It's been quite awhile since I've posted but I haven't been sitting idly. Over the past month I've purchased (at a great price), a Canon EOS 7D and a Canon 24-105mm f4L IS USM lens. Both pieces of equipment are excellently made. Today, I'll be reviewing just the 7D. Compared to my old T3i, the 7D feels like an actual tool, and the versatility of the 24-105 is unmatched by any lens in its price range.
So why would I purchase a digital camera when I specialize in film? Versatility. When I shoot a wedding, I take about 300 pictures depending on the length of the event. Due to changing lighting, experimental use of flash, and the need for 3200 ISO, it is impossible to use film. That's where a high quality digital camera comes into play.
My last digital camera, a Canon Rebel T3i, was -adequate- for weddings. The problem with this camera is that while the pictures from it look great at ISOs below 2400, anything above that looks like junk. In fact, a low light picture at 6400 ISO is unusable. If you keep it in shutter priority or aperture priority, the camera's brain can figure out what needs to be done to get a good picture. The program and auto functions are next to useless and can yield terrible results if you aren't paying attention to the settings, which, if you have the camera in program or auto, you probably aren't. Another point off the T3i is the camera's poor low light autofocus. Anything below moderate indoor lighting will stump the camera.
It's not that the camera was poorly designed. It's that it wasn't designed to make money. It's not a tool to base a business off of. It is designed and priced to be used by people that are new to DSLRs. In fact, the camera, by default, will tell you what each mode is and what it's for when you click the wheel to it. For example, if you put it onto Av, it tells you on the display that Av is for aperture priority.
The 7D is quite different. For one, it's bigger and heavier. Its frame is made out of magnesium rather than plastic. It also includes a HUGELY useful feature- the Quick Control dial. This dial serves multiple purposes: in manual mode, it controls the aperture, and in the various program modes, it controls over/under exposure. Another welcome change is that the camera takes CF cards rather than SD cards. This means that read and write times are faster and that in turn helps the camera achieve an impressive 8 FPS burst rate with a decently sized buffer (4 frames at 8 FPS and more than I've tried to take at 5 FPS).
Perhaps the biggest, most important feature that it has is that it has only one full auto setting. Just the green square. No Action, Landscape, or Portrait settings are available. Why? Because this camera is aimed at people who won't ever use those. Instead, Canon gives you three custom modes. The autofocus system is quite intelligent and it has many more autofocus points than the T3i. A feature that it keeps from the Rebel series though, is the on-camera flash. This is sadly absent on the 6D, 5D Mk III, and 1D. It is very convenient and yields great results when used as a fill flash.
I could go on about how wonderful the 7D is, but I'll end it here. To conclude, the 7D, now that it's been replaced by the 7D Mk II, is a perfect value for people that need more than a Rebel camera but less than a 5D.
Coming next, a review of the venerable and infinitely useful 24-105.
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