I’ve reread my initial “review”, if you can call it that, of the 7D a few times, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the post really didn’t do justice to the camera. Note, probably no review I can provide can be fully counted on, but I feel as though maybe I should tell a little bit more than what was said in the beginning. Now that I’ve really had the time to shoot with the camera I can provide a more “mature” depiction of the camera, rather than the “Oh I just got it now I want to talk about it” state of mind I may have been guilty of earlier.

As stated before, the camera feels very good in hand. The body is designed quite well, and it feels snug and not as bulky as it could. The buttons on the back of the body have nothing to hide, and everything is well placed. A couple of the most useful physical features of the camera are the Quick menu and the One-touch RAW + Jpeg buttons. The quick menu is essentially what the name sounds like…its a quick menu. Press the button and you’ll see your settings neatly displayed on the LCD which can be easily navigated through and changed, you guessed it, quickly. The instant RAW + Jpeg button is useful if you’re shooting Jpegs just for the fun of it, and then you see something really cool so you need to quickly record a RAW image as well. I do not find much use for this feature, however, considering I shoot entirely in RAW. I would also imagine that most people using the 7D would be doing likewise. Of course the feature works both ways, so If you’re shooting RAW and you also want to record a Jpeg you can do that as well, but I can’t really think of a practical application where you would be unable to make a jpeg from the RAW image later… Lets not go there.

Also as as stated previously, the menu controls are logical, but some features can be a little buried. The 7D also has a feature which allows the photographer to write his or her copyright information into the metadata which is just super. Since I’m upgrading from the XT I’m not used to this feature and I’m so glad its there. Something else great about the menu is that you can customize pretty much every button on the back of the camera. Very very cool. I’ve found that having image quality assigned to the SET button in the middle of the dial is the most useful for me.

The custom functions are easily utilized, and can be very useful in the right situation . Just simply begin in manual mode, choose the functions and settings you would use to shoot in that given situation, and then assign them to C1, C2, or C3. I use C1 for standard daylight shooting, C2 for night shooting, and C3 for video.

Another great feature is the electronic level. Just hit info a couple times while your shooting and the level will come up on the LCD. You can also have it appear in the viewfinder through the activated AF points, but I haven’t spent the energy to figure out how to do it. When I first read about the level, I thought it was cool, but I didn’t think I would use it. Wrong. I’ve already used it several times in practical applications and its oh so useful, and in all my experiences, accurate.

I don’t shoot a lot of fast moving subjects, but today I decided to go out and shoot my dogs just to play around with the all new AF. Love it. Its deadly. The 7D tracked my running dogs with ease, even when they were running towards me. The 8fps was also a very useful tool and a pleasure to listen to. Oh, the power.  The low-light AF also greatly outperforms the XT, but I’m not too sure how it racks up against direct competitors. Again, the 100% viewfinder is a blessing.

I’ve looked at the noise on the 7D SEVERAL times. Yes, I’ve been pixel peeping. What I’ve found is that the noise at high ISOs isn’t as bad as I thought it was. I was actually just looking at a few JPEGS I took indoors in low light at 5000 ISO and I found the noise levels to be surprisingly manageable. Here are a couple screenshots of an image I shot in the middle of the night at 4000 iso. The Raw files were opened in DPP and then brought into Lightroom as Tiffs. NR tools were used in both programs. Taken with a Canon 50mm 1.8 II at 1.8 for 1/40 sec at ISO 4000.  The second image is at 100%.

Another point of interest is the apparent softness in the images viewed on the LCD screen. To some people, like me, this may cause some stress early on in the game. Its important to remember, however, that we’re dealing with 18 megapixels, the image we’re viewing on the LCD is a Jpeg rendition (even in RAW), and that every sensor depicts a RAW file differently, and that each RAW file put out any given camera needs a given amount of editing.

As far as video goes, I’m not going to pretend like I know stuff, ’cause I don’t. After doing some research I’ve realized that in order to really fully get into video one has to invest in a plethora of other expensive gear that I’m just not ready to commit to by any stretch of the imagination. I’ll dabble with what I’ve got and edit with iMovie. You can find a lot of other reviews raving about the 7Ds video capabilities.

