Hi Alex, and welcome to the TDP Forums!


The 5DII and 7D are both excellent cameras, but intended for different purposes. If you'll be taking mostly landscape/travel photos, I think you'll be best served by the 5DII. The 7D is a sports/action/wildlife camera. For family photos and travel, I use my 5DII whereas when I'm going out to shoot birds/wildlife I grab my 7D. The build quality of both is very good (the 7D has better weather-sealing than the 5DII).


If you get the 5DII, the 24-105mm f/4L IS is a great general purpose lens, and I use it often. The 17-40mm is reportedly very good, but best use when you can stop it down a bit (as you would for landscapes on a tripod). I use the 16-35mm f/2.8L II instead, since the extra stop is a benefit for low light.


If you get the 7D, I think the best general purpose zoom for that body is theEF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS. It offers better IQ than the 17-40mm on a crop body (better than the 24-70mm, too), has a fast aperture, and has image stabilization. All it lacks is weather-sealing.


One thing to be aware of in the 1.6x crop vs. FF comparison - as you know, it applies to the focal length (and you probably also know that EF-S lenses with their smaller image circle nevertheless have 'true' focal lengths meaning you multiply them by 1.6x to get their FF equivalents. What you may not as a film shooter know is that the crop factor also applies to depth of field for the same subject framing (i.e. an f/2.8 lens behaves like an f/4.5 lens on a crop body, since you have to move further from the subject to get the same angle of view, and that reduces DoF). Also, due to the greater light-gathering capabilities of a FF sensor, the ISO noise of a FF sensor is 1.6x better (1.3 stops) than a crop sensor, all else being equal. For me (I have a low tolerance for image noise), that means ISO 1600 is fine on my 5DII, and just barely tolerable on the 7D (where I really prefer to keep the ISO under 800).


Hope that helps, and good luck with your decisions!


--John