Canon 5D3 vs 7D for birding thoughts

[briansquibb]

nice summary.  question is,  with 1.3 out of the picture, is Canon forcing  the wildlifers into carrying more glass or will they produce a high performance 1.6x body?

I would guess that either:

- 1.3 is not dead, just resting (a 22mp 1.3 would be good!!)

- a 30+mp ff is round the corner allowing cropping equivalent to the 16mp 1.3 (maybe even a 1.3 mode in firmware, like the EOS 1X APS camera had)

[dlleno]

nice summary.  question is,  with 1.3 out of the picture, is Canon forcing  the wildlifers into carrying more glass or will they produce a high performance 1.6x body?

I would guess that either:

- 1.3 is not dead, just resting (a 22mp 1.3 would be good!!)

- a 30+mp ff is round the corner allowing cropping equivalent to the 16mp 1.3 (maybe even a 1.3 mode in firmware, like the EOS 1X APS camera had)

I haven't seen the confirmation yet or any commitment from Canon that 1.3 is really dead, and I doubt Canon will abandon the high end sports body.  Whether or not they implement such a body by cropping a high mp FF will depend on the next generation FF sensor, and whether or not it is possible to truly optimize for and push the state-of-the-art for sports without a dedicated body/sensor platform. 

[awinphoto]

On topic, the 7d will give you more native resolution and give you bigger files to work with in comparison to the 5d3 files when cropped respectively.  If you can get close enough either by distance and or lens to the bird with the 5d3, you may get cleaner/better files with the 5d3, but with birding that's not easy to do.  Odds are if you have to crop severely on a 5d3 file to get a bird shot, you wont get as clean of files especially if you are desiring to print the picture compared to shooting a 7D and shooting natively and or scaling down in print to get the same print size

[neuroanatomist]

I haven't seen the confirmation yet or any commitment from Canon that 1.3 is really dead, and I doubt Canon will abandon the high end sports body.

They didn't.  12 fps and top-notch AF - the 1D X is the high-end sports body.  Sports shooting rarely demands the longest lenses - the 300/2.8 and 400/2.8 are sufficient for almost all sports even on FF, else there are f/4 lenses at 500mm and 600mm. 

The people who are really affected by the loss of the 1.3x crop are the bird/wildlife shooters, where you can pretty much never have a long enough lens.

[dlleno]

I haven't seen the confirmation yet or any commitment from Canon that 1.3 is really dead, and I doubt Canon will abandon the high end sports body.

They didn't.  12 fps and top-notch AF - the 1D X is the high-end sports body.  Sports shooting rarely demands the longest lenses - the 300/2.8 and 400/2.8 are sufficient for almost all sports even on FF, else there are f/4 lenses at 500mm and 600mm. 

The people who are really affected by the loss of the 1.3x crop are the bird/wildlife shooters, where you can pretty much never have a long enough lens.

ok, so re-phrase the question to target what I should have stated:  the high end bird/wildlife shooter . If the 1.3 demise is real, then they will have to either pack more glass or settle for a 1.6. To me  it seems surprising that Canon would abandon this crowd.

[neuroanatomist]

ok, so re-phrase the question to target what I should have stated:  the high end bird/wildlife shooter . If the 1.3 demise is real, then they will have to either pack more glass or settle for a 1.6. To me  it seems surprising that Canon would abandon this crowd.

I agree - and Art Morris certainly bitched loud and long about the 1D X not having the ability to AF at f/8.  Of course, now he's gushing praise for the 5DIII's AF system...

[briansquibb]

ok, so re-phrase the question to target what I should have stated:  the high end bird/wildlife shooter . If the 1.3 demise is real, then they will have to either pack more glass or settle for a 1.6. To me  it seems surprising that Canon would abandon this crowd.

I agree - and Art Morris certainly bitched loud and long about the 1D X not having the ability to AF at f/8.  Of course, now he's gushing praise for the 5DIII's AF system...

I would miss the ability to have the 1D4's function to keep the iso to a minimum at the same time having M functionality with ec ..... so the 5DIII will not replace the 1D4, there is just too much missing

[dlleno]

Back to the OP's subject , 5D3 versus the 7D for birding:   given the choice, and the evidence so far presented, todays 7D wins.  However, my vote is for a 7D2 announced late in 2012 (purely CR -1 I have no idea what I'm talking about).  But my thinking here is that (1) its due.  7D is three years old and behind on sensor technology  (2) the 7D series could replace the xxd series and become a real upper-end 1.6. and (3) such a body would easily out-perform today's 5D3 in distance-limited situations using the same glass, where a post crop of the 5D3 would just not have enough pixels "on the bird". 

[ScottyP]

I haven't seen the confirmation yet or any commitment from Canon that 1.3 is really dead, and I doubt Canon will abandon the high end sports body.

They didn't.  12 fps and top-notch AF - the 1D X is the high-end sports body.  Sports shooting rarely demands the longest lenses - the 300/2.8 and 400/2.8 are sufficient for almost all sports even on FF, else there are f/4 lenses at 500mm and 600mm. 

The people who are really affected by the loss of the 1.3x crop are the bird/wildlife shooters, where you can pretty much never have a long enough lens.

Why yield the ground to Nikon?  Or Sony?  Or Panasonic, etc.... There is a market for crop body because of the free reach.  Who is confident enough that NEW photographers love the Canon brand SO much more than Nikon or SONY that we will forego any desire for a decent crop-body camera?  That we will instead buy telephoto lenses wwe would not need otherwise which cost 7 thousand or more?

[dlleno]

I haven't seen the confirmation yet or any commitment from Canon that 1.3 is really dead, and I doubt Canon will abandon the high end sports body.

They didn't.  12 fps and top-notch AF - the 1D X is the high-end sports body.  Sports shooting rarely demands the longest lenses - the 300/2.8 and 400/2.8 are sufficient for almost all sports even on FF, else there are f/4 lenses at 500mm and 600mm. 

The people who are really affected by the loss of the 1.3x crop are the bird/wildlife shooters, where you can pretty much never have a long enough lens.

Why yield the ground to Nikon?  Or Sony?  Or Panasonic, etc.... There is a market for crop body because of the free reach.  Who is confident enough that NEW photographers love the Canon brand SO much more than Nikon or SONY that we will forego any desire for a decent crop-body camera?  That we will instead buy telephoto lenses wwe would not need otherwise which cost 7 thousand or more?

+1  moreover, why abandon the pro BIF shooters by not advancing the state-of-the-art BIF body?  I dont' claim to know what sensor that would be, but if the 1D4 successor is the 7D2, then Canon has a lot of marketing/messaging to do to convince pro BIFers to use a body that isn't a "1" no matter what sensor is in there.  and its hard to imagine Canon abandoning the very market that the 7D proved successful in (1.6x prosumer wildlife)