A feature that I’m excited about, but haven’t been able to test yet, is the ability to trigger multiple speedlights via the pop up flash. I haven’t been able to play yet because as of right now I don’t have any speedlights. Maybe soon? Should be very useful.

And I guess that’ll wrap up my 3rd edition of the Canon 7D “review”. Thanks for reading. Here are some sample photos taken with a similar workflow as mentioned above.

i was just finishing my Philip Bloom blog-post-”adulation” … as i reconsidered: “actually …how the hell i got into video dslr’s ?!”
… well it was October 2009, i just got on vimeo & twitter and in kinda coincidence i got a hint on a webside called canonfilmmakers

this was my fist peek / notice on the 7D:

this is Jon Connor holding his (at this time) new Canon 7D – package in his hand(s)…
this is literally the fist impression i got on Jon & the 7D … fist thought … besides “boy, he has to shave”  …“why is he so excited ?”

…well i read his “Canon 7D: My First Impressions” and as he is always surrounded by cristina valdivieso i ended up – a few days later or so – on the vimeo page Canon 7D Field Test:

my comment on that: “stunning !!! a stills cam !!!”
… well i heard of some video-shooting going on with still-cameras… just hadn’t seen footage till this point in time (at least not that i was aware of)

so after that in invested some research time and at some point i got to Philip Bloom …
and there you go …

since that i had some serious discussions with my co-workers/co-founders and our DP and local filmmakers … about to use a canon-dslr for some of our next projects (as i mentioned before) and certainly i watched a lot of cool Video-DSLR stuff since then …

so i got excited too

so now (after x-mas) i’ll have to find a rental-house to do some actual test-shootings with our DP … to see who this works for us and how this can fit into the budgets … and so on.
now i guess i have to thank cristina, jon and philip for opening my mind a bit
so … thanks a lot guys!

some final thoughts, tho’:
in the end actually it’s not that important what camera we use … i still like the footage that comes out of the XH-A1, which we use all the time lately. it is the story/concept/idea you have / want to tell … it is the right voice … a great music / sound…the talent of the DP “behind” the camera … the whole package -  so to say … that matters the most

… but i also have to say again: the footage you can get out of this DSLR’s is really great !

… you have to watch this: Philip Bloom - a well experienced filmmaker – did some astonishing work / tests with the canon video-DSLR’s and did some serious blogging about it…
this is just mind-blowing. we’ll have quite “some” corporate film and viral stuff coming up in 2010 and we definitely considering using V-DSLR’s

philip and his stuff helped us quite a lot making this decision …
just to see and read how this works is great … so check this:

Canon 5DmkII and Canon 7D on Skywalker Ranch

philip’s blog-post about that

Low-light-testing of a pre-production Canon 1DMKIV in Prague

philip’s blog-post about that

Pentax K-7

With the talk always focussed on Nikon and Canon’s efforts to outdo one another, some of the other camera brands have been forgotten about somewhat. Pentax have had a long and illustrious history of making great SLRs and lenses, so it’s a shame that their DSLR cameras are not often the talk of the town. But they do actually make solid DSLR cameras, with the K-7 being a prime example of that. Here are our 5 reasons why you should consider buying the Pentax K-7 over the Nikon D300S or the Canon 7D.

1. Price: With a difference of almost £200 (body only comparison), the Pentax K-7 makes more sense for the bank balance.

2. Primes: Pentax have some of the nicest selection of prime lenses out there. With a healthy selection of made-for-digital DA lenses and some 35mm film lenses that give the Nikkor and Canon lenses a run for their money.

Pentax DA Limited 40mm

• DA Limited lenses:
• Old classic Pentax lenses: with a selection of Pentax glass from waaaaaay back, you’ve got rich pickings for prime lenses.
• FA Limited lenses: these Pentax lenses comprise of some gorgeous glass with metal housing. The cover of the March 2002 Popular Photography made a claim that they were “The 3 greatest prime lenses we’ve ever tested!!

