Canon EOS 7D 18 MP CMOS Digital SLR Camera with 3-inch LCD

Having moved from a Canon 30D to a 40D, and even thought about the 50D, my decision to go with the new 7D was based on the rationale that I’d buy it sooner or later so why not now and get the use and enjoyment sooner and longer. The price was not insignificant but since I have a number of “L” lenses it all came together. One of the features I was looking for was the increased ISO performance since I shoot youth basketball pictures in dimly-lit gymnasiums. I was shooting at 800 ISO and occasionally bumped it to 1600. Now I’m shooting 1600 and 3200 with much better results. I wasn’t sure about the video feature since my results with video from a Canon SD 970 have been quite unprofessional (not a camera problem), but as I’m gradually learning to shoot video properly I’m really glad I didn’t settle for the 50D (which I think is a great camera). The Canon video tutorials for the 7D are great! Go to [..]to check them out, whether you’ve purchased the 7D or are thinking about it.
Rating: 15 / 5

I paid over $1,800 for the body and the RAW file takes 25M bytes, which is more than twice the size than my previous camera. So, I assumed that the picture quality should be good. Yes, the picture quality is indeed good, ONLY IF you resize the 25Mbytes of RAW file into something like 1024 pixels width, at ISO 400 and above. You buy a cheap point and shoot camera, and it’s image quality will be incredible in low ISO and when there is enough light. We pay more and spend more memory (and pay extra for that) for DSLR to get more descent ISO performance when there isn’t enough light. If you willing to resize to 1024 pixel width, there is no problem in high ISO – but then why would you spend 25Mbytes for the RAW ? And why would you pay $1,800 for the body ?

I took about 40 pictures in a gathering. It was in the evening and light was more than enough to read books very comfortably. So, at least the light was enough not to create bad quality pictures. However, I used high ISO (1600 and 3200) so that I don’t have any blurred pictures. Besides, I read so many praises by 7d fanatics about how good 7D’s ISO performance was. Somehow, I trusted them. But I was very surprised to see so many white dots/pixels in the dark area when viewed in 100%, as I showed in the uploaded picture. Indeed, there is no problem if you down-sample (resize) to 1024 pixel width. You won’t be able to see them.

I asked around about this problem and there were two types of responses. One is that it is the expected behavior of 7D, which has so many pixels in a small sensor. And I need to remap those white pixels using software. Indeed, LightRoom does it automatically. But not DPP (Raw processing software from Canon). And LightRoom is not ready for 7D as of now. The other response is that 7D is so good in high ISO performance, and I must have gotten a lemon. I hesitated what to do. And I just decided to return it and try an another 7D, only finding that this was a disaster. The new one showed the exactly the same behavior. In addition, the new one has hot pixels that appear even in ISO100. In fact, there are five such dead pixels. I know that this is OK, only if they are spread around. Unfortunately, all those five pixels are adjacent together and the whole white dead spot area is quite visible in every picture.

So, I don’t know at this moment what to do. I will definitely return this 7D that has the dead pixels. But unfortunately I can only exchange. Would I just exchange to another 7D and live with those white dots in high ISO, and be satisfied with down-sample’ed pictures ? Or would I exchange to other Canon camera or even Nikon… Anyway, my opinion is that this camera should not be this expensive and waste 25Mbytes for the RAW file just to create this kind of bad images in mid to high ISO. And for my horrible experiences, I can only give one star. But YMMV.

–edit—

OK, I decided to get the replacement of 7D – this is the 3rd one. This time, I was tired. Whatever it is, I would just take it. I’ll live with white dots or some dead pixels or whatever. Let it be my destiny… So, I did not go through mid-to-high ISO testing, and I don’t know what it would be this time – and I would not care any more. But then when I took some pictures, I found that they were so soft. I investigated, and saw that 7D is not focusing correctly. The lenses required AF micro-adjustments. At least the previous two 7Ds did not have this AF problem and need not AF microadjustments, as the manual says. They were focusing correctly. Since the 3rd 7D is not, I went through AF micro-adjustments. However, I also found out that the AF microadjustment at particular distance and aperture is not global within one lens adjustment. For example, if I set the microadjustment correctly at F2.8 from 1 foot (this was +15), AF at F 5.6 from 7 feet was very fuzzy. So, I set the AF microadjustment from the setting, and the value was – 20, but then the pictures are fuzzy at F2.8 from 1 foot distance. I tried to find the middle value which would work in all cases, but once I found a AF miroadjustment for particular distance and aperture, it wasn’t working for other aperture and distance. So, there is no global setting for one lens. It varies depending on the distance and aperture within one lens adjustment. What a bummer… I think that a lot of people who are complaining about 7D’s AF problems have 7Ds like the one that I have now. BUT if you take picture at F8.0 or higher, AF will look OK – not because 7D works correctly, but because at this aperture the depth of field is deeper.

So, for all the people who praise Cannon 7D, either you are extremely lucky people, or you just don’t care/know about the details.

Or I am the extremely unlucky person …
Rating: 15 / 5

This Price is jumping all over the place…at least it is back down to 1900 now. Buy quick. Actually, with this price war it might go down further.

I assume this post will be deleted as it is not really a review….
Rating: 55 / 5