EOS 7D Mark II Announcement September 5, 2014?

[RocklandDragon]

It would be a camera I'd save up to get but not right away. The current 7D I have has done the job quite well. Admittedly, I have had some trouble using it during low light situations and I need high aperture glass just to get good football and baseball images. I was looking for a second body and wasnt fully tied to the Canon brand. I tried the Nikon 7100 for that reason, and overall I like the 7100 a lot. Still, I enjoy the aging 7D over the Nikon 7000 and even 7100 and Sony a77. Havent tried the new a77 yet, though. I really like the quick focus and feel of the 7D. It's raw buffer isnt the greatest but it sure is better than the 7100. Switching from a swinging batter to a runner at home and the 7100 has to slow down just to write. Get four frames on a swing and switch to a runner coming home and it gets stuck. The 7D had more capacity to work with and I need that.I like the image quality of the 7100. I really do. In many cases, it is sharper than the 7D and it should be. It is a much newer camera but I prefer the 7D's focus, grip, weight, speed, and buffer.

I wouldn't mind getting a 70D though. I like using that camera and the buffer is better than the 7100 but I do miss that extra frame of the 7D and feel of the 7D. It'd be hard to choose between a 70D and a 7D that is now currently $500 off. At Best Buy, they have the 7D with a 28-135 kit lens for $1,099. That ain't bad at all and used prices are getting better and better.

I'll get a second body and put my 70-200 on there and have the other camera have a long prime for games. Renting the long primes, of course. Can't fully afford the 300 or 400 f/2.8 just yet. I'll make it a goal to get the new 7D Mark II but maybe for next year. I'll likely buy a discounted second 7D.

 

[jrista]

jrista has an advanced case of the astrophotography bug. That's an expensive bug to catch, at least if you give it full freedom to grow. ;D I would be more worried about catching this bug, but unfortunately I live in an area with less frequent clear skies, lots of light pollution, and I don't function too well on little sleep, so my AP window of opportunity is Fridays and Saturdays.

On the other hand, telescopes keep getting better for less money.

Oh, that is SUCH a TRUE statement! I do worry about myself now. If I just "let go", and got everything I wanted, this is the bill:

10Micron GM2000HPS UP: ~$24,000 (with all required options)
PlaneWave 17" CDK Telescope: $22,000
SBIG STX-16803 w/ 7-pos Filter Wheel: $11,590
Astrodon LRGB E-series Gen II 50mm Square: $1,225
Astrodon H-alpha 5nm Narrow Band 50mm Square: $875
Astrodon Oxygen-III 3nm Narrow Band 50mm Square: $1,250
Astrodon Sulfur-II 3nm Narrow Band 50mm Square: $1,250

That's a total bill of: $62,190

The big benefit of the 10Micron mounts is they use high end absolute encoding on the axes. They can track with <0.1" accuracy without guiding for up to 20 minutes. They also include sky modeling built right into the mount. This stuff is big and heavy as well, so you really set it up in a personal observatory, perfect and tune it's alignment and sky modeling, then just access it all remotely. You log in from your computer, tell the dome to open, point at whatever you want to image, program an imaging sequence, and then just let it run. Go to bed, wake up in the morning, and you have a bunch of image data to work with.

The cool thing about automated observatories these days...you can automate EVERYTHING. You can even pre-program imaging sequences that automatically "wake up" the observatory, open the dome, point it and the scope at the right location, do the imaging, then park the scope and close down the dome and have everything "sleep" when morning arrives. You can even set up weather monitors and cloud detectors, which will again put everything in sleep mode until the clouds pass, then wake the thing up again so it can get back to work when the sky clears. (You can also wire all this into forecasts online.)

Of course, building a nice, fully automated observatory like this, under really dark skies that have a lot of clear time, is like another sixty grand...so...you know....only the independently wealthy really get to play with "toys" like that.

 

[NancyP]

In my part of the country with dark-ish skies, the deep Ozarks in Southern MO and Northern AR, the problem with an automated observatory (run from a remote location such as St. Louis City) is that someone would break in and make a meth lab out of it.
Sheeeeit, I had no idea mere 50mm filters could be that expensive. OK, even I know that Astrodon is the high end manufacturer.

That list puts my daytime dream exotic lens to shame - I could have a 600mm f/4 L IS II lens, drop-in polarizer, v.III 1.4 and 2x teleconverter set, and the rest of the Custom Brackets Gimbal (I have the side arm already) for a quarter of the price of the gear you listed.

 

[9VIII]

That list makes suddenly makes me feel ok about the idea of owning a Big White.