Pentax FA Limited 31mm f1.8

3. Size: With 130.5 X 96.5 X 72.5 mm dimensions, the Pentax K-7 is considerably more compact than the Nikon & Canon counterparts, with the D300S measuring 147 X 114 X 74 mm and the 7D 148.2 X 110.7 X 73.5 mm, respectively.

4. Image Stabilisation: The Pentax K-7 comes with in-camera IS as standard. The D300S and 7D do not – the IS is something that is integrated into some of their lenses and not the camera body itself. The benefit for the K-7 is that you can instantly make your old Pentax lenses “IS lenses”.

5. Lastly: If you haven’t invested in the Nikon system or Canon yet, then you should definitely take a look at the Pentax. If you’re not going to be doing lots of fast, sports photography then this camera

Had the pleasure of working with Jennifer Wise back home in Southern Missouri. She rounded up some models and we hit the lake and the hills for an awesome photo shoot. The models were real troopers. The temperature was below freezing and the wind was torture on the lake. To see my Flickr Slideshow of the shoot, just click on the picture below…

People often say that a picture can say a thousand words and this video easily says millions. Though the video is only a mere 6 minutes long, I can guarantee that you will be pleasantly surprised at how powerful the piece is. Eliot Rausch, the director of this piece did an excellent job at portraying the emotion and experiences that are shown throughout the video and the end result is something truly magnificent. This is a very touching story, so take 6 minutes to watch it and think about what so many people take for granted these days.

Thank You Jason Wood for allowing us this moment.

Canon 7D

Directed/Edited: Eliot Rausch
Director of Photography: Luke Korver, Matt Taylor
Song: Big Red Machine / Justin Vernon + Aaron Dessner

Documentary Release 2010

www.PhosPictures.com

-Kristian

Taken at the Desert Botanical Garden’s Luminary Display.  Shot in full HD at 24fps with the Canon 50mm f1.4 lens.

I was going through my redbubble photo folio looking at possibly cleaning up my folio for the new year and I feel that some great work has gone unnoticed, maybe this is because my folio has grown quite a bit throughout 2009.

You can see some of my unnoticed work by following the link: http://www.redbubble.com/people/eos20/journal/4333127-my-unnoticed-work

Here is my Canon 7D with a few of my speedlights (pro speak for “flashes”), pocketwizards, and cables:

Sometimes I use them for standard lighting. Sometimes I use effects -more often than not colour. Here’s four of them firing at once, with some of those excellent (try them) Honl gels:

I try to add a splash of colour every now and then. Like here in this outtake from a recent shoot (see the slight green on the subject’s left, our right?)

And I recommend that you try this, also. Recommended.

This season, think “red ” and “green”. Seasonal family pictures, but add some splashes of green and red light to the fun.

For this, I would use manual and pocketwizards. But here’s the key: I would still use TTL for the main (bounced-off-the-ceiling-behind-me) flash. So the normal flash is on the camera (or with the 7D, off the camera), while the “effect” flashes are fired with PW’s from the x-synch socket, and set manually to, say, 1/4 – 1/16th power.

That’s what is happening th that “four flashes side by side” shot above: the two left flashes are fired by the 7D’s popup flash using e-TTL, while the right two are fired by Pocketwizards that are driven by the sender PW on the camera’s x-synch contact. Yes, that works fine!

Like a friend was quick to mention, Christmas came early this year at casa de Fake Chuck when I noticed that I was being followed on Twitter by none other than Nikon USA. In case you think that’s a typo, let me type it here again for you: I’m being followed on Twitter by Nikon USA. And no that’s not the fake Nikon USA, that’s real Nikon USA. You’re probably wondering how this happened, so let me explain it to you in more detail. 

