Camera Needs?

I shot a school Sunday: “Photo Day” portraits at a music school.

My colleague Anita and I used strobes, backdrops, and Canon cameras: 40D, a 7D and a 1D Mark IV. A few interesting observations:

  • The 7D produced the same crisp wonderful images as the 1D Mark IV. The 40D was not far behind. Sharp… amazing. Of course we were using all “L” lenses.
  • We both loved the 7D’s feel, ergonomics, even shutter sound.
  • I left the 1Ds MarkIII in the bag. With the 16/17 Megapixels of the 1D and 7D, who needs more?
  • The sharp display on the back of the 7D/1D4 really helps. And that is important: some images were slightly soft (ever so slightly – not that you would see even in a 8×10 print). Almost certainly due to me moving: I was using the cameras handheld.
  • The 1D4’s metering is a bit “enthusiastic”, as dpreview calls it. But on manual, with all  JPG adjustments turned off, this did not matter.
  • Excellent colour out of the box (shooting RAW, importing into Lightroom, WB set to “Flash” on camera to give LR a good starting point).

The 1D is the pro workhorse, of course, and it performed great (redundant memory card included!), but I must say, the 7D was a real pleasure to use. Especially at low ISO (100-400, say), I see no reason not to use it for pro studio work.

0 thoughts on “Camera Needs?

  1. Just quibbling a bit here, and giving you a hard time for it, but you mistyped the number of MP the 7D has in the line:

    “With the 16/17 Megapixels of the 1D and 7D, who needs more?”

    And yes, the 7D is a pleasure to use!

  2. Michael — I am really enjoying your blog. Informative, insightful, and real world. One the photo shoot, what “L” lenses did you use? Also, I certainly agree that the 7D is awesome. But I know for me, my 40D is not far out of reach. 🙂

  3. David: a pleasure to hear that you are enjoying the blog.

    And indeed, a 40D is an awesome camera. I am very familiar with it – I used to own a 20D, and I teach 40D users,

    I used the 24-70 2.8L lens on the 1D MarkIV, and the 16-35 f/2.8L on the 7D. That gave me roughly the same range on both cameras.

    Michael

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