Canon 7D Mark II

[Pelican]

Hi there folks,

I'm excited about this new camera but I will buy mine at December which is long time to wait without any info so if you have a 7DII already please share your experiences and thoughts about it.
Also very interested to port ML to it.

[Pileot]

Lots of reviews online.

I figure I'm one of the first in my area to get one, been on the pre-order list since forever ago. Five consecutive 0s in my serial number lol.

10FPS is amazing. Was really missing it when I upgraded to the 5D3. Such a beautiful sound.
Frame rate doesnt suffer immensely when you have a SD card inserted. Used with a UHS SD card pictures transferred fast. not sure HOW fast since there is no ML yet, but its fast.
the grip feels sharper than the 5D3, it fits in your hand very snugly, somehow it just feels BETTER than the 5D3 (which is already a step ahead of the 7D Mk I in my opinion)
Silent shutter is super quiet and reasonably fast. Like, library quiet. lol.
ISO performance is greatly improved. Anyone saying its just a re-hashed 70D sensor needs to boil their bottom. Images are fantastic!
AF system reaches further to the sides, tho not far enough up and down in my opinion. Still, its an improvment and its pretty excellent.
SO MANY SETTINGS. Im going to be reading and re-reading this manual for months making sure I know the ins and outs of this camera. So many little features.
LEVEL IN THE VIEWFINDER?!? Yes please!  Always on level in the viewfinder, among other useful information making full use of the transparent LCD display.
The list goes on and on and on, this is an upgrade to the 7D in every way.

ONLY GRIPE so far: They COULD have put a touchscreen on it. Im not sad its not a flippy screen, those have their place but not in a high end camera IMO, and a touchscreen COULD be useful for video or live view focusing while not creating extra bulk or interfering with weather sealing.

Oh, and they could have kept the old battery and wifi grips instead of charging another ludicrous $800 for a wifi grip. Im going to be seriously looking into other options, that's for sure.

Last tiny gripe is that the raw files dont work anywhere (yet) tho that will be fixed next update, reportedly.

[Pelican]

Thanks for the report!
I'm curious what card speed it can fully utilise. I'm planning to buy the 160 mb/s cf and the 95 mb/s SD from sandisk but maybe the camera's interface is not fast enough especially the SD interface like in other canon cameras.

[HondaATC]

I'm really interested in the 7D mkii also - looking to upgrade body finally and kind of stuck inbetween getting a 7d mkii or just springing a few hundred extra and getting a used 5d iii. Magic Lantern is playing a big part of my decision making process although I've heard extremely good reviews about the 7d mkii so far 

[rpt]

Lots of discussions on the Canon Rumours site. Take a look there.

[dlrpgmsvc]

Not so enthusiastic for quality improvements: http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Canon/EOS-7D-Mark-II   

[rgilman]

DXO's score is heavily weighted to low ISO. For a good discussion of why this may not be so important to the 7D2, take a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTuBr0W0Zhw.

For an deeper look at the considerable quality in the 7D2 sensor that Magic Lantern might be able to tap, take a look at Roger Clark's analysis.

There's a lot to like about the 7D2 and Magic Lantern would be a fantastic addition.

[Pelican]

I've got my camera yesterday and I'm eagerly waiting to try it (today is another day with traveling to the rainforest).
It has fw version 1.0.2

Another review:
http://www.clarkvision.com/reviews/evaluation-canon-7dii/

"The data shown here for the Canon 7D Mark II indicate that the camera is operating at near perfect levels for the sensor with lower apparent read noise and impressively low pattern noise compared to all other current Canon cameras tested and better than that in the 7D Mark I. This means that for high signals, noise is dominated by photon statistics. Sensitivity is improved 14% over the 7D Mark 1, and the sensitivity per square micron is the highest that I have measured for any Canon camera to date.

The approximately 10x lower thermal dark current is a game changing factor, making this camera the top Canon camera for long exposure low light photography that I have tested. The superb autofocus system, comparable to Canon 1D series pro cameras with 65 autofocus points is another game changing innovation, as the camera is at a price point that is affordable to more people."

[STXX7D2]

Hi ! I have the 7D2 since 15 days

Very nice !

A question about Magic lantern :

Do you know when the 7DmkII port coming ? Some news ?

Thxs

[Walter Schulz]

Top of page -> User Guide -> FAQ -> Section "Troll Questions" -> Last one

[Pelican]

[Danne]

The bat picture. Perfection.

[Greg]

It seems that the 7D2 is the first Canon camera with SD slot faster than 45MB/s

SD SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s - http://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/canon-7d-mark-ii/fastest-sd-cf-card-comparison/
74.9MB/s 

So CF + SD will be about 175 - 200MB/s

[DigitalVeil]

The 7D