On November 23rd, 2009 Nikon USA appeared on the list of people I’m following on Twitter. At first I thought someone hacked my Twitter account and then followed @nikonusadotcom to frame me or something. But upon further investigation I concluded that apparently I must have somehow stumbled upon their profile on Twitter and then clicked the “Follow” button. Now, I’m sure some of you will be quick to mention that this is confirmation of the fact that I’m probably a crazy Nikon fanboy because I’m following Nikon USA and appear to be anti-Canon. But nothing could be further from the truth. The simple fact of the matter is that I like to keep an eye on the competition. That’s all. In the past I’ve also been very open about me using a D3 and D3x quite often while I’m out with the family. And in fact my D3s should arrive in time for Christmas. But this is just me err… evaluating… the competition and doing uh… competitive research. You have to know who you’re up against. On top of that I’m even doing all of this in my free time without getting paid for it, while spending my own money on the uh.. research samples. This just goes to show you the kind of dedication that I bring to my work at Canon USA. 

Soon after Nikon USA somehow made itself into the list of people I’m following, I noticed the following tweet by them: 

We’re reviewing the presentation of our products pages like this one http://bit.ly/1pul0P – send me a DM with your thoughts and ideas #nikon 

Being the helpful and caring person that I am, I couldn’t help but offer them a suggestion: 

@nikonusadotcom “We’re reviewing the presentation of our products pages – send me … your thoughts and ideas” – Suggestion: Remove them all 

Yes I know what you’re thinking again: “Look he’s helping Nikon USA! He’s obviously a crazy Nikon fanboy!” And again, relax, nothing could be further from the truth. I believe we’re all operating in the same market and in a way we’re not only competitors but also colleagues who’re trying to do what’s best for the industry. And in that sense, I felt that they could really benefit from my suggestion. I’m not a webdesign expert, but in making that suggestion about improving the product pages on the Nikon USA website I was kinda going for the Zen approach to design. You know, less is more. So far it doesn’t look like they’ve followed my advice, but that might be due to internal bureaucracy. You know how these things go. 

But I did notice soon after my suggestion that Nikon USA added me to their list of people they follow, which can only mean that they value my feedback and are genuinely interested in what I have to say. 

It’s a sad day when you have to find out that the competition appears to be listening to you more actively than the company you’re working for. I don’t see anyone from Canon Inc. following me yet. Hell, I’m willing to bet my left nut that none of them even have a goddamn Twitter account. I’ve said it before, but our social media strategy is almost non existent. Canon Inc. apparently still think they’re doing business in the 80’s. At least I didn’t wait for them and started this blog, again in my free time, showing just how much I care about my work and about Canon products. I tried getting those fucks in Japan to start blogging about the company and about our products numerous times. I even told them to read Robert Scoble’s excellent book about corporate blogging. But every time I mention Naked Conversations to the Japanese they give me a funny look. Now they think I’m gay.

On the other hand you have Nikon who appears to understand social media a lot better. I’ve mentioned this many times before and the Lord of the Speedlights just rubbed it in again for us in true Nikon style, just to make absolutely sure we were noticing.

I really can’t understand Tokyo anymore. We’re fucking up in all possible ways. We’re out of touch with customers, our quality control is fucked, our recent products are fucked, our marketing strategies are fucked. It’s aaall fucked! 

Nikon VS Canon

And the results can be seen in the image above. What you’re seeing there is worldwide fuckage. Quite scary, to be honest. That’s a shitload more D3 and D3x sales compared to 1D3 and 1Ds3. Let’s be honest: Does this surprise you? Because it sure as fuck doesn’t surprise me! And it also won’t surprise me at all when this same trend can be seen for other product models, especially when you consider the following graph which I mentioned in my previous post: 

Maeda: "Competitions set our ass up the cocks!"

Call me pessimistic, but I don’t see this changing in the near future. Not with Nikon’s D3s receiving glowing reviews everywhere, especially when it comes to low light performance. We’re going to be oh-so-fucked if they update the D700 with the new sensor from the D3s early next year. In the mean time, Canon Inc. will keep cramming more megapixels onto future sensors while raping the shit out of image quality. Can you see a diffraction limited aperture of f/2.8 in the future? I know I can! It is going to be so awesome. Stop down from f/2.8 and experience mushy image heaven!! Hell, you’re going to have to shoot wide open constantly on most lenses if you expect to see any kind of detail in your images! 

