Canon EOS 7D Firmware 1.2.1 Available

Very disappointed no long exposure NR correction, no low light 8fps fix – waiting before I replace my 50D.

Does anyone know what was updated i firmware 1.2.o?

I AM VERY DISAPPOINTED BUT THE 7D WAS OR NOT THE VIDEO DSLR???
WE ARE WAITINIG FOR THE SAME FEATURE OF THE 5D MARK2 AT LEAST???

Where is the Audio Control?

Where is the AGC disabling?

Where is the Av & Tv Adjustment modes for video?

C’On Canon, we bought the more expensive cam, the T2i even has that zoom feature above the 7D, throw us a bone here!

Oh COME ON canon, no manual audio levels? lame lame lame. Clock is ticking on this, if you want people to take the 7D seriosuly as a semi-pro camera you can’t let the 5DmkII pull ahead like this.

agreed. but i want it a step further, i want a lower and upper limit where i can bracket my preferred ISO settings

what can the 550D do with regards to this auto ISO thing?

The more expensive Cam is the 5DII or the 1DIV. You went cheap.

You can set an upper limit (between 400 and 6400 in full stop increments), see here:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos550d/page10.asp

The 7D has a fixed upper limit of ISO 3200, which, as I wrote above, is too much for my taste (and — not being configurable in any way — is reached to quickly, in particular when using IS lenses).

I haven’t had too many Canon DSLRs, but it is interesting that so far I always felt that the (not configurable) auto ISO upper limit chosen by the Canon engineers was one notch too high. For example, the 450D would go to ISO 800, which I found too much, here I would have preferred ISO 400 as upper limit.

@Grummbeerbauer
I mostly use my camera for video, I preffer to have total contron in the ISO and I use Fix ISO’s

Why you used auto iso? also in photography I normally avoid shooting anyting higher than 800 and normally prefer 200. I really interested in your view.

Well, I am apparently quite sensitive to image noise, so I prefer to use low ISO if possible. However, sometimes lighting conditions change too quickly to manually adjust ISO, and if I set a fixed, comparatively low ISO value I will get shutter times that are too slow, resulting in subject motion blur and blur due to camera shake. Here a good auto ISO function should give me the lowest possible ISO setting (i.e. minimal noise) while at the same time give me fast enough shutter times to prevent blur. And since there is no simple answer on what is “fast enough shutter times”, but this naturally depends on the shooting situation, a good auto ISO feature needs to be adjustable. And being able to have a fixed upper limit is only the very minimal amount of configurability. Read the proposal I sketched on the DPReview forums linked above.

there is not like noise free images

I fully understand that requirement as well. Here selectable limits don’t help, but what would need to be configured is the rule with which the camera decides on what shutter speed is needed (and which is then used to decide on ISO). In the Canon bodies I know this rule is of course fixed and follows the 1/focal length rule (taking crop factor into account).
First, this rule is from the film days. With 18MP or more, not only subject detail, but also camera shake or motion blur is resolved much “better”. Of course the overall image quality at the same output size will not be worse, but honestly, many of us tend to look at their images at 100% (I do… ;-)), and we expect them to be sharp, regardless of what we actually later do with the images. So if you want to do pixel peeping or serious cropping, the traditional rule is giving you too slow shutter times.

Second, depending on shooting situation (static subjects vs. sports) and lens type (IS or not) the shutter speed is often either faster than necessary (resulting in an unnecessarily high ISO being selected) or slower than required (giving you excessive motion blur).

So to satisfy all needs, we need not only be able to set bounds for ISO, but also modify the parameters of the rule, i.e., how fast the camera reaches these bounds.

I plan to buy a 7D next week, do I need to download the previous versions of firmware, or this one includes already the changes? Thanks.

Your suggestions make a lot of sense.

Of course many people probably don’t want to have to think that much about how they would set the parameters, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t something Canon could offer in the Custom Functions.

In any event being able to adjust the formula by which the camera determines shutter speed and ISO in Apeture Priority shooting (my usual mode) to something other than the shutter speed being the reciprocal of the focal length would be enough for me.

Having blurry photos at a camera-selected ISO100 drives me mad when I know the same shot would have been a lot, lot sharper at ISO400 or 800. I couldn’t care less how noise-free these shots are if they’re blurry.

You are getting FF! That is worth the few extra bucks.

We should all start emailing Canon with complaints concerning the features they have yet to add to the 7D that the cheaper models have.

1.1.0 -> 1.2.1 ? That seems like a big version jump for just a few little things…

I want HSS with wireless flash master… it works on st-e2… why not here?

Anyones have problems with exposure? I never could work with P, A or V because the camera ALWAYS over expose and in the areas overexposed I get bad colors. White become magenta or cyan or green. I always have to work with my sekonic 758 but you don’t have allways the time to do this. With my XTi I could be overexposed by one stop and in CR reduce the expo and the image was really nice (what you could get with the XTi) but if you blow in the 7D you are really blowed.

