MichaelHodges said:
The complaints of the 70D are especially interesting (many from Germany, it seems) which uses the same AF as the 7D:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUUxpneyGsY
A petition to Canon with 400 signatures:
https://www.openpetition.de/petition/online/canon-70d-autofokus-maengel-fuer-eine-ehrliche-stellungnahme-von-canon
Now, does this mean every Canon 70D is bad? Of course not. But that doesn't matter when you're one of the customers who got a bad one, and you lose great shots, and suddenly find yourself beyond the return date.
Thanks for supporting my point, albeit unintentionally. That video was linked earlier in this thread, and based on the information provided in the clip, the 'problem' being demonstrated – sharp images with live view, OOF images with viewfinder AF – is exactly what AFMA is designed to correct. How many of those 400 petition signers know what AFMA is, and have properly calibrated their lenses? I suspect the number of petitioin signers with a camera that's actually defective is
much smaller than 400, as many of those people quite likely read about it on the Internet, and decided they have a problem unit despite not checking appropriately. So, you have a few people in Germany with cameras that are actually defective…and it's the second best selling dSLR in the country
according to Amazon.
Why Germany? Most likely beacuse someone there got a defective camera and posted about it on a German-language forum.
Sure, it's unfortunate that some people get defective products, but as I stated, defective units are unavoidable in any mass-produced item. In the case of the 70D, the camera came out less than one year ago, meaning everyone who owns one still has warranty coverage provided by Canon.
When a problem is documented and widespread, Canon issues a Product Advisory and provides free repair for the problem, even after warranty coverage has expired. Among EOS Bodies, there have been service notices for lots of them, including the 7D. The 7D's documented issues were a residual image (corrected by firmware update) and an issue the off-center points non functioning as cross-type with a few very old Canon lenses (also affected 40D-60D, and probably affects the 70D, and the newer Rebel/xxxD bodies that inherited the 40-60D AF; more significant was that the problem also affected a few 3rd party lenses, like the fairly popular Tamron 17-50/2.8…but that's not Canon's problem, is it?). No where on the list of
Product Advisories is there an issue listed for inconsistency/imprecision of the 7D's or 70D's AF system.