You know, there are very few "professional" reviews of the 7D out yet. I've been looking and looking,and one of the most distressing reviews was this one
Canon EOS 7D Review Performance| NeoCamera.com
which says the metering is often quite erratic. I have also been reading the massive Fred Miranda 7D master thread, which has a number of people rabidly defending the 7D and also some people who are having difficulties and issues with the new viewfinder screen's inability to allow manual focus ascertainment with fast lenses like the 50-L,85-L, and 135-L, and in short, the inability to accurately gauge focus by "eye" with any lens over f/2.8 in aperture speed. There are also a significant number of professional bird/wildlife and sports/news guys who are not satisfied with the autofocusing system's results. And this odd new dual-green, "4-color" sensor array is causing massive problems with RAW conversion software, leading to strange noise that's being called the "maze effect".
I get accused of being a Nikon fanboy, but I also own three Canon d-slr's and three Canon L-glass lenses, plus four non-L Canon lenses, and two Sigmas for Canon, and have been just waiting and waiting for a revolutionary new camera before upgrading. I'm convinced there are some BAD 7D cameras out there, 'cause their owners have been sent back NEW cameras from Canon's Irvine, Calif. facility, while others have had their cameras adjusted. I've spent the better part of a few nights over the last week going through Fred Miranda and dPreview's forums dedicated to 7D issues, and it seems like there's a subset of people who are getting great results from the camera on simple, static AF shots, but there are people sending the cameras back for full refunds too. Also, a few experienced wireless flash users who are finding that bounced flash multi-flash setups are not being exposed correctly,and two of them have independently corroborated that their respective 7D's are not functioning as they should.
I'm sitting here trying to figure out if this is just what happens when a company introduces a "pro-style AF system" to a user base that has had a simple, 9-area diamond array--like Nikon did when the D200 and its 11-area AF was bumped up to a 51-point system in the D300 D3. I wonder to myself if the 7D is simply presenting a huge learning curve issue for the majority of people used to the 20-30-40-50D and 5D series 9-point diamond array AF system, OR if this system needs more work on it, or if it's simply a manufacturing issue with maybe some bad components? What freaks me out are the pro nature and wildlife guys who are getting lots of OOF shots,even though they are used to 1-series AF capabilities. The web has gotten to the point where I simply hardly trust glowing new-owner/new-user reviews,and there are so many people that buy a new camera and defend it that I don't trust the new 7D owners trying to shout down those that are comparing their OWN new 7D camera with their 5D or their 5D Mark II or their 1 D Mark II-n or 1D Mark III bodies.
The reason I don't trust glowing user reviews any more? I payed $5,000 for a Nikon D2x body based on early reviews that focused on how great the image quality was, and on how high the resolution was even better than the Canon 1D Mark II (16.7 MP) with the same lens, used on an adapter. Yeah. Up to ISO 320 or maybe 400. I told myself how great the camera was, and then I got the chance to shoot my first late afternoon-to-twilight baseball game. It was fine at ISO 320 and 400, but at 500, the images changed. I had bought the camera on May 3rd, and in the SPRING and SUMMER, in good,bright light, it looked superb at ISO 160 or 200 or 250 or 320 or 400. I was telling myself how great the camera was for several months, until an August evening-to-twilight game....wow...the camera's ISO 800 and Hi-1 images needed massive Noise Reduction. The vast majority of new-owner reviews had lead me to believe it was an amazing,breakthrough camera, but honestly, for the newspaper sports gigs I was shooting, I was p*$$3D'off I had sold my older D1h sports camera, which had far fewer but HUGE pixels, and better IQ under a set of conditions I was confronted with once spring and summer had turned to fall and then winter.
I live in a gray,rainy, cool part of the country. I saw some great 7D Texas bird pics shot last week--at EV values I will not see again here until next May or June...and I am not going to make the mistake of buying another camera until I am absolutely,positively *sure* all the bugs are worked out.
The 1D Mark III AF fiasco was the last straw; I am now doubting Canon's engineering direction and Quality Assurance. It's gotten to the point where the D90 has better IQ but slower AF and slower handling in all aspects than my 'speed camera' the D2x, which I think of as "the five thousand dollar mistake". After the D2x disappointment sunk in, I bought a Canon 5D after it had been on the market for like 2 years, and am **still** impressed with its image quality and shallow depth of field FF look. But you know, I'm tired of chasing megapixels, and am once-bitten, twice shy about buying a significantly "new" camera from Canon OR Nikon.
Last time I dropped major coin on a 'great new camera' it was the D2x. It was great shot in bright light,and the photogs who had been "seeded" the early pre-release camera shot it in California and Hawaii where it's EV 17, EV18 all the time. Right now here, it's dull and f/4 at 1/30 at ISO 400. I'm not interested in seeing shots of birds in Texas shot at ISO 3200 in full sunlight at f/4 at 1/5000 second..I want to see more night football and gray-day soccer, and on those two specific areas, I am reading about pro sports shooters complaining about the 7D's AF. I no longer trust early, amateur owner comments--I was fooled by them in 2005 and dropped 5k and regretted it as soon as summer turned to fall and the light levels dropped.