The 7D has landed - and general how to questions

[Overread20]

Yep its here!!!! :mrgreen::mrgreen:
At last after being ordered; cancelled; reordered and even sent to the wrong address its finally made it! Its here in my hands (oh gosh its big!)


And first thing out of the box the battery is on charge and I was having a minor heart attack as I looked through the viewfinder and saw - well what I saw was horrible grain and no af points or nothing. It looked like it was broken
On the offchance I slipped the battery in (partly charged only) as a quick test and the viewfinder magically fixed itself - take the battery out and its back to horrid. So it seems to need electricity to work. (didn't notice the manual telling me that snippet of info!).

So here is to the 2.5 hour wait for the battery to charge up before I get to play with more than putting the wrist strap on!:mrgreen::mrgreen:

 

[bentcountershaft]

Congrats!

 

[tmartin2347]

Congrats, thats the camera I think I'm going to get.

 

[j-digg]

Woohoo! Congrats on the 7d, Over yeah it is much bigger than the XTi ( if I remember correctly thats what you had ) the first thing I recommend doing is putting that thing in high speed continuous and hold that shutter button in hehe.... I couldnt stop smiling while doing this, I still find it quite sexy .... plus it sounds SO badass compared to the whiny Rebel shutter.... selecting AF points is quite different and takes some getting used to, but is ultimately easier once you get used to it.. you can chose to toggle the AF points' visibility, so that they always show or just when you select them... they take up much more space in the VF than the little dots of the Rebels so you may not want them all to be visible at all times. The VF grain ordeal must be normal, mine does it as well... Cant wait to see some of your stuff with the new body!

 

[cfusionpm]

The viewfinder uses an active LCD to display whatever you want. Either a grid, all AF points, the active AF point, etc.

I would suggest reading through this, if you haven't already. It explains a lot of the new features and handling, which would be dramatically different from a 400D: Canon EOS 7D Digital SLR Camera Review

"The 7D utilizes Canon's new Intelligent Viewfinder which uses a liquid crystal overlay to provide various displays of focusing points and zones, on-demand grid lines and a spot metering circle. The LCD overlay can also be illuminated or turned off completely. "

 

[Samerr9]

yeah.. that viewfinder is ammazing.. it is like it knows what u want to focus on without telling

congrats

 

[Derrel]

Overread, please be advised that the new transmissive LCD type of viewfinder used in the 7D, with its artificial illumination system also means that the "visual" depth of field as seen on the focusing screen is around f/4, according to (former) Canon technical ombudsman and technical rep Chuck Westfall. Tech Tips - The Digital Journalist

What that means is that the viewfinder screen does NOT show shallow depth of field, but the on-screen image your human eye sees represents very closely the depth of field of a lens with a maximum aperture of f/4.8--even if the lens has a wider maximum aperture. For those who do a lot of manual focusing, and I assume you do since you have the MP-E 65 ultra-macro lens, as well as multiple other macro lenses, I think you'll probably need to be aware of the way the new transmissive LCD viewfinder system differs from the older systems used in 99.5 % of other d-slr bodies from all makers. Other experienced shooters claim that the 7D viewfinder screen's ultra-smooth, brightened surface is actually closer to f/4.8 (darned near f/5.6) in terms of "apparent depth of field". This entire issue of how this works is based on viewfinder screen grinding technology and the principle of what is known as"scatter", and now with the new artificial brightening, yet another wrinkle has been added. So, this might be something to keep in mind when doing manual focusing.

 

[cfusionpm]

^ All of which is easily remedied by using Live View for precise manual focusing:

From your link: "As a workaround when using fast lenses, your best bet would be to use the camera's Live View function. This method will display the actual depth of field at all times, and it has the added benefit of being able to magnify any portion of the picture area, either 5X or 10X, for critical manual focusing."

 

[Overread20]

Ahh my thanks all - esp Derral for that bit of info that I've not seen mentioned thus far in most threads/discussions. I assume then that if I'm shooting the lens at around f5.6 or smaller I should be ok for the depth of field in the viewfinder that I see - however if shooting wider I'll have to take into account the wider view than I can see and make sure that the critical point is not only in focus, but as well into the middle of the plane of focus that I can see, as is possible. Shooting with liveview and magnification can solve this of course, but a lot of my shooting is either action (where it will be mostly reliant of AF so not a concern) or handheld macro, where live view is somewhat not an easily used option (1:1 on a still subject if I can lean on something would probably work, but anything moving and I'll need that viewfinder to my eye for added stability of the setup).


Also a few small questions (if any here know the answers) and points for me to read up on:
Auto lighting optimiser - seems the same as going into editing and using highlights and shadows tool, but automatically. Since I edit myself (and don't always want to have higher noise levels) I assume this can be disabled without loss.

Lens peripheral correction - like the alo above this appears to be something easier done in editing rather than auto through the camera (esp as I use a selection of 3rd party lenses that either won't be registered or will use canon registrations and confuse the auto system). Thus another setting best left disabled. It's also something that I've not directly seen in my previous shooting or rather not identified as a problem. (not saying its not there, nor that its not good to use such a feature in camera or in computer, but that thus far its not been a bane of my shooting).


safety shift - not 100% sure on this mode thus far, it seems that its enabling some kind of auto exposure compensation when shooting in bright/changeable conditions to allow the camera to compensate for a changing subject brightness when used in TV/AV mode.

High ISO Speed noise reduction - Currently on standard, but I wonder if the 7D build in noise reduction is superior to that of say an external reduction of noise from say Neat Image, Lightroom or other editing options.

Highlight tone priority - far as I can see outside of aiming for perfect ISO 100 shots in controlled or a limited dynamic range of lighting this mode would be best left active; ISO 200 (even on my 400D) being a perfectly usable aperture, whilst the added dynamic range is a feature more often wanted than not by default. Though I seem to recall reading of some complexities and possible conflicts with using this mode - however thus far I must admit most of my 7D readings were light and only fringe - I never really delved deep into any discussion (hard to follow when one does not have the tool to appreciate the controls).

I've not yet delved into the minefield that is the AF control and customisation, that is for when I'm both more familiar with the basic camera operation and also when in a fresher state of mind. I'll also have to do some reading around wildlife, bird and other typical shooters of my interest areas to find out what custom options people are using and the justification for them (good to understand why not just what - even if the why is only to a limited level).

 

[j-digg]

Did you go with the Canon battery grip? Thinkin about pickin one up, mind givin a quick review?

 

[Overread20]

Yep went with the canon battery grip (was one of the first parts to arrive). Overall its not a complex grip at all - the batteries go in via the back (that is the part facing you as you hold the grip) and you've the choice of either one battery (either side); two batteries; 6AA batteries in a holder (provided) or a mains charging point adaptor (has a cable out to a mains plug and not included).

The door itself into the battery compartment isn't anything special, though I'm not sure if its weather sealed the same as the camera is (hard to tell, but I think it is).

After that the grip as a basic button layout:
Top row buttons:
Shutter button (this is the same style as the 7D with it being a soft squishy button rather than a hard click press)
M-Fn
Scrolling wheel

Back control buttons
AF-ON
*
the af point select button

side button
On/Off button - note this rests under you hand when you hold the camera normally and is an odd design - its not really in a place to be flicked on/off (esp if you use a hand grip which covers this button) and rather is more aimed at being left on/off for prolonged periods of time. Its about the only downside compared to say my 400D grip which has the on/off button on an accessible part of the grip. For me its no worry as I just leave the grip on all the time.

Other than that its a pretty standard grip - same build and response speed as the camera itself. The only thing that is a little annoying is that settings such as ISO and AF drive are not present in the grip so you can't as easily change these on the fly as you're working with the grip (esp if you've got a heavier lens so your left hand is way out holding the barrel). Some custom function controls and the like might resolve this problem, but I've not looked into it that much as yet.

 

[Formatted]

Cannot comment, but gratz on your purchase. Come down to Bath sometime!

 

[cfusionpm]

Lens peripheral correction - like the alo above this appears to be something easier done in editing rather than auto through the camera (esp as I use a selection of 3rd party lenses that either won't be registered or will use canon registrations and confuse the auto system). Thus another setting best left disabled. It's also something that I've not directly seen in my previous shooting or rather not identified as a problem. (not saying its not there, nor that its not good to use such a feature in camera or in computer, but that thus far its not been a bane of my shooting).

Its a convenience factor to take care of vignetting automatically. Canon pulls data for each individual lens automatically through firmware updates. I trust Canon knows how their own lenses perform on their own bodies, so I leave this on.

High ISO Speed noise reduction - Currently on standard, but I wonder if the 7D build in noise reduction is superior to that of say an external reduction of noise from say Neat Image, Lightroom or other editing options.

I ran a quick test myself, you can see the results below (click each image for a full size of the 100% crops).

RAW

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RAW with LR NR

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JPG Standard NR

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JPG Low NR

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JPG High NR

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JPG NR Disabled

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JPG In-camera NR Disabled, with LR NR

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Highlight tone priority - far as I can see outside of aiming for perfect ISO 100 shots in controlled or a limited dynamic range of lighting this mode would be best left active; ISO 200 (even on my 400D) being a perfectly usable aperture, whilst the added dynamic range is a feature more often wanted than not by default. Though I seem to recall reading of some complexities and possible conflicts with using this mode - however thus far I must admit most of my 7D readings were light and only fringe - I never really delved deep into any discussion (hard to follow when one does not have the tool to appreciate the controls).

It gives up dark dark shadow detail to retain more highlight details. If you shoot RAW, its more or less useless.

 

[Nubbs]

I love my 7D and im sure you are really going to enjoy yours also. Congrats