Tuesdays with Nate | Canon 7D Review

I was fortunate enough to be one of the first people to get my hands on a Canon 7D, thanks to Colonial Photo & Hobby. It really has worked like a dream, but because it’s so hard to get ahold of, very little has been said about it. I haven’t run lab-style tests on it, I haven’t done comparison shots with 5 other cameras in identical conditions, and I haven’t taken it to sub-arctic conditions, but I have put about 6,000 actuations on the shutter and explored every menu and feature on it. Here’s what I’ve concluded so far:

(Preface: A lot of this is very technical. If you’re not a photographer, this might be incredibly boring. Also, I’m not a professional technical critic. If you’ve used the 7D and have different conclusions, I’d love to hear them. Keep in mind these are my opinions, not lab results)

First Impression
Right off the bat you’ll notice that the 7D is built like a tank. It’s heavy, it’s solid, it’s sealed tight, and it’s rated up to 150,000 shutter actuations. It’s about the same size as the 5D, albeit a little sleeker looking, but because I shot with the 5D for so long, the grip seems slightly less comfortable. The second thing you’ll notice is the plethora of new buttons and the big 3” screen. Looking through the viewfinder is like riding in a Cadillac after being in a SmartCar. It’s big and wide, it gives you tons of information and lots of light, and for the first time on a Canon, you can superimpose a grid in the viewfinder. Right off the bat, you’ll love what you see… Click here to continue reading the review, see photos, and watch a video shot with the 7D

Features
This camera really is “feature heavy”. If you’re a geek like me, you’ll really appreciate getting to know all of them, if not, you might be a little overwhelmed. (Like Becka, for example, who doesn’t really want anything to do with all those buttons.) First off, you have the ability to reprogram most of the buttons on the camera to really customize your experience. For example, I switched the Depth of Field preview button (that I hardly use) to a more useful button that when pressed, activates the AI Servo autofocus, so I can track moving subjects on the fly.
-I would have to say my favorite thing about the 7D is the Dual DIGIC 4 Image processors. This gives you an 8 frames per second burst for about 2 seconds, longer if you shoot on JPEG or a smaller RAW file. It’s lightning fast and great for nature, sports, or the occasional garter toss.
-The most innovative new feature on the camera is the redesigned autofocus system. It gives you 5 ways to select which of the 19 (up from 9 on most previous Canon models) AF points you want to use. The default AF mode automatically selects the AF points for you, and lights up all of the corresponding points that will be in focus. It’s easy to cycle through the different AF modes, which include a single AF point, precision single AF point, group AF point, or a crosshair style point, which allows you to select one point and uses the 4 points directly around it. No matter which mode you choose, the AF system is extremely fast and sharp.  Even more impressive is the AI Servo mode, which will refocus almost instantly as you recompose or track a moving subject.
-The video function is brilliant. For the first time, Canon has given us a LiveView/Video switch with a Start/Stop button this is stupidly easy to use. The 7D will shoot 1080p video and 30, 25, or 24 fps, and can shoot 60fps in 720p. Like the 5dmkII, the 7D video is amazingly vibrant and sharp, and the audio quality from the built-in mono mic is actually pretty impressive. For you Mac users, the 7D records it’s movies in an H.264 .MOV file that works seamlessly with iMovie and Final Cut. The most important feature is the ability to use your own lenses, making the 7D an extremely versatile and high quality video camera.
-There are several other little features like the built-in level (both in the viewfinder and on the LCD), the ability to trigger other canon flashes via the pop-up flash, ISO expansion to 12,800, smarter metering and an active lighting system that boosts shadows and reduces highlights to balance exposure, and an 18 Megapixel CMOS sensor.

Image Quality
Full-frame camera lovers be warned, the 7D will give you a run for your money. I’ve shot extensively with both the 5D and the 5DmkII, and expected that I would be compromising a little bit of the color quality and noise reduction to get 8fps and a bunch of awesome gadgets on a smaller sensor. I was 3/4 right. The color is simply stunning. Blues and greens from the grass and sky are almost too vibrant and rich right out of the camera, and we’ve had to tone some of them down. The high ISO noise quality, while nowhere near that of the 5DmkII, is still impressive. I’m comfortable shooting at 2500, 3200 in a pinch, but the really high settings are just too grainy. (Becka’s shots with the mkII still win in the low-light department.) I would say that it performs as well or better at high ISO than my old 5D, but there is still leaves something to be desired. Other than that, the images are sharp, vibrant, and look amazing on the 920,000 dot 3” LCD. (See photo above.)

Concerns
-My first issue with the 7D came when I was shooting outside on a bright day. The AF points are superimposed on the focus screen, and when you have a fast lens attached (first notice with a 50mm f/1.2) the AF points virtually disappear when shooting into light, as does the red light that normally indicates that you have your subject in focus. This is likely to be addressed with a firmware update, but until it is, it can be obnoxious.
-As of today, Adobe has not updated it’s Camera RAW to officially support the 7D.  The current version of Camera RAW (5.5) does allow you to import and edit the regular RAW files into both CS4 and Lightroom 2.5, but if you’re concerned over having enough storage to contain 25MB RAW files, the mRAW (10MP, about 14MB each) is a very appealing format. I found out the hard way and shot 2 weddings on mRaw, and I’m left with images that we either have to sit on, or convert to JPEG with the (cough, crappy, cough) Canon software that is included with the camera. A workaround, for now at least, is downloading the Lightroom 3 Public Beta, which seems to work well, but is still glitchy and a bit slower when dealing with any 7D files. (Becka’s been going crazy waiting for the updates! Come on Canon and Adobe!)

Summary
DSLRs come and go. New models come out every year. One company tries to outdo the other, usually by adding some gimmicky feature that the other one executed poorly in an attempt at “innovation”. Lately, the trend has been for companies to “trickle-down” the high-end features from their top end models into their consumer cameras, which usually results in dumbed-down or over complicated features that are just not practical or necessary for the people that actually end up with the camera. The 7D truly brought Canon up-to-speed, it brought out some key new features that are more than likely going to start appearing on more and more cameras in Canon’s lineup (note the video buttons on the new 1DmkIV). It’s more camera than a hobbyist or weekend warrior would need, and it’s definitely not a starter camera, but for serious amateur or professional photographers, especially those in the sports or nature fields, this is the perfect camera. It’s really an amazing value at around $1700 dollars, if you can get your hands on it. I don’t have a rating system, i would give it 4.5 out of 5 somethings.

And I’ll end with a video from the 7D shot using our Canon 100mm 2.8 macro…

Canon 7D Macro Vido Experiment from Studio222Photography in HD on Vimeo.

*Office warning* MUSIC IS ON

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