A month ago Canon announced a new model, the EOS 7D. Ever since, there’s been a lot of buzz about the camera because of all the cool features it has, at a price that’s about $1000 less than the 5D Mark II (which caused quite a stir when it came out last year). Now the 7D is flying off the retailers shelves, and everyone is scrambing to get one. I saw it reported that Adorama had 700 of them but they’re all gone. People who ordered from Amazon.com are getting notices that their cameras have been shipped. My friend John in Sierra Vista says that his will be arriving tomorrow, so I’ll be stopping by his place when I go to the Patagonia Arts Festival next week to check out his newest toy!

The new 7D shoots at 18 megapixels, which is probably overkill for the smaller APS-C sensor it uses (it’s approaching the limit of how much resolution you can get from the lenses). But the camera also has a new improved autofocusing (AF) system and a brand new iFLC metering system, which uses the color of the subject that the camera has focused on to help determine exposure (this feature is long overdue!). And the video capture is their latest incarnation, which should be an improvement over that in the 5D Mark II and the Rebel T1i. Ever since I tried out the video on the 5D Mark II, I’ve wanted to have this capability, mostly to make video for my web sites.

The 7D sports TWO Digic 4 processors, so it’s fast and can shoot at 8 frames per second, nearly as fast as my 1D Mark III. It can capture 15 images before filling its buffers, which is fewer than the Mark III, but there’s nearly twice the pixels! You might be wondering why anyone would want to shoot that fast, but anyone who shoots wildlife, especially birds, can tell you that this is a Good Thing.

Another cool thing for wildlife photographers is that the APS-C sensor effectively “multiplies” your lens by a factor of 1.6, so using an affordable 100-400mm zoom lens on this camera body is equivalent to a 160x640mm lens!

So now the question is, do I buy the EOS 7D, or wait for the 1D Mark IV to come out?

Ed

The 8 megapixel sensor was also a great boon! It had less noise than the sensor on the EOS 10D, with more pixels! I have no problems blowing up photos into 13×19 prints using images from this camera. And for my sharpest images that were taken at ISO 800 or less in bright lighting conditions, I can blow them up to 24×36 inches.

Generally, I used the EOS 20D for landscape and macro photography. But when I was out doing bird photography with my EOS 1D Mark II and the 600mm lens, I’d put the 20D over my shoulder with the Canon 100-400mm zoom lens or the Canon 400mm f/5.6 lens mounted. I’d do most of my shooting with the 1D and the 600mm lens, but if there was suddenly close by bird activity, or birds flying overhead, I could use quickly grab the 20D and get the shot. I found the 400mm f/5.6 lens was very fast for flight shots, but the single focal length made for lots of lens changing when I wanted to do landscapes too. So I gravitated toward using the 100-400mm zoom most of the time. An additional advantage to the 100-400 lens was it had Image Stabilization (IS), while the 400mm f/5.6 did not.

When I traveled by plane, I used to take the EOS 20D and the 100-400mm lens for bird photography, and a smaller zoom like the 24-70mm f/2.8 for landscapes and scenery. Because the 20D has a small sensor, it has a multiplication factor of 1.6x, which makes the 100-400mm lens equivalent to having a 160-640mm lens on a body with a full-size sensor. Add a 1.4X teleconverter, and it becomes equivalent to a 224-896mm f/8 lens. Unfortunately, autofocus doesn’t work with the teleconverter on this body and lens combination.

The 20D and the 100-400mm lens  served me well in Maui, where I had more fun photographing birds than I did windsurfing or snorkeling. I was able to get some great shots, like this one of a ‘Auku’u (Black-Crowned Night Heron) at the Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge. This is also the camera and lens I would use to dayhike with, and I was able to get this great shot of a Cactus Wren on a Cholla Cactus at Sabino Canyon near Tucson with it.

I used the 10D for landscape photography and beginning bird photography. At first, I would take my old film camera and the 10d, and take similar photos with both cameras to compare the results. I quickly figured out that the digital images were just as good as the slides I took with my EOS 3e. I loved how I could see my results right away with digital, while I had to wait a week or more for my slides to be developed. And I could take all kinds of experimental or practice shots without worrying about running out of or wasting film. Not to mention that even a 1GB memory card held a lot more images than a roll of film and changing memory cards was a lot quicker and easier than changing a roll of film! Eventually I realized that I wasn’t even using the film camera any more, it was just taking up space in my bag. So I sold it and gave away my refrigerated rolls of Fuji Velvia and haven’t looked back since!

The EOS 10D gave me great results for landscape photography and got me started in bird photography. I have images created by that camera that are sharp blown up to 13×19 inches and I sell in that size.  One of the advantages of this digital camera is that there is a “magnification factor” due to the size of the image sensor, which effectively multiplies the length of a lens by 1.6. So my Canon EF 100-400 zoom lens was now a 160×640 zoom. It was like getting a new longer lens! This helped out tremendously for bird photography, since I could now zoom in much closer that I could with my film camera. Then I bought the Canon teleconverters, a 1.4x and a 2.0x, which multiply the length of the lens again. So with the 1.4x teleconverter, my 100×400 lens became equivalent to 224×896 after the camera’s multiplication factor and the teleconverter’s 1.4 magnification. The 2.0x made it a 320×1280, if you can believe it, but unfortunately autofocus doesn’t work when you use the 2.0x teleconverter with that lens. But even without autofocus I was able to get some good images of birds, like Wood Ducks in Oregon, that I couldn’t have done without magnification.

I was really happy with this camera, but there were a few drawbacks to it, like the nearly two seconds it would take to wake up after being in its power saving sleep mode (it would go back to sleep after 30 seconds or so). Pushing the shutter button would wake it back up, but it would take what seemed like forever to get ready, which in the case of birds, was way too long. This cost me quite a few great bird images! Sigh…

One of the neat things about the Canon EOS digital series of cameras is that they come out with new improved models fairly often. Back in the days of film cameras, it would take many years before you’d see a new model with new features hit the scene. In some cases, it took decades. But the EOS 20D, the replacement for the EOS 10D, came out only 18 months after the 10D. The EOS 20D featured “instant on,” which was a big enough deal for me that that feature alone was worth the upgrade! But it also had a bunch of new features and its image size was increased to eight megapixels, which made easier to get great blowups 13×19 inches and larger!

Links:
Review of the Canon EOS 20D