The 7D

Ok, so I rushed into it --as I some times do-- wanting a second camera for the basketball games I bought a 7D. Reasons behind it, why buy same generation technology as my 40D, 50D being the next generation is not a significant leap in regards to features or speed. So what to do? Buy a 7D and get dual DIGIC 4 image processors, 8fps, New AF system and a 100% view finder.

The results:
1- The view finder. While looking through he view finder you know you are in a different world, larger, sharper, makes manual focus easier and with 100% coverage you are not doing any guess work regarding what you are framing. Nice additions are the grid for lining up horizon shots for example and the soft presence of the focus points.

2- AF System. This is where you notice part of the revolution that is this camera. The Zone setting in particular is extremely superior to anything I had seen before, it's almost like comparing the now standard AF for sports photography with the old times of manual focus only. I may be exaggerating a bit here but I think this is a real leap forward. Tracks the subject just fine but it expands withing the selected zone following the subject and achieving accurate focus.

3- Image Quality and Software. Here is the little problem, I only shoot RAW and use ACR for post processing, I'm currently using CS4. The first time I attempted to load the images on Bridge the files from the 7D did not show up, ah! I got it, I need to update my Adobe software, click, click... done, restart Adobe Bridge and... what the heck is that? all images were ugly, immediate disappointment, what is going on here?

I researched a little bit and ended up using Canon DPP to open the files, I wanted to figure out if the files looked just as bad on Canon's own software. Result: amazing IQ, spot on colors, bright, saturated but not overdone. Excitement at first but, what about my post processing work flow, what am I going to do with this "problem"?

The ideal solution is to wait for Adobe to release an update that can handles these files correctly. Everyone knows of the advantages of working with ACR over DPP. At the tail end of my post processing I update meta data and upload an HTML gallery via FTP --Not going to happen on DPP.

So between now and then I had to come up with an ACR recipe to pre-process all my 7D images before final adjustments. Put up DPP and ACR side by side and moved every slider I could possible think of to help match the image on DPP. The end result is not an exact match of the DPP rendition but it gets me close enough to live with it for now. There is some noise also, may be even more than the 40D images at same ISO.

Technology and software, they have given us amazing new capabilities, but they can be a real pain as well.

She cute


She good


Arizona girls