First impressions of a Canon 7D (from a 40D)

[abarickman]

I have been shooting with a 40D for a few years now. Its a great camera but its showing its age. A friend of mine just upgraded his camera to a 7D and was kind enough to allow me to borrow it and put it through its paces. I shoot for my church so today I shot our service in the morning and then led a photo walk for our photography group at church in the evening. This gave me a good chance to see what I thought of it and I wanted to share my thoughts in case anyone else was thinking of the same upgrade.

The greatest surprise that I had was that the metering is far superior to my 40D. When shooting in our sanctuary with my 40D I normally have to shoot and then adjust my exposure and then shoot again. The 40D does not do well with a subject well lit on the stage and then the audience in relative darkness. It tends to overexpose the subject by nearly a stop. The 7D handled this very well. I could dial in the suggested exposure, shooting in manual, and rarely had to adjust it to get it right.

Dynamic range appears to be improved as well. The darkness of the audience to the well lit person on the stage was handled much better than I am able to with the 40D.

I expected a slight improvement in high ISO performance but it was greater than I expected. The noise level is comparable to my 40D but the detail is much improved with the added megapixels. This allowed me to dial out the noise in Lightroom and get very usable results all the way up to ISO 6400. Its at least a stop better in terms of usable ISO than my 40D. I was comfortable using ISO 3200 where on my 40D I try hard to avoid it.

The auto focus is light years ahead of the 40D as well. Its faster and way more flexible. Having 19 AF points is great and the ability to expand one selected point or pick a zone of AF points is fantastic. No contest.

In summary I should not have borrowed the camera because now I WANT ONE. I had been looking for the experience of someone moving from a 40D to a 7D so I hope this helps at least one of you.

[OsmosisStudios]

RE: Metering. Are you sure both cameras were set to the same metering mode? It sounds like your 40D was in an evaluative mode (entire scene) and the 7D was centre-weighted or spot.

[abarickman]

Both were in evaluative metering mode which is why the difference surprised me.

[bluelagoon]

HI! I've been working with the 7D for the last 3 months and I am really happy with it. I had a few problems with the auto focus speed but the problem was the my sigma lens. I'd recommend you to find a 7D.