Canon 7D sees dead people.

[gsgary]

This is one of the reasons i would never buy a camera when they first come out

 

[musicaleCA]

You know, as an interesting anecdote about technology, I bought this MacBook Pro a few years back. At the time this model had been around for a little under a year. Two years after I got it, the nVidia GPU cracked; all of the chips from the first batches were defective. The problem didn't crop up until much later. Technology isn't perfect, and as I said, if anyone bought the 7D hot off the shelf and expected it to be perfect out of the box, they were incredibly naïve.

 

[Derrel]

As musicaleCA wrote, "if anyone bought the 7D hot off the shelf and expected it to be perfect out of the box, they were incredibly naïve."

And the same goes with the Canon 1D Mark III, Nikon D2h, and Leica M8--all allegedly state of the art cameras, each one hyped by their manufacturers as cameras so fantastic, they were,well revolutionary...

Like the 1D Mark III--Canon put out a white paper that in plain English stated that the 1D Mark III had the BEST autofocus of any camera they had ever made--but the AF system had massive problems. Failures to focus on sequential shots, in dead-simple scenarios,using professional glass. AF that grew WORSE on bright sunny days than in dim lighting! The 1D Mark III's 18 month AF issues and the inability to solve the problems directly forced many sports/PJ guys straight to the Nikon D3 full-frame camera with proven AF that worked! Canon lost a huge swath of full-time pros due to the 1D Mark III and its autofocusing problems. Many users still rely on the 1D Mark II and Mark II-n versions and have refused to buy the Mark III.

Nikon's D2h: same deal. Nikon hyped the D2h before release,claiming the lowest noise ever. Documents written by Nikon and released to the public stated that the noise level of the D2h sensor would be *supremely* low. What happened? Two things: excessive sensitivity to infrared and near-infrared wavelengths rendered MOST black synthetic fabrics as purple-ish black,with a very strong magenta offset. Sports uniforms came out WRONG all over the world! The camera's top maximum quality was around ISO 1600, with 4.2 MP sensor size. Two or three weeks after the D2h, Canon introduced the 8.2 MP EOS 1D Mark II model,trumping Nikon's new sports model with a double-MP count offering that was a superb camera,with reliable autofocusing. Then the infamous "D2h Dead Meter" issue in the early run D2h bodies; a non-Nikon-made light metering system component turned out to have a tendency to fail very early in the life of the camera. Much like the failure of the Nikon D5000, with a 3rd party electronic component failing. The Nikon D2h and D2Hs models were massive failures for Nikon.

How about the $5,000 Leica M8, Leica's first digital rangefinder body. SAME,exact problem as the D2h had--EXTREME over-sensitivity to infrared caused black fabrics and all types of black objects to be rendered with a strong magenta offset. What made this problem so,so egregious was that Michael Reichmann of the famous Luminous Landscape web site got an M8 pre-production and he raved about what a great camera it was! He shot it and he MISSED the huge,huge IR problem it had! As did others with whom the M8 was "seeded"; they web-published glowing reports about Leica M8 image quality, and yet like the D2h sensor from 2 years earlier, the M8's sensor had HORRIBLE color rendering. In the M8's case, even one of the web's most-respected, most widely read web site owners gave out very bad, misleading information, talking about what a great picture-maker the M8 was. Boy, did he have egg on his face when Leica admitted the problem and offered users three free UV/IR blocking filters to put on their lenses! Not just UV filters, but expensive "hot mirror" filters costing $100+ each.

I no longer trust the people who buy a new body,and with a day or a week or a month, tell me how great it is.

 

[musicaleCA]

Well at least the 7D renders colour well.

I was asked to shoot video today. First off, I need a big, big grey card to get my WB for video right. I was off by a little with my WB, so the poor multimedia editor has to fix that. The audio came out crap, but that said, we weren't using the BEST gear, and there was lots of ambient noise in the room (except for the sexay Manfrotto tripod...mmm...so smooth...). She and I are going to play with external mics and the 7D at some point to figure out this audio. If it actually is the camera destroying the audio, well...not cool.

 

[inTempus]

She and I are going to play with external mics and the 7D at some point to figure out this audio. If it actually is the camera destroying the audio, well...not cool.

It looks like Canon carried that "feature" over from the 5D2. It's nice to see they're working hard to improve the video experience. Not.