A few more thoughts on the 7D now I've had it for 3 weeks or so.





I think this a fabulous camera. I've already described how much I like the ergonomics, but the image quality is really impressive. I have a 5D II so I can compare the two and there is very little difference in real-world overall IQ to my eye. I took this shot of a Mississippi River barge from a high bluff, a distance of about half a mile, using the 100-400L at 400mm, f/9.0, 1/1000, ISO 200 with the 7D. It's a 2933 x 1955 crop out of the original image that has been downsized to 1024 x 683 and converted to '8' compressed jpg for web display (open it for ful size). The original sharpness in DPP was set to 4, and I applied a luminance noise reduction of 2, chrominance of 3 (not really necessary). Apart from the need to sharpen less, I would not be able to realistically claim to get a better image from my 5D II.

Of course, the larger pixel size and larger sensor of the 5D II give it some inherent advantage in terms of diffraction limiting and depth of field, but in (my) actual use it's not going to make much difference. The focusing advantages of the 7D over the 5D II are clear to me - you simply have that much more control over where you want to pin your image. I love having the full-frame capability of my 5D II, but I can't say that I would have done much worse if I had the 7D instead. Anyway, I hope this helps anyone who is agonizing over which of these two great cameras to buy.