Best Auto Focus EOS

boesman73 · Oct 17, 2012

My eye sight is going and I need to upgrade from my old 10d. Thinking the 7d looks like my best option. Any thoughts. Thanks.

TheFantasticG · Oct 17, 2012

Best EOS AF? I hear its the 1DX or 5Dmk3... But not speaking from experience just all the reviews I've read.

Hardrock · Oct 17, 2012

What is the budget? Ive owned a Canon rebel XT, 50D and 7D. The Canon 7D is far superior to both previous cameras Ive owned. The 50D wasn't bad but the 7D blew it out of the water.

boesman73 · Oct 17, 2012

I was hoping to stick to my upper limit of $2k.

MLeeK · Oct 17, 2012

The new 6D is looking pretty impressive too.

TCampbell · Oct 17, 2012

The 6D is Canon's new (technically not shipping yet) full-frame and they have improved the focus system over the 5D II but is not as good as the 5D III or even the 7D. It has 11 points. The center point is cross-type, but the rest are vertical or horizontal only. The 5D III (but that's a $3500 body) has 61 AF points and up to 41 of them can function in cross-type mode. A fantastic focus system to be sure... but a price that's well beyond what you were hoping to spend.

The 7D is the best crop-frame body in the line-up. It has a 19 point auto-focus array and all 19 points are the high-precision "cross type" focus points. It's an excellent camera for focus precision and "list" price is only $1600. BTW, if you phone Canon, you may find that they'll give you a "loyalty program" trade-in for your 10D... it will probably knock several hundred dollars off the price of the 7D if you want to trade in the 10D body. They don't publicly "publish" the prices available on the loyalty program ... it changes all the time and you have to call to find out what the current offers are. But the 7D is commonly available through that program. It may be a refurbished 7D body (ask). It would be a way to save quite a chunk on the price of the camera and leave you with more money in case you'd like to buy something else.

The 10D was, if I recall, the only APS-C crop-frame body that could not take EF-S lenses (it would have had to use only the EOS "EF" series lenses) so even if you decided to go with a 6D you still wouldn't have to worry about lens compatibility (6D, being a "full frame" body can only use "EF" series lenses.)

BTW, be aware of two things:

1) There's a tiny little wheel next to the viewfinder. That wheel allows you to adjust focus for your eyes (it can handle up to -3/+3 diopters worth of change.) This way if you don't shoot with glasses, you can still your subject's "in focus" through the viewfinder. I believe they make a slide-on attachment that can increase that even more. I don't believe it handles astigmatism.

2) You can tell the camera to use only a specific AF point for focus. OR... you can let the camera auto-choose. If you let it auto-select (the default) then it will always pick the AF point which is able to lock focus on a subject at the CLOSEST focusing distance. Suppose I'm taking a photo of someone on a patio, but there are some flowers in the foreground near the edge of the frame. If those flowers happen to be located at a point in the scene with an auto-focus point, then the camera is going to lock onto the flowers in the foreground and NOT your intended subject a bit farther away. Keep this in mind when you're composing a shot and make sure the AF point that lights up (the point it chooses will light up in red) is actually on your intended subject -- otherwise hit the AF point selection button and select the AF point you want it to use.