Exposure compensation.

Thanks for the tip. I had seen the TC-80N3 but mistook it for a simple cable release – which it is – but also much more! I see it’s a bit pricey – but that’s nothing new.

Except yourself.

Thanks. I looked on eBay and see several different “knock-offs” to choose from. And most are about $30.

Hi anon
I wonder about your comment. Is it for me?

The iFCL in the 7D is (in my opinion) a rather weird metering system. For once (just found this out yesterday) my fps went down from 8 to about 4 when Im shooting an entirely dark objects (like black bag packs) in high continuous drive.

Anyways, what picture style are you using… I use faithful and the color rendering is quite ok though slightly pinkish. The AWB might have a play on why the white becomes magenta or cyan… I found if there is a blue object in my frame when I use AWB… then bang! the whole image turns to some greenish colour. 7D’s AWB is really sensitive compared to my 450D so I’m on a learning curve here as well.

I found as well… that if we over expose a normal subject (as in not dominated by white or dark area) if we over expose by +0.33 it turns to be properly exposed.

Am I answering your question? haha… anyways, about the blown images. I found the dynamic range on the 7D to be quite high… so I really dont know what you meant by blowing and not being able to pull the exposure down.

My apology if I’m not answering ur question. I just found out about the 4fps thing at high speed drive at dark area… it was quite a let down… despite the 7D being an awesomely good camera in my opinion.

That dropping to 4fps in low light is a known issue. I find the explanation for this behavior that was offered (in brief: less light meaning metering becomes slower, and the camera then prioritizes metering accuracy over fps) a bit weired… after all even with 63 color sensitive zones we are speaking about something comparatively simple given the processing power found in today’s cameras — I highly doubt that the metering algorithms are so sophisticated as to not run fast enough on that kind of hardware.
In case you don’t know: If you really need high fps in low light you can press and hold the start (*) button. Then exposure parameters will be fixed and the camera doesn’t bother about metering. Of course this won’t work if you are shooting in quickly changing lighting conditions.

I also had some negative experience with the 7D’s metering. I recently did some (private) shooting at a family event. It was actually the first outdoor shooting with lots of people in good weather since I got this camera. It was sunny, leading to strong shadows in peoples faces, so I used my 580 EX II as fill flash a lot, with HSS enabled.
I got lots of overexposed shots that way. While LR3’s highlight recovery slider was able to save some, others are beyond repair.
My biggest gripe with the 7D however remains my trouble with its AF. I had severely inconsistent focus with a number of my lenses. At said family event I was taking pictures in a comparatively well lit church (primarily natural lighting thanks to big windows). I mainly used the 85 1.8, subject distance was about 7-10 meters, and easily half the shots we so far out of focus that they were unusable. I could not even identify a consistent front- or backfocus. In one shot, the focal plane was clearly in front, in the next shot clearly behind the target.

I got pretty much the same behavior when shooting birds at a feeding place in my garden with the 70-200 f4 IS. AF was rarely spot on.
So for me, the 7D is so far quite a let-down.
I have not yet been able to more thoroughly analyze this behavior, but I am afraid I have to send in the body and most of my lenses for adjustment. Too bad that some of the lenses are third party or out of warranty. If they charge me for having a lens that is just a bit over one year old adjusted to a new camera body, I might be tempted to start looking elsewhere.

To cd

Good suggestion. EOS Utility does have a Camera settings/Remote shooting option, activated via wired USB. This is a viable option if you can have a laptop nearby – which is a very awkward option in the field – but certainly doable. In reality, the best (and most expensive) option is LC-5 Wireless Controller. No wires – and no laptop. Quite an investment unless it is used frequently enough to justify. All it ever takes is money…

It would be nice to have 5 frames in AEB instead of 3.

Why use DPP? Try the latest Lr3b, it’s freeeee…. =)

I guess I might be interested, although FF is probably for the more enthusiastic consumers, and these will usually already be using a xxD or xD body, and so they would do a major step backwards regarding ergonomics, haptics and build quality.
Assuming it was feature-wise (AF, fps, controls) a 550D with a FF sensor, I guess it would have to be at or even slightly below the 7D’s price for me to consider, which is probably not realistic. I don’t know how much more expensive a FF sensor is compared to an APS-C sensor, but its not the sensor alone. The viewfinder would have to be bigger and thus more expensive as well, and would probably also make it difficult to find the space for the Rebelesque internal flash.

Another problem is that Canons current full-frame lenses are either ancient or very expensive. What standard zoom lens would you bundle with that body? The only affordable alternative in Canon’s line-up that comes to my mind is the 28-135. It might have been an OK lens at the time of its introduction (IIRC during the film age), but I wonder if this lens’s performance regarding (FF!) corner resolution, vignetting etc. would make people very happy today.

