The Canon 7D – First impressions and a 7D Kaikoura wedding
October 13th, 2009 | by Andrew |I took delivery of a 7D early last week, the timing was perfect as my 1DsMKII went off to the Canon workshops for it’s second shutter replacement, the current one lasting not very long! That’s another story and we won’t even go there at the moment.
I had a keen interest in the 7D as soon as I heard the rumours of it’s upcoming release, seems Canon had decided to up the ante on their prosumer range of gear and the features list seemed worth having a look at. I put my order in with the good folk at Photo & Video and got a pleasant surprise when they rang me in the first week of October to say the shipment had arrived.
The obligatory glance through the manual while having my 3rd flat white on the morning the camera was dropped off by the courier, then I plugged on a lens and set it to work. Well, not really work, a couple of days of sorting it out which could have been one day if I had read the manual properly in the first place.
There’s a lot of new and useful technology in the 7D and you need to read the book to make the best of it.
A week has now gone by since it arrived and I’ve now had a chance to test the 7D in the rigours of a wedding day. I did all the shooting for the day with the 7D except for the ceremony when I had two camera/lens combinations on the go.
So.. what’s to like with the 7D.
Handling/ergonomics
Out of the box the 7D feels nice. It almost feels like a 1 series build with a solid feel and nice grippy textured rubber in all the right places. The finger and thumb positioning is perfect for my (average size) hands, all the buttons are well placed and after one week I can operate the camera easily without second guessing any of the controls.
After a few years of using 1 series canons I am well used to the bulk of a battery booster and like the balance and handling they give to the camera, I have my order in for a booster for the 7D.
Viewfinder/focus
The first time you look through the viewfinder on the 7D you hardly know where to look, it’s big, bright and beautiful. Can be set to display a grid and electronic level, perfect for folk like myself who don’t know straight from crooked.
The Auto focus is impressive with 19 points and selectable focus zones. Very fast and seems accurate.
Shooting speed
The 7d is a race horse with a shoot speed of 8 frames per second and a burst buffer of 126 jpgs or 15 RAW images. That’s faster than I’m going to need for most of my photography but very useful for when I get out for a bird or wildlife shoot.
Wireless flash control
I’m loving this and used it several times on jobs in the last week. Speedlights can be run wirelessly from the camera. Just set the Speedlights to slave mode and go wild either in ETTL or Manual with ratios and all settings done remotely from the camera. Set your flash to 1/2 power manual and it magically is set and fires as commanded. I’ve used it for interior real estate shoots and it works great, seems to be reliable indoors where there are plenty of places for the infared to bounce and trigger the flash but haven’t tested it outdoors yet.
ISO
ISO 12800! Don’t know how useful that can be but I’ve made a 1/2 second exposure at f4.0 of my back lawn in the pitch dark and can see my kids’s pet rabbits in their cage. There is a fair bit of noise happening but it is still an image. Using the camera at ISO 1600 seems to make very usable and not over noisy files.
Any problems?
Nothing major. I shot a set of images with 70 – 200 2.8 lens wide open and none of them were focused. They looked fine on the 7D LCD but they were trash when I ingested them. Of course they happened to be the first images I looked at and I had a major flip out when it crossed my mind I had shot a whole day of unfocused images. I did a focus test on the 70 -200 and it was miles out for some reason. They were the only images I shot with the lens full open all day luckily, a reminder to test gear before setting into a job. Did an AF micro adjustment on the lens and it is focusing sweet. Tested my other lenses and they were all good.
I’ve always been a bit suspect about Hi resolution APS-C sensor cameras after using 1 series Canons with their huge sensors, big pixels and low noise. The 7D files do have a different look than I am used to with a little more noise, not unpleasant it’s almost like a film grain. The next project is to sort out a RAW processing workflow that makes things look nice. Lightroom or ACR are working in beta but the results did not seem too impressive. I guess shooting JPG would solve a lot of problems but I always end up going back to RAW because I enjoy it.
RAW developer turned out to be the trick. It’s a good grunty RAW processor made by a proactive developer who already has it tweaked for 7D files.
And the verdict…
Liking it! It handles nice, the performance is good, image quality is looking good – I’m looking forward to a long and productive summer with this peice of gear.
And there’s the video to check out yet!
Gallery of good looking people – images made with Canon 7D
And a couple of useful links;
Photo & Video – Kick Ass camera suppliers
Seriously serious RAW processor
Tags: amp, battery booster, camera lens, canon, canons, couple of days, finger and thumb, first impression, glance, images, kaikoura, keen interest, lens combinations, photo, photograph weddings, rumours, second guessing, shutter, surprise, textured rubber, tyrannosaurus rex, useful technology, wedding day, wedding photography
By Brett Corlett on Oct 14, 2009
Hello,
I was interested to read your review of the 7D. I work in video post production and also I am a keen photographer. I had a the opportunity
last weekend to shoot a friends wedding with the 5D mark 2. I shot stilla and video. I enjoyed using this camera, (this being the first semi pro digital camera that I have used. I have been hearing allot of good things about the 7D so it has been good to see your results, (impressive images). So how much discernible is there between the 7D and 5D in image quality in your opinion. The 5d being a full sensor and the 7D not.
