7D Mark II - Timing and when to buy

[campbbri]

I WANT to buy a 7D2 but there's nothing on it I NEED right now, so I'm a little flexible with the timing. I expect this to be my only camera purchase for at least five years, but I have some questions to help me decide the timing.

1. What's the rough pattern for price drops on launches like this? For example would some retailers offer it at $1700 or $1600 in January? Did the original 7D stay close to MSRP for a long time?

2. Do DLSR's have revisions and bug fixes in later batches of the same model? For example if you buy a computer monitor at launch it will often have subtle issues that get silently corrected or improved in later revisions. Are DSLRs the kind of product that get more reliable later in the manufacturing cycle?

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[Dylan777]

Company likes Canon, I wouldn't worry about hardware issues. Firmware, yes. Can be updated.

The price drops, Uhmmmm, is another story. If 7D II turns out to be popular camera(which I think it will be), the price drops could take 6 months or more.

 

[JustGunner]

I would probably wait until early next year. The price will very likely to come down a bit. If there is any defects, like the light leakage in the 5Dmk3, people will know very soon when they get their first batch of cameras. They do indeed rectify manufacturing faults in later batches.

 

[NancyP]

I usually wait for the early reviews and first batch of cameras in hands of general public. Any issues get corrected in next batch of cameras - Canon is at least better than Nikon in admitting problems and fixing them. All you whiners, be glad for that at least - Nikon is now perceived as less than trustworthy.

 

[Tugela]

If there is nothing on it you need right now then I would suggest waiting a year or two, when there almost certainly will be much better options. The 7D2 is a camera designed for the past, but rest assured that cameras designed for the future will be coming thick and fast, they just won't have the word "Canon" printed on them.

 

[retina]

I usually wait for the early reviews and first batch of cameras in hands of general public. Any issues get corrected in next batch of cameras - Canon is at least better than Nikon in admitting problems and fixing them. All you whiners, be glad for that at least - Nikon is now perceived as less than trustworthy.

well said 8)

 

[docsmith]

You can see the price history of the 7D below:

http://www.canonpricewatch.com/product/02849/Canon-EOS-7D-price.html

Waiting for the price to drop may just be lost opportunities for the savings for $100-$200. If I was in the market for the 7DII, I would have already pre-ordered it. I have several friends that have.

 

[helpful]

Wait a year if that's the only camera you need in the next five years.

If you buy it early, you have a very small chance of running into issues, and won't save anything on price.

If you wait a few months you might end up with one of the cameras returned by other terrible citizens of the photography world. I've seen people who brag about how many times they use then return lenses and cameras on these forums, for example. I never, ever buy cameras without being fully committed to the purchase, merely so I can try them out and then return them. And even if something is truly wrong with a camera, I have it serviced rather than exchanging it to pass the problem on to the camera store or another photographer. But there are a lot of people who do the exact opposite, and there will be a lot of "new" cameras that aren't really quite new being sold after the initial introduction as a result.

If you wait around a year, you can probably catch it at a great sale price, and get one that is fresh from the factory, and probably better by some slim margin than all the cameras being sold at the release date.

Some even suggest that the sensor's performance can improve slightly between one production run and the next, similar to the "steppings" of computer CPUs which vary in overclockability (which would be somewhat a parallel to the amount of sensor thermal noise and read noise) despite having the same design.

 

[unfocused]

I was a relatively early adopter of the 7D and never regretted it. I got a small Canon Loyalty discount that they were offering at the time, but that was it.

I think it depends. With the camera coming out in November and with pre-sales already very strong, there may not be many "deals" this holiday season (although I would wait until closer to Christmas just to see).

I would not expect a rebate offer for at least six months, but I could be wrong. I think it just depends on how long you can stand to wait and what the potential savings is worth to you.

Follow CanonPriceWatch.com to see what the going price is, once the camera is actually released.

I would not be surprised if it takes almost a year before the price drops much, if at all. The question only you can answer is whether waiting that long will be worth it to save maybe $100-$200.

 

[campbbri]

Thank you for all the great replies, which brought up some things I hadn't thought about. Funny how many people (myself definitely included) agonize over these decisions, when at the end of the day we are talking about a tool. How many people worry about timing of the latest Dewalt drill?