Indeed! This an especially good option when shooting images for high dynamic range composite image – like in Photoshop CS4 and/or Photomatix. It would be nice to shoot +/- 5 stops every stop in single AEB burst. You may not always need them all, depending on dynamic range of scene, but it’s easy to throw away unneeded ones. There are work-arounds using the stored C1, C2, C3 custom settings, but you can only get three images at a time this way, and never up to 5 stops using AEB.

OK, if we’re talking wishlists for the firmware, I would really like to see focus bracketing, which would be very useful (for e.g. macro photography). I haven’t seen that in any Canon dslr but don’t understand why. Must be some subtle technical reason. The Canon G3 had focus bracketing.

Timelapse is also something that should be trivial to add to the firmware. I’m gussing it’s a business decision to not include it (sell remotes for that), but it was also a feature of the G3 that I miss.

How about locking the mirror up, and keeping it up during a series of shots? I was very surprised when I found out this wasn’t possible, for no good reason as far as I understand.

I’ve got an eBay one and used it extensively for at least the past year. Totally worth the $30. The instructions are awful, but worth studying to figure it out. Now that I’ve written out my own cheat sheet (large enough to read in the dark) it’s a breeze. I think the build quality isn’t as good as the Canon, but I can use the $120 somewhere else.

Thanks
If you don’t have the problem a describe I think that maybe my camera is a bad one. With my XTi I could take the reading with my 758, add one stop to the exposition and in CR take it down and the image sort really nice but with the 7d if a take a shot like this is a nightmare. I manual WB with Lastolite EasyBalance and with ColorChecker Passport. So I think my color is fine. But if the sky is overexposed I obtain really weird colors. I don’t understand why I could not take photo in P and obtain a descent one. I always need to be in manual and I do weddings so they’re times when I don’t have the time to work M.

Jeff

From Hong Kong? Or?

because when the mirror is locked up there’s no AF???
if you shoot something still, then you have time for series of shots, no need for the lockup, or you shoot some kind of action, where the AF is necessary .

Oh; just out of curiosity, have you try to compare with 5D II (or even a 450D and latter rebel and xxD series) files with the kind of processing that you do with the XTi?… if the other cameras could handle your work flow processing of the XTi output; the 7D may have different output characteristics in pixel level than other canon cameras.

Good luck in finding out :)

A formal request to Canon to include a Custom Auto ISO in the next firmware update for the EOS 7D owners, we really need this feature for rapid changing lighting conditions and when in a hurry to take a shot, but don’t like when the camera hits ISO 3200 …. must of us don’t like to go over iso1600 on this sensor !

I would participate. Via which way did the 5DII folks start their petition regarding the video features? Did they use any online petition site?

Someone please start a petition! At least for the same features as the updated 5D!

Cool. Upgrading now.

I like auto-ISO and I too feel like sometimes it would be nice to be able to set an upper limit… BUT, if I see the ISO has jumped to 3200 then I just open up the lens a stop, or slow down the shutter a stop. Easy. :-)

Best thing about auto-ISO? Setting manual at like 1/125 and f/2 and just going for it… Works well, I find.

Not having enough money to buy a 5D MarkII and owning 2 L lenses, against my better judgement I bought a 7D. I have just been on a 6 day odyssey through Europe and shot stills as well as video. These are some of the peeves I have. I wonder though if Canon ever listens to us photographers?!
If one can make some comparison to the Nikon300S where is the dual flash card slots? There is also no time lapse,which one can find on Canon’s dinky point and shoot cam’s.The on board light meter was sometimes 2 stops over which led me to underexpose.The color sat is awesome as is the motor drive.
AF when using video is sadly missing, I would put my head on a block that Canon has the technology and can apply it to the Mark II and 7D.
I shot Video using SD and the quality is pretty darn good not withstanding the problems. The 19 point focusing app is sometimes finicky and I opted to use a center point of focus all the time.The focusing app on the video setting is pretty much useless as it takes a very long time. Unless you have some kind of follow focus when shooting video anything that moves in front of your point of focus will be out.It can though be used at times for effects. Trying to shoot video using a speed below 1/60 just did’nt work.It seems that the camera has a 1/60 default speed for video. As for the sound in the video setting, one definitely needs one of the pro mic’s that are now on the market. The sound is tinny to say the least.And if you don’t have a tripod, Joby has a great new apparatus out made for DSLR cams. I hope this is not all over the place and is of some use.

OK, that’s one reason, but not a very strong one. I can think of several situations where mirror lockup would be useful during a series. Just because you can pre-focus it doesn’t mean you’re shooting a still object (only that you can anticipate where the object will be at some point). You may want to catch the right hard-to-catch moment, or you may just want the time sequence without image shake due to the mirror moving, if you are at high magnification on a less than rock-solid tripod and e.g. 1/10 sec exposures. One example is trying to catch the green flash during a sun set.

The point is that I don’t see how this could be hard to implement, but it would still be a useful feature.