Not to mention the noise. It was just fucking unbelievable to see how much more noise the 50D offered compared to the 40D. Even the 7D features more noise in images compared to the 40D. Moses wrote in recently to mention that he updated his 7D post with results from DXO Mark, showing that the 7D does indeed offer more noise compared to the 40D and, lord have mercy, even the D300s. A clear indication of how low we’ve sunken here at Canon. 

So does it surprise you that Canon is losing market share worldwide? Does it surprise you that people are switching to Nikon? Just check this out: 

Despite my near-constant frustration with Canon, I held out for the mythical 5d Mark II – a camera that promised even better ISO, an even bigger sensor, an even fancier LCD and (you guessed it), the same crappy focusing system. At that point, Canon had me by the you-know-whats (I don’t actually have you-know-whats… it’s a euphemism, silly) – I had *thousands* invested in lenses (see below). So I shot my 5d Mark II for the entire 2009 wedding season…. on One-Shot…. using a high aperture… constantly cussing under my breath. 

So, there you have it! Canon is a great system…. I will miss some of the lenses and the way the bodies feel in my hands (I still think Nikons are made for a man’s hands and mine don’t quite fit around the grip right).  But, at the end of the day, I am a stickler for focus and Canon just didn’t deliver.  

And this is not an isolated incident, trust me. The end result was predictable: Switched to Nikon. I’ve written a lot here in the past about what can only be referred to as the legendary AF system of our 5D Mark II, but here’s a nice story to freshen up your minds. This user hasn’t yet switched to Nikon apparently, but sure as hell was already considering it. (Update: We’ve lost her)

The more I see these reports around the Internet and in my mailbox these days, the more I myself am thinking about switching to Nikon. Hell, I already am following Nikon USA on Twitter and already own Nikon gear, I might as well ask them for office space too!

Last Saturday, my close friends played a show at Tantra, and I took it as an opportunity to record some straight video with my Canon 7D. I used an external mic to make sure the audio would be clear. enjoy!

Moving up to the Canon 7D was quite a leap from the Canon XS aka the 1000D.  18mp, several HD video modes, and 8fps just to name a few of the highlights. Here are some of my thoughts about the camera.

Image from Canon Website

Body:

From the moment you pick up the camera it feels solid and substantial.  Compared to the Rebel XS which suddenly feels like a toy. The 7D fits the hand, and doesn’t leave my pinky finger hanging off the camera. In addition, the rubberized grip accents make the possiblity of the camera slipping out of you grasp less of a possibility.  The layout of buttons is very intuitive and the only trouble I’ve had is with the small “C-Fn” button located just above the shutter release.  It is a frequently used button and a little difficult to find with your finger when looking though the viewfinder.

Shooting:

One of the main selling factors for me was the ability to do 8fps at full resolution, and the 7D delivers!  I do a lot of wildlife shooting, and the XS just couldn’t keep up and get the frames I wanted.  In some cases 8fps is a little overkill, and gives too many shots!  There is several settings within the camera for high speed (8fps) and low speed(3fps) as well as single shot.

Where the XS sounded more ‘mechanical’ when the shutter released, the 7D sounds like it’s spring loaded, and overall a lot healthier.  I’m sure that previous “pro” models, 40d, 50d, etc had this same sound, but not the more amateur models, (XS, XSI, XTI, etc).

HD Video:

Beautiful video can be produced, but at a cost.  First you better have a computer fast enough to play HD video!  Canon recommends at Core Duo running at 2.6GHz or faster.  My computer (2.00 GHz) yields choppy video that is mostly unwatchable.  Second, there is no true ‘full time’ auto-focus on the camera while recording.  Before recording, you must either press the shutter button down half way, or press the AF-ON button on the back of the camera.  While recording, you can either manually focus or press the AF-ON button again which will slowly, (and almost always) find focus.  Bottom line, you basically have to set up shots in advance, the your golden. (Sample video I shot below; make sure to click the HD button)

Image Quality:

18mp sounds great, but the crop sensor has its critics.  There are many posts on flickr, and dpforum about “soft” and out of focus images coming from the 7D.  Some of this can be blamed on user error, due to the completely new 19-point AF system.  However, some argue the quality is no better than the 50d.  I have found that the areas the camera does focus on are very sharp, and seem much better than the XS, but getting it dialed in can be tricky.

