Why the hell did canon make a Crop frame Pro DSLR anyway? and why did everyone buy it?
My guess is because it was new or they thought those hoax pictures of the Canon camera with nikon mounts was real that had dvd disc and photoshop built in etc..
Yup, that's exactly why I bought two 7D's. Yup, those pics really got me. And I was really stoked about the 7D having PS CS5 built-in to the camera. Too bad about that. *rolls eyes*
They did it because they were pushing boundaries on a whole lot of fronts. A good ol' redesign of just about everything, from the sensor to the viewfinder to the processors (and they put two of them in there which means better battery life to boot). I highly suspect that things the 7D team discovered in engineering it were used to further perfect the 1D MkIV. Not to mention plenty of very experienced photographers will use crop sensors for the sake of having higher pixel densities. A crop sensor camera body, capable of 8fps with an 18MP sensor is something many nature and sports photographers would understandably be interested in. Oh, and the fact that it costs less than a 5D MkII by about $1,000 is nice too.
Oh yeah, and the AF system is Canon's most advanced yet, period, hands down. No, not even the AF points of the 1D series can compete head-to-head (though they do have many more points). Oh, and hey, they also did a great job with video and have thus provided budding videographers with something to chew on. Until they release the 1D MkIV, the 7D is Canon's best camera is several areas.
Anyway, I digress. MRAW and SRAW aren't supported by LR 2.5 and ACR 2.5. The uncompressed RAWs are, but generally need some odd tweaking in post. I've used a colour card to calibrate both of my 7D's, so these oddities have been significantly lessened for me. Otherwise, the images coming from it are fine and quite usable for my purposes (which right now is mainly shooting a veritable myriad of subjects for a twice-a-week newspaper with online articles as well).