Canon 7D Mark II Owners first thoughts

photorockies said:
I returned mine due to front focusing issues. Volleyball players' arms and hands were in focus instead of the torso or face. It was a frequent occurrence. It may be something correctable by AFMA but FOCAL isn't working yet with the camera.

What aperture were you shooting with? Comparing the focus on the two hands it looks like your DoF was about the width of the woman's shoulders.

Since the infocus portion (arm) was in front of the face, are you sure your focus point was on the woman's face and not partially on the arm? One has to consider that the actual focus point may not line up exactly with the projected focus point in the viewfinder.

Did you have this same issue with more static shots where you would have more control over where the actual focus point would be?
 
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Finally made the upgrade!

1st impressions, having only shot test images indoors -

- Nice feel to this camera, handles much like a 5D. Pairs with the 5D3 very well.

- Loving the expanded customization abilities of this camera. Particularly the expanded "My Menu" option and the ability to customize entire tabs...awesome.

- 65 pt AF spread has very good coverage of the frame.

- Tested it with 2 lenses - the 70-300L and 24-70 4 IS. The 70-300 was basically good to go, but the 24-70 front-focused significantly esp. at the wide end. An on-the-fly AF adjustment helped a little (I don't have the advanced tools that many other forum members do to get it completely right).

- AF accuracy - can't speak too much to this, as my ability to test was limited...but I can say it's much more consistent than the original 7D. Not perfect, of course, but you can re-focus and take the same shot over and over and have confidence that the shot will be of acceptable sharpness. (Wasn't the case with the original 7D, which was all OVER the place). Servo accuracy seemed a little better, but again, since I have nothing moving I had to move myself. Not the ideal way to test, so more on this later.

- Focusing: Also impressed by the camera's ability to focus in dark conditions, even in Servo mode. This is probably the biggest improvement over the original 7D in my opinion, since that was its #1 weak spot.

- High ISO performance - it's one thing to see test images online, but when you actually pick up and use this camera in your own lighting condition, it tells you so much more. Don't expect the performance of the 5D3/6D but it's a SIGNIFICANT improvement over the 7D - and not just in noise AMOUNT, but in noise QUALITY. Grain appears much finer with no "blotchiness" and significantly fewer "colored pixels" (although they're still there if you look for them). Best high ISO performance I've seen from a crop camera to date. 3200 is good (I set the Auto ISO limit here, as on the original 7D), and for the first time on crop, I find 6400 to be actually usable! Probably would hesitate to push beyond 6400, although I did test all the way to 16,000 and if one really needed the light, at least the files clean up nicely. I underexposed some 3200 shots and attempted to boost it up 1+ stops - much more flexibility in the files, but still not at the level of FF. Overall, if this is the best they could do, I'm happy.

Great camera so far, I like it.
 
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I shot it yesterday and am very pleased with it. I normally shoot raw, but with Adobe Camera Raw not supporting it, I shot this in JPG, ISO 1600, F2.0, 1/1000 and no noise reduction turned on. I reduced the size in half to upload it using Perfect Resize.
 

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One thing I noticed, and would like to ask other owners:

Reading the manual, it looks like the buffer capacity for RAW is 24, or 31 if you use a UDMA 7 CF card.

Now, I have a SanDisk 128GB UDMA 7 card in the CF slot...but I'm still getting the lower 24 count. This is with OR without an SD card in the slot. Anyone else using this card (or is managing to get the full 31 buffer rate)?
 
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Klaus_Kleber said:
im not at awe about the image quality but the speed is great.
IQ is good thought.

i killed my first one the same day (well at night :) ) i got it.

yesterday i got my replacement so i only had 3 hours in daylight with it yet (and weather here sux).

but so far so good.

exKnLfx.jpg

Good to hear you have your issue sorted out. Happy hunting!

Rod
 
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GraFax said:
dolina said:
Not a troll post so pls do not interpret it as such.

What do you not like about your 7D Mark II?

I wish the new joystick thumb lever gizmo was bi-directional. I have to disable some of the AF area modes to I don't have to scroll through all of them to get back to the one I wan't which would often be I click in the opposite direction. I"ll probably end up having to assign it to something else. Which is too bad because that is a great location for tha function. Or, assign another button to that function as well. I noticed that on the grip it's a seperate rocker switch. But that looks one directional as well.

Also not sure how robust that little lever is. Right now, I am switching those AF modes a lot.

+1 Agree it should be bi-directional. Have had to disable some AF modes too.
 
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photorockies said:
I returned mine due to front focusing issues. Volleyball players' arms and hands were in focus instead of the torso or face. It was a frequent occurrence. It may be something correctable by AFMA but FOCAL isn't working yet with the camera.
7MII0961.jpg by NAVBPhotos, on Flickr

Sometimes the DoF can be an issue, but this was also shot at f2.0, so I agree maybe AFMA is off on yours...
 
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photorockies said:
I returned mine due to front focusing issues. Volleyball players' arms and hands were in focus instead of the torso or face. It was a frequent occurrence. It may be something correctable by AFMA but FOCAL isn't working yet with the camera.

