White balance pre-sets are useful for professional work where mixed lighting is encountered, or when one wants to shoot mixed tungsten + flash (wedding) or wants a specific white balance, like a Uni-White Balance, or a specific shade white balance. Shooting in RAW is fine, but unless you set an accurate WB beforehand, the demosaicing of the RAW data will be done using false color information. For those on deadline, or who shoot JPEG, or who do much critical work involving mixed lighting sources, having 4 custom White Balances makes sense....that's why other camera makers have more than "one" pre-set. Think bride's dressing area-church-reception hall-outdoors. Or 1/4 CTO gel + Tungsten. 4 versus 1 pre-set. Again, all software, no extra cost--why can't Canon use a few bytes to implement 4?
Sticky...no...check page three of the thread...Nikon has a 4-option setup...so no, you're not thinking of what the post was discussing.
No bracketing in Manual mode is a "meh"? The 1Ds-Mk III has 2,3,5,and 7 shot bracketing +/- 3EV in 1/3 or 1/2 stops. The Nikon D300 has bracketing in 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 1-stop bracketing increments, over a 5-EV value range. Covered in anywhere from 2 to 9 frames. The 7D offers 2- or 3-frame brackets, over +/- 2EV, in 1/3 or 1/2 stop increments. Uh, meh is right--that's not bracketing, that is exposure micro-adjustment. There's a new type of photography called HDR, derived from the older exposure blending--which is why Nikon is going with bracketing that spans as many as NINE frames, and FIVE f/stops worth of difference. There is often not time to flip the dial and make manual adjustments--for those who do a lot of HDR photography, Nikon has become the clear leader. Manuallly moving dials and knobs slows down the process and can move the camera or allow too much subject movement in a 10-second process done all manually, when with a camera like a D300, the entire sequence can be shot in roughly .5 to 1.2 seconds. It is simple engineering, all done in software, but yet Canon cannot figure out how to include this feature? Or do they want you to buy a 1Ds-III, or a Nikon?
Flexible program shift is NOT exposure compensation. Confused much by the terminology? Flexible Program is "P" in Canon-speak. Camera picks an aperture and shutter speed,and YOU manually, with forethought, turn the wheel to set a different, but equivalent exposure setting--to get a slower or faster shutter speed. Every time the light meter switches off, Canon bodies like the EOS 5D and the 20-30-40-50D, all shift back to the DEFAULT, or baseline suggested value selected by the camera, ignoring the Program SHIFT aspect that the shooter has set himself. So, over a 10-minute or a 10-hour shooting session, a Canon will default to the factory program every single time the meter times out; a Nikon will remember the user's settings for hours, or all day, until the power switch is flipped to OFF. The 7D acts like a point and shoot, always trying to override the Program Shift back to fatory determined defaults.
Why is this important you ask? Recall the fellow poo-pooing that the 7D goes to SLEEP. Oh, yeah that guy was you! Try remote-mounting your 7D and set the shutter speed in Program mode to the highest shutter speed possible with a given lens, say 1/4000 at f/4 at ISO 1000 for a track meet. Then, remote mount the camera. Every time the 7D goes to sleep, YOUR input will be disregarded, and the camera will revert to its basic, dumb programming,which favors a modest relationship between speed and f/stop. It'll be sweet to download the Program shots the 7D elected to expose at its default of 1/500 second at f/11. Same exposure as f/4 at 1/4000 second--totally equivalent exposure values,right? "Meh," indeed. A Nikon will not do that--it will honor the Program Shift as it was entered. All day long, even if the camera meter switches off. Remember, the 7D is aimed at sports/nature shooters...but its acting like a Point and Shoot and overriding the input of the photographer. But so have the 5D and 10D thru 50D on this same,exact metering mode, Flexible Program--which is different from the Green Box or 'Idiot' mode, which is NOT user-shiftable.
Changing metering mode, or programming any number of functions to a body-mounted button called the FUNC button is something Nikon premiered in 2004. Allowing the photographer to program the FUNC button is invaluable for a serious user: I have my D2x mode set to switch from 1.5x mode to 2.0 or High Speed Crop mode with the press of the FUNC button. See, the idea is that there is a FUNC button that the USER can program for INSTANT, even in-the-dark control, to set the camera up to do a certain thing. Nikon understands that dedicated buttons and menus are nice. Canon has been pushing that nifty Direct Print Button for quite a while. It's not a case of cycling through modes, which is a Canon user's concept of how a camera ought to function--it's a matter of having the *ability* to put whatever a particular user determines is the most-critical feature setup at one's fingertip. That is why Nikon uses a FUNC button that each user can program, to put a critical adjustment at the fingertips for various jobs. The Func button is pressed with the right middle finger while the camera is at eye level. One design ethos respects the shooter, the other sees him as end-user.
Does the 7D have four, user-configurable shooting banks, with ALL settings user-configurable, so the camera can be pre-adjusted for four widely disparate shooting conditions? Nikon uses that system. Minolta's 7D had a top-deck mounted 3-position shifter knob that controlled what Nikon would call Exposure Settings Banks. Great concept. Easy enough to execute.
See, the 7D is ostensibly targeting Nikon's high-end APS-C cameras and is claiming to be a "pro" camera, yet it lacks a lot of the controls other pro cameras have. And MOST of this stuff could be done in software!
Why should flash bracketing be done controlled by the camera? Uh, that idea came from Nikon when they invented off-camera, multiple speedlight photography with their CLS sytem. Nikon figures that controlling the flash should be done by the camera body,and not at the flash itself, since the flash might be mounted off-camera or on a light stand 13 feet in the air. Canon thinks flash bracketing adjustment ought to be on the flash, I guess.
After all, who would remote mount a flash and want to control the flash's exposure from the camera position? Meh...
Seriously..the two camera companies have very,very different control methods. If you want to read the 2nd and third pages of the thread I referenced, the answers are in there. Check out the Program Shift feature on your 7D and get back to me if the behavior of my 5D and my 20D is different, if you would please.
