Andrew Spencer Photography

The Canon 7D – First impressions and a 7D Kaikoura wedding

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

Check focus on your DSLR

Seriously serious RAW processor

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Kaikoura Real Estate photography

There is an interesting mix of architecture in Kaikoura. I get to sample the diversity when I photograph properties for a couple of the astute real estate agents in town. There is everything from cutting edge architectural masterpieces to contemporary seaside baches to 1950s designs from the state house era.

One thing that makes Kaikoura different for photographing houses and properties is that almost everywhere you go there is a view of the ocean or the mountains. When I think of the photography I have done of houses in the city I really do enjoy the big vista of Kaikoura as a backdrop.

I usually get the tricky jobs, the houses with big windows that let the bright sunlight stream into huge living areas, contrast that real estate agents with Fuji pocket cameras are never going to deal with and I am constantly telling them to do the selling while I make the marketing material.

Using lighting, a variety of lenses and having good local knowledge for when to photograph, along with efficient post processing systems I can usually (weather dependent, and I call the shots on when I photograph) deliver images very quickly and cost effectively. All images are delivered as a print and web copy on CDROM. I am about to trial a flash drive exchange system for file delivery with my key clients in a bid to do our bit to save the planet. I shudder when I think of all the CDROMs sitting around or thrown out after marketing programs.

A guy a few days ago asked me how I was going to make a photo of his kitchen with the Seaward Kaikouras in the background and sun pouring through the windows. I told him I would rather be dealing with sun and mountains than a next door neighbours clothes line and that he had forgotten what a beautiful place we live in.

Kaikoura Realty – Joe Van Rooyen

Harcourts Kaikoura – Janice Dreaver

CRT Kaikoura – Kathy Thompson

Bayleys Kaikoura – Robin Gibson

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The Hairy Mussel Co – live tank shoot

The Hairy Mussel Co is an innovative company of cool Guys who have worked out how to distribute fresh, live green-lip mussels to folk who enjoy fine food. I’ve done a bit of work for them and I love them! They are go-getters with the good old kiwi can do, never say die attitude, an inspiration to the rest of us.

Thing is, they’ve developed this mussel tank that will fit in retailers shops and it needs no power to run, has a small footprint. You just put the mussels in, fill up an ice box and you’re good to go. Too easy. Yeah…as long as you’re not a photographer! The Hairy Mussel Co need some promo images, this tank is as shiny as your retired father in law’s car and I was having nightmares about capturing images of it.
I thought of putting one of these tanks on the beach somewhere and using a 200mm lens to  keep myself from being reflected off every sparkling piece of it. Turns out that wasn’t an option and we had to make photos at Cuddon Engineering in Blenheim, they are the clever people who turn dreams into tangible assets.

So, rethink on the photo shoot. Solution – huge light source by shooting a strobe through a diffuser panel, a little bit of fill with an umbrella and try to eliminate any bright ambient light  with another diffuser. And used a blue background in case we decided to cut out the tank.

Result – beautiful! What a work of art this mussel tank is, almost as delectable as the product that’s going to be in it. I adore mussels!

The Hairy Mussel Co

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