new Canon 7D announced...
 

Well the much rumoured EOS 7D is now official...

Loads fo details available on Canon's website and a few retailers are already offering it for pre-order... http://www.canon-europe.com/About_Us...ss_Release.asp

Having read that my first thoughts are:
- I'm amazed it's called a 7D, I assumed the 7D when it arrived would be full frame.
- having consulted 5000 photographers about what they want I'm shocked to see a 18mp sensor, lets hope the high ISO performance is as good as it will need to be.
- 19 point AF, 8fps and dual processors all look promising.
- an intergrated speedlite transmitter, could be a great feature.
- new body design, so new accessories (battery and battery grip) needed.
- electronic levels in viewfinder, great for landscape work.

and perhaps most interesting of all this comment from WHE's page - "also a dual layer sensor which gathers information from each distinct zone to produce an accurate, consistent exposure"... I wonder quite what this means, perhaps one layer for shadows and the other for highlights, leading to an improved dynamic range?

I really thought that Canon would have gone down in sensor size the way they did with the G11. Most photogs that I've heard express an opinion wanted less mp and greater ISO. Can't wait to read the reviews.

Canon essentialy claim the new sensor caapable of high ISO with much less noise and more pixels. If true would be great. In fact if true it looks to be a great camera, not seen a price yet though.

From a birders point of view this looks a very interesting camera.
1.6 crop for effective 'reach'
18MP for cropability with less high ISO noise than the 50D (according to early reviews)
8 FPS
AF point expansion to aid focus tracking.

Early UK prices are up to £1699 but this is the per-order rip off that we always see. In the US it is $1699 so I reckon it will settle around £1300 ish once they start to ship.

cant believe the money they want for yet another crop frame camera

I can.....and to be honest, people will pay for a cracking camera with high mp/ pixel density AND excellent high ISO performance. It's probably a good time to launch new technology too, in a bid to inject some movement into a sales market that has slowed of late (recession, yen vs pound/dollar etc)

However, my first thought is.......how much did they pay SONY for the rights to use the model number 7D? Or, maybe those model number 'rights/ownership' died with the KonicaMinolta name and weren't transferable to SONY?? Similar happened with Olympus vs Leica when the Olympus M1 (which became the OM1) was launched.

I'm sure there will be plenty of Canon 7D vs Nikon D300s comparisons coming in the press and online reviews.

Interesting times

Joe I am off to pick one up from Jessops.

For those who have yet to read through the pages of information on this new release, or just want some movie footage, here's one of the better one's I stumbled across recently....

http://journal.phottix.com/


a reasonably good concise quick review I thought......with an important point about thinking of the 7D as a cropped sensor 5D, rather than a 50D revamp.

NOOOOooooooooooo! lol

If you want to wait a while we might see one come in at Real Camera!?.....We've had 50D and 5Dmk2 bodies, infact we've had cameras people have brought in to sell to us which are barely used! (I guess financial climate etc)

To Late. He! He! just waiting for the battery to charge, I thought I would get in quick before the price increase Canon are supposedly putting prices up by 10% because of the yen.