Final Thoughts:

Overall, I’m ecstatic with the 7D.  It has huge potential with its 8fps, HD video mode, and integrated Speedlite transmitter.  While the new AF system is somewhat tricky, it seems to perform well and reliably.  If your thinking about upgrading, go play with one at your nearest electronics store and decide for yourself.

Below are some photos I’ve taken with the 7D.  The kit lens (28-135mm) as well as 50mm f1.4 lens were used.

Here is a nice set of video tutorials about using the Canon 7D.  You can watch them online, or even download them to your camera for viewing.  The one on AF Custom Fuctions is especially helpful at clarifying those setting.  Be sure to look around on the Canon Digital Learning Center to find all kinds of other cool stuff about using your camera plus useful tips and instructions from pros who use them.

The distinctive voice you hear in the 7D videos is Canon guru Rudy Winston, and the photo samples are his images as well.  If you are in NYC, you can often find him leading workshops and presentations at places like B+H and Adorama.  I went to a wonderfully informative introduction to the 7D that he gave a B+H a month or 2 ago, and these videos are pretty much the same presentation.

Tuesday evening saw CanonCameraBuzz host a round table discussion with Canon on their range of DSLRs.

We’d invited along a seven professional photographers all of who you can catch up with online, @meteorit, @BenjaminEllis, @chrisbrockphoto, @regularjen, @carlonicora, @mnoo and Kishor Krishnamoorthi. Present from Canon were new media consultant Lisa Freeman and product specialist Mark Burnhill who got the evening started by briefly chatting about Canon as a brand, before going into the specs of the DSLRs they’d brought along.

On the table were Canon’s 1000D, 450D, 500D, 50D, 7D, 5d Mk II, 1D Mk IV and 1Ds Mk III. Each of the cameras is given some analysis by Kishor in his post covering the event. And out of the selection it was Canon’s 1D Mk IV which seemed to cause the most excitement.

However, each camera prompted reaction – Jen took a particular liking to the 7D, with Chris loving the full frame goodness of the 1Ds Mk III and Carlo even decided to get his followers involved to see what they thought.

To finish the night off everyone headed out for food and to chat into the night, something that went down well, excuse the pun.

We’d like to say a big thanks to the guys who attended, including Lisa and Mike from Canon, it was great to meet you all and we hope that everyone found it valuable – we can’t wait until the next one!

If you’d like to be involved with what we do at CanonCameraBuzz get in touch. We’d love to hear from you, so just leave a comment below.

Photo credits to Kishor Krishnamoorthi and Marianne Taylor.

The 1st of 2 videos I shot with Sean Hayes is now available for view in my Film and Video Section.

This video is a minute and a half teaser for Sean’s upcoming album “Run Wolf Run” which will be released March 2nd 2010. It was shot using the Canon 5D mark II.

Usually I rather not talk about camera in my blog. But in this case, I rather be, a short one. Canon just launched its best APS-C DSLR camera recently with a pricetag of RM5,600 for body only. That includes 3-year warranty from Canon Malaysia. Coupled with ultra-wide-zoom lens, a 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5, this setup would covers most of the job I’m intending to do.

7D and 10-22mm

Apart from that, a tele-zoom lens such as 70-200mm f/2.8 is essential lens for all photographers. Whenever there is an event or candid gives the different perspective view; it compress an image by distance. It considered as good portraiture lens which produces shallow depth of field images.

This is example of photo taken using 7D and 10-22mm.

Bern & Gee

iz

Originally, I was writing the longer post for today, but it was going in different direction that I originally planned.
That is why I will try to keep this post short and informative.
Basically, I want show you how well the new Canon EOS 7D works, while photographing moving subject and with a obstacles entering the frame. I want to add that this mostly depends on your camera settings, especially: Custom Function III.
For the following series of shots, I was shooting in AV mode (aperture priority) set to f/7.1 with 1 full stop of overexposure and ISO 400. This gave me a shutter speed of 1/1250s. Those settings were previously set to keep the eagle’s head well exposed.