For high quality stills work is the 7D up to the task?
I am seriously considering purchasing a 7D for shooting high grade stills and some HD video.
Thanks for your time.
Cheers
Brett C
By Andrew on Oct 14, 2009
Hi Brett
Good question. I bought the 7D with the intention of using it for a second camera for shooting weddings and some portrait work and since I have had it I’ve used it for everything! I’ve shot a wedding, 5 real estate jobs, a school photo shoot, some stock and the usual personal in-between stuff. I’m blown away with this thing! I thought ‘well I’m never going to use this thing for architectural images because it’s not full frame’ you know what, I bought a 10-22mm lens which works the same as the 16-35mm I use on the full frame and I reckon it’s sharper and nicer than the 16-35mm. Plus, I push a button and view the level to get everything nice and straight and use and control my Speedlights to light the scene where I think they have enough grunt.
I’ve never liked the prosumer Canons because they’ve felt a bit kind of plasticy and tinny up till about the 50D, well the 7D feels so dammed nice. It’s solid, ergonomically excellent and I can hardly put it down.
I’m still getting my head around the image quality. So far I cannot fault what I am working with, there is a ton of resolution (you can print A2 from a native file) The files look different than I am used to and I am still working on a workflow that feels good. I like using RAW for the majority of my shooting and it will be interesting to see how Lightroom produced files will look when it is up to the task. I’m using RAW convertor which is a great processor and it is making nice file images.
I need to get some of the images I’ve made completely through the system (Wedding albums and prints) before I can make an honest comment on image quality. From what I’ve worked with till now, things are looking good. Watch this space for the latest thoughts.
Video is looking good, I’ve shot a bit. Apparently not as good as 5DII but I’m sure it’s going to be more than useful for the work I do. There’s lot’s of impressive footage around the internet.
hope that’s helpful
Andrew
By Jerome on Jan 2, 2010
Andrew, thanks for your input on the camera. In addition, I’d love your opinion on the following: If the 7D was the only camera you owned, which two lenses would you couple it with for the majority of your wedding photography? In short, I have a 70-200, but am trying to determine if (given the crop factor) the best coupling will be the 24-70 or the 17-55. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
By Andrew on Mar 23, 2010
Hey Jerome.
With the 7D I have been using 70-200, 24-70, (24-105 is not good) and I got a 10-22 for use with the 7D. I’ve got a 16-35 but it is a nothing range on the 1.6 crop. 24-70 is a nice portrait zoom with this crop factor.
By Andrew on Mar 23, 2010
Hi there.
I’ll put up a post wedding season update in a while.
Regards
By Daryl Quenet on May 27, 2010
Greetings Andrew,
I’m just about to upgrade from a Rebel T1i up to a 7D and I saw something in one of your comments that I’d like some more information on… why isn’t the 24-105 not good? I just got one last week…. and I thought it would work great on a 7D which is coming next month…
By Andrew on May 28, 2010
Hi Daryl
The 24-105 is a real useful range for weddings and walk around shooting. Trouble is it’s affected by flare. Not counting the recall issue Canon had with flare in a run of these, they all seem to have a flare problem. Lens seems usable on my 1Ds series cameras but I have had no luck on the 7D, image quality is bad. My theory is the lens flare problem, put on a 24-70 and all is sweet.
Hope you have better luck than me.
Andrew
By Daryl Quenet on May 28, 2010
Is that a first gen 24-105mm, or a recent one? I thought I read somewhere about the lens flare mainly being in some of the more original models…
By Andrew on May 31, 2010
Hi Daryl
My 24-105mm is a recent one. The first generation were hardly usable for flare.
By Ben Aguirre on Jun 3, 2010
Hi Andrew,
I stumbled upon your article. I’ve had 3 7Ds, now have 2. When I saw your comment about how the images looked good on the LCD, but like garbage on the computer, I can totally relate. Soft, no-specific focal point, kind of noisy looking images no matter what I did. I micro-adjusted both a 24-105, 70-200 2.8L IS, but they still sucked! Luckily, here in California, I took them into Canon. When I got them back, the paperwork said ” your camera was found to be within specifications. Cleaning was performed along with some “electrical adjustments’”… I don’t know what they did, but they are both tack sharp on all of my lenses ( without micro adjustment) and I have about all the L glass they make. They are basically as sharp as my 5D2 and with 18MP, there is some extreme detail. If your’s arent so great, send them in. It was WELL WORTH IT!
Thanks for your review….
Ben
By Melissa on Jun 5, 2010
Hello!! I am trying to decide if I want to upgrade from my 40D to the 7D or a Mark canon camera. I am looking for something with better ISO than the 40D. Would the 7D be a good jump? I am just starting out in photography and am going to do some wedding this summer. Thanks so much. I appreciate any help you can give me.