I few months back, I’ve made posts detailing my experiences with Sony a900 and Nikon D700. I was on track to testing out Canon’s full frame offerings to make a comparison between these cameras, but was derailed in doing so because of school and work. Now that I finally have the time to sit down with Canon, I decided not to test their 5D MKII. While Canon 7D is not a full frame camera, it does rival Nikon D700 in everything except the sensor and I assume that the 7D is a better comparison to it overall. Canon 5D MKII offers a good comparison to Sony a900, both suitable for fine art, landscape, or anything that does not require high fps or ISO. I will likely buy the Canon 5D MKII this summer to make the comparison. But for now: Canon EOS 7D.

I purchased the 7D kit with 18-135IS kit lens included. For telephoto coverage, I also bought a 70-200 F4L.

My testing intentions include high ISO at 6400 and 12800, a thorough look into Canon’s new AF system for this camera, and the 1080p movie mode. I will be visiting Queen’s University’s campus tomorrow, which allows for an oppurtunity for filming. As for high ISO and AF tracking tests, Zoom Student Film Festival is around the corner in less than a week. I will definitely keep the results posted.

Below are some images of the items.

Experience Report – Zoom Student Film Festival

This is a follow-up report of my experience shooting the Zoom Student Film Festival Screening with this camera and select Canon lenses.

Heh, so I finally got to play with Canon’s HD movie mode in depth. My impressions haven’t changed; movie mode is just gimmicky to the average consumer and limiting for the serious cinematographer. To reiterate, video mode on DSLRs is just inefficient and a hassle for the average, impromptus shooter. One can forget about hand-holding the camera for steady footage, zooming gives a even more pronounced “jello” effect. Using a monopod/tripod is a nice idea, but in practice it’s a pain in the butt to lug them around. While I’m not quite acquainted with how Nikon has implemented their video mode, Canon’s HD video mode has some serious drawbacks for the more knowledgeable and serious video user. Firstly, aperture can only be changed in full stops (within the limit of the lens), such as from F2 to F2.8, with no options to manually set half or third stops. In practice, it’s a serious drawback because the video would suddenly get darker if the aperture was changed while in full manual control with unchanged shutter speed and ISO settings. For example, many zoom lenses have different aperture values that change throughout the zoom range. Using one of these lenses in movie mode on manual control would give you inconsistent exposure when the lens is zoomed. I was told that this problem is due to Canon’s lens design. Secondly, Canon’s movie mode lacks continuous autofocus.

Now, the good. Canon 7D’s viewfinder is fantastic, trumping that of the Nikon D700 while having a cropped sensor. It’s both very bright and large with a high magnification that really helped in the dim light of the Zoom venue, living up to the price of the camera.

Now the bad. I was disappointed to say the least about Canon’s new exclusive AF system for the 7D. Autofocus speed and accuracy were good, as well as the placement of the AF sensors, but tracking and the changing of tracking modes was a nightmare due to Canon’s crappy wheel interface for the changing of the active AF point. I did have the option of setting AF point selection to the joystick, but it was nowhere near my thumb and I had great trouble using it in hasty situations. I had a lot of ruined shots during that evening because the camera’s tracking decided not to track the subject consistently and because of the difficulty in switching AF points. Nikon D700 had a joystick control as well for AF point selection, but it was a lot easier to operate and press in practice. I really think Canon bodies could be more ergonomically friendly.

Noise is well controlled for a 18 Megapixel sensor, a cropped one at that, and at small sizes its not a cause for concern. However, the noise is fairly coarse and blotchy, especially color noise which may become a problem at large print sizes, although noise reduction would be appropriate before printing takes place. While the Nikon D700 does perform better in terms of noise because of 33% less pixels than the Canon 7D and housing a full frame sensor, Canon 7D’s noise control is quite good for 18 Megapixels at a smaller sensor size.

Exposure is consistent and highlight detail retained fairly well, perhaps better than the D700. However, I do see heavy banding and posterization in the RAW files which I think is a serious problem for post-processing. There have been many reports of 7D’s banding and it’s something to consider and test before committing to this camera.

In addition to the 70-200L F4 which was a stellar performer with fast and silent AF, I’ve also had the opportunity to test out the Sigma 50 F1.4HSM thanks to a friend who was shooting the event with me. I was told by Alex that the lens had a case of backfocus, and after confirming the condition, I tried to use AF micro-adjustment with little effect. However, the focusing speed and bokeh were fantastic. I’m definitely buying this lens in the future.

All in all, I think Canon 7D is quite a capable camera that can compete with the Nikon D700, but I feel that the D700 is still more robust in terms of performance.