YOu dont need FoCal to AFMA your camera. YOu can do it easily with a sheet of newspaper and a wall. THe only thing FoCal is good for is racking up your shutter actuations. Most of the time it's AFMA calculation is not consistent. I rather set it manually based on how my shots look. I can get a lens calibrated in about 10 minutes. A little longer for zoom lenses snce you have to do it twice, one at each end of the zoom range.

I did have to AFMA my 7d2 as well. +8 with my 300 2.8. However that's within reason for now and I'll have that fixed when I send it in for cleaning. Doesn't start bothering me until it gets to +15 or so.
 
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Crapking said:
On the grip, it is a little lower, further away from the natural resting position, and much harder to accidentally flip, but I would say a little too hard to use conveniently. An unnatural motion of the thumb is required...

Not as functional but you can program one of the back buttons AF-ON or AE(*) to switch AF modes. You cannot select between them but you can set it for ONE of the modes. I set it for spot AF but you can choose whatever you want. While you are shooting (half press) just press the AE(*) button and it instantly switches to your preset AF mode.

You can also set the same button to switch to a fixed shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and/or a host of other functions.

It's a bit difficult to move the AF point while holding the button but if you can work around that this might be an option for some.

I find it quite usefull for switching from BIF Zone AF mode to stick picking spot AF in stride while tracking something from flight to landing.
 
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Have had my 7DII for 24 hours, playing with the raw the last few hours on LR5.7. I have to say I find it much better than my 7D. Maybe lab results show "just" a 2/3 stop improvement in quality, but in real life I find it so much more than that. I look at my 3200 ISO shots and I'm liking them more than anything at ISO 800 with my 7D. Besides IQ, I find it a great improvement, I will definitely be using it next to my 5DIII, something I didn't do with my 7D.
 
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krjc said:
Have had my 7DII for 24 hours, playing with the raw the last few hours on LR5.7. I have to say I find it much better than my 7D. Maybe lab results show "just" a 2/3 stop improvement in quality, but in real life I find it so much more than that. I look at my 3200 ISO shots and I'm liking them more than anything at ISO 800 with my 7D. Besides IQ, I find it a great improvement, I will definitely be using it next to my 5DIII, something I didn't do with my 7D.

I echo your sentiments.

just got my 7Dii late yesterday evening and took a few test shots at about 10pm, in a room with a 60w bulb.

Setting at ISO 3200 and when I ran my standard noise reduction I use for my 500D, the noise cleaned up far, far better than my 500D would at ISO 800
 
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What do you like?

1. The ability to program another button besides having to use the DOF button to toggle between One - Shot and AI Servo. How about a FW update for the 5D3 Canon?

2. The AF selection lever (outside the multi controller).

3. Not camera related but I did not have to restart my computer when I updated DPP 13.4 to DPP4. I thought it may have been a fluke but I updated from 4 to 4.1 and no restart. It is about time Canon. Thanks

What do you dislike?

Although far better I still have to the DOF button to toggle between One - Shot and AI Servo. It would be nice just to press and release and it stays in the opposite drive. An indicator in the VF would top it off. All of course programmable.
 
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I pulled the trigger and got mine on thanksgiving at B&H. This camera is great for me, what I like about it? the focus is a new hybird system like no other it is totally rebuild from the ground up. I had a little playing around before pulling the trigger. Guys that owns the 1DX gave some very strong information at the time, they said it was actually better than the 1Dx in focusing and tracking, this I don't know how valid it is (and don't care) since i do not own a 1Dx.
I like the tracking and how it does it's thing, I shoot with my 50mm 1.2 and 100mm 2.8 IS Maro which both lenses were very fast and smooth. The menu was really something new to get use to since I am a user of the 5d Mk2 and very satisfy with it's files out put, the only thing I really needed was a better focus system that is good enough for sports and action this was a area that I felt very limited in, since the 5d Mk2 is slow to do those tasks like I really want to. So it was time to fix this area, and I also was a user of the 40D that I sold so now that this one is back it's a great machine to have.
I shot in very low light and the system was very accurate most of the time, the best part of all this is that it was faster than what im use to.

One of the things, I notice was that the metering display that many says is not available in manual mode, this is incorrect I got mine to work in manual mode, somehow but will come back here to edit it in, just did it without notice how I did it, if i have to, the hook leaver at the back with its one direction selection is nasty, you can go into AF menu from left to right the second to last dot AF area selection method change that to main dial and you should be able to go forward and backward with a breeze.

I took a look at the ISO and to be honest I have no problem with the noise at all, since I happen to master my 5Dmk2 noise levels very well this camera should not be an issue since I shoot for shadows anyway and understand the results.

I have no negatives about this camera since I have bin using older systems for years, so i appreciate the bells and whistles that this camera has also with the dual pixels and the dual cpu's power, Im only happy to be capturing images in a much more fast fun way.
Thanks Canon for this great machine.


no editing only croped

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https://www.flickr.com/photos/53773636@N08/15899399052/
 

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