Please note that eagle isn’t on the center of the frame (my fault) but camera kept focus anyway – this is where the extra focusing points of 7D come handy

Note about the pictures:
These pictures are a downsized full frames (not cropped, only resized for the web). No editing, except slight sharpening, was done.
Shots were taken with Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens, using the AI Servo mode, 8fps burst, center AF Point Expansion.

Eagle flew behind the tree, but camera keeps the focus on the bird

camera still keeps the focus on the main subject (this is where xxD series camera would fail)

another picture with focus on the Bald Eagle

To see larger pictures please visit my website: Greg Gard

When I saw the eagle behind the tree, I stopped shooting. Now, I regret that I didn’t continue taking more pictures. This would be interesting to see when the camera will eventually fail to focus.

For this kind of photography I keep my camera’s Auto Focus custom settings set as follow:

C. Fn. III
1 – one stop before SLOW setting
2 – 0
3 – 0
4 – 1

These are some head shots I took of a friend. I used Animoto.com to create the slideshow.

I’ve got a logo for my images now!

These are some photos from two different shoots. I used slide.com to make the show.

!!!

I thought I would give you all another update on the 7D. Upon further examination… the 7D isn’t quite so bad in low light as I had imagined. One of the culprits for the amount of noise was actually Lightroom. Apparently Canon’s Digital Photo Professional handles noise a LOT better than the current Lightroom. I’ve done a little research and it appears that others are having the same issue, and have found DPP to be superior in this respect. Lightroom beta 3 is being tested right now and, when released, should have some new noise algorithms.

I’ve also started setting up my custom functions. These are pretty useful, seeing as you can customize pretty much everything.

So yeah. A useful little update. I was sweating a little bit, but this makes me feel better. I’m not one for pixel-peeping, but noise is noise, and this is noise on a camera projected to perform amazingly well in low light high iso situations.

At the WEXblog Hamish Brown has reviewed the Canon EOS 7D. Going from a spec list to a conclusion, and covering a whole lot in between the two, it is likely to have the answers to anything you’re wondering about where the 7D is concerned.

His thoughts on the spec list are that it ‘seemingly goes on forever’ – he cuts it down a little, but feels continuation and expansion are required, adding in mentions of the weather sealed body (see Ole Jørgen Liodden really testing this) and 100% viewfinder coverage to name just two.

The speed of the camera is also discussed under the sub-heading of ‘How Fast Indeed!’ This focuses on the attention paid by Canon to DIGIC 4 processors and the placing of two into the 7D,

“In practice, I found the extra speed a real bonus in terms of getting the shot with moving subjects. If action or wildlife is your thing, then you’re onto a camera that will serve you very well.”

Hamish pays close attention to size of images, giving detailed information on how those 18 Megapixels are used. In addition to this he’s impressed with the built in flash, referring to it as ‘class’. From then on it’s into new buttons, autofocus and metering. In terms of metering he suggests that he should have titled the section, ‘you can’t have everything, but this is close.’

As for shooting movies, he recommends getting an external microphone, just to add a further level of professionalism to your output, before going through the different frame rates the 7D offers,

“You get three different frame rates at 1080 in the video mode at 24, 25 and 30 fps and at 720 you can get slow motion effect frame rates of 50 and 60 fps. It’s not like it’s just a great quality HD video camera, it also gives you plenty of options to get creative rather than just point and shoot.”

The post is finished by Hamish under the heading ‘In retrospect and conclusion’ before giving the camera a rating,

“Canon has taken the developments both pre and post digital, and provided a fast, high quality camera body for both stills and video. It has improved metering, focusing and a gamut of new features that raise the stakes across the DLSR board.”

If you’re intrigued by the Canon EOS 7D, the review is a must read, going into to the finer details that you’re going to want to know about.