A couple people have asked what I think of the new Canon 7D which was just announced, so here you go:
- Personally, I like full-frame cameras. So right off the bat I'm not really interested. That said, it seems like it's pretty tricked out from first glance.
- Unless there's been some amazing breakthrough, I think 18MP in a cropped sensor is a waste. First off, most of the people who are buying cropped sensors are not using glass that's up to task of feeding nice sharp images to a sensor that packed. And the 50D at 15MP already had only middling high-ISO noise performance. All of this remains to be seen of course.
- 8 Frames a second would be useful for sports or wildlife shooters and is pretty darn fast for $1699 or whatever the body costs. People who need this capability are pretty psyched. That's a lot of data at 18MP, which is probably the reason behind the dual Digic chips. I'd say that this totally makes the 1D a paperweight unless you're the kind of person who needs a bulletproof body for war zone use. And even then, you could buy three of these for the price of one of those.
-Along with the speed comes an updated auto-focus system with 19 cross points. This was a badly needed updated which brings Canon back in line with the mid-level AF from Nikon. Not that I use anything other than the center point on my 5D2, but I'm a little jealous on this one. Seriously, this should have been done a year ago and on my camera.
-100% viewfinder. Here's another one that should have been on the 5D2 in my opinion. Though it's a little easier with the cropped sensor. Should be a big step up from the 20/30/40/50D. No interchangeable focus screen though, which is sad, but understandable.
- Movie modes. Great for those who want them. The cropped sensor will give you a bit more depth of field at the equivalent focal length and aperture, but you lose sensitivity of course. I hope they port the 720P mode to the 5D2. I could have used that last week while helping my good friend Carole film her puppets.
- There's been some suggestion that in the past, Canon tries out new technology on the smaller APS-C sensors which have higher yields than full frame. The area of a cropped sensor is about 337 square mm while a full-frame sensor is 864 square mm. The practical upshot of this is that if you do the math, it suggests that the next full-frame sensor from Canon is going to be spitting out huge amounts of data. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see the 1Ds4 at 32 or even 36MP. Food for thought.
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All in all, a fine upgrade and in some ways a new class of camera for Canon. Squares up better than well with the D300. at $1699, I think they should get rid of the xxD line and stick with something like this as the mid-grade body.
For those with a 40/50D, I'd say only upgrade if you need something specific like the video.
For those with a 20/30D or an old Rebel and are ready to make the leap to a modern body, I'd say that it's a great time to leap.
- Personally, I like full-frame cameras. So right off the bat I'm not really interested. That said, it seems like it's pretty tricked out from first glance.
- Unless there's been some amazing breakthrough, I think 18MP in a cropped sensor is a waste. First off, most of the people who are buying cropped sensors are not using glass that's up to task of feeding nice sharp images to a sensor that packed. And the 50D at 15MP already had only middling high-ISO noise performance. All of this remains to be seen of course.
- 8 Frames a second would be useful for sports or wildlife shooters and is pretty darn fast for $1699 or whatever the body costs. People who need this capability are pretty psyched. That's a lot of data at 18MP, which is probably the reason behind the dual Digic chips. I'd say that this totally makes the 1D a paperweight unless you're the kind of person who needs a bulletproof body for war zone use. And even then, you could buy three of these for the price of one of those.
-Along with the speed comes an updated auto-focus system with 19 cross points. This was a badly needed updated which brings Canon back in line with the mid-level AF from Nikon. Not that I use anything other than the center point on my 5D2, but I'm a little jealous on this one. Seriously, this should have been done a year ago and on my camera.
-100% viewfinder. Here's another one that should have been on the 5D2 in my opinion. Though it's a little easier with the cropped sensor. Should be a big step up from the 20/30/40/50D. No interchangeable focus screen though, which is sad, but understandable.
- Movie modes. Great for those who want them. The cropped sensor will give you a bit more depth of field at the equivalent focal length and aperture, but you lose sensitivity of course. I hope they port the 720P mode to the 5D2. I could have used that last week while helping my good friend Carole film her puppets.
- There's been some suggestion that in the past, Canon tries out new technology on the smaller APS-C sensors which have higher yields than full frame. The area of a cropped sensor is about 337 square mm while a full-frame sensor is 864 square mm. The practical upshot of this is that if you do the math, it suggests that the next full-frame sensor from Canon is going to be spitting out huge amounts of data. Personally, I wouldn't be surprised to see the 1Ds4 at 32 or even 36MP. Food for thought.
-----------------
All in all, a fine upgrade and in some ways a new class of camera for Canon. Squares up better than well with the D300. at $1699, I think they should get rid of the xxD line and stick with something like this as the mid-grade body.
For those with a 40/50D, I'd say only upgrade if you need something specific like the video.
For those with a 20/30D or an old Rebel and are ready to make the leap to a modern body, I'd say that it's a great time to leap.
Well put. I wish Canon would increase dynamic range and used more of the resulting RAW headroom on improved high tonal range / un-linear highlights handling instead of packing more and more pixel on the sensor.
With latest tecnology such as gapless microlenses and larger light diodes the possible increase of dynamic range must be tremendous when used on full frame with 12MP or even a little more.
I agree with you: The 5D2 Should have had an updated autofocus and a 720p video mode... Something that I'm going to miss.