Why I bought my 7D

icassell · Nov 21, 2009

I bought my 7D because I missed out on a great image of grizzly cubs playing when I was in Alaska last June. On my 30D, I just couldn't crop close enough to make a reasonable image (especially since I was shooting in relatively low light).

So, I've been playing ...

Here's the 7D at ISO 2500 with my Sigma 100-300mm f/4 + 2X TC at 600mm. It's handheld at 1/1600sec f/13. I really wish I had this combination last June! It's certainly not ideal, but would have saved my images.

Here are the grizzlies (30D Sigma100-300mm f/4 + 1.4X TC at 420mm f/5.6@ 1/640sec ISO 100):

IgsEMT · Nov 21, 2009

GIVEN High ISO, GOOD JOB.
I'm not a canon expert, but I believe there's a firmware update for 7D

icassell · Nov 21, 2009

IgsEMT said:
GIVEN High ISO, GOOD JOB.
I'm not a canon expert, but I believe there's a firmware update for 7D

Thanks. This was an experiment to see how it would perform at those ISO's. I rarely use my 2X TC as it slows me down 2 stops and is a bit soft, but it will be a long time before I can afford a true 600mm lens and, IMHO, it did pretty well. The 30D would have been worthless at high ISO. Yes, I updated the firmware yesterday.

Overread · Nov 22, 2009

I'm going to make a note not to open any more gallery posts by you now - cause I'm only going to get jealous

A 2*TC and a really high ISO and yet the result is far better than I would have expected! Be interested to see a 100% crop, but at websize its certainly acceptable level results

icassell · Nov 22, 2009

Overread said:
I'm going to make a note not to open any more gallery posts by you now - cause I'm only going to get jealous A 2*TC and a really high ISO and yet the result is far better than I would have expected! Be interested to see a 100% crop, but at websize its certainly acceptable level results

Thanks. It's actually far better than I expected as well. At full crop, you can certainly tell that it is high ISO, but it is perfectly acceptable to me. I was VERY surprised how well the 2 X TC performed. I love this lens, but it has a reputation of being a bit soft at the full zoom (does extremely well to about 275mm) and the TC adds to that softness, although I use it at 300mm quite a bit and often at 300mm + 1.4 X TC (420mm). The bottom line is that I think I was right in my decision to move-up bodies. I seriously debated sinking the money into a longer lens rather than the 7D, but this gives me other versatility as well with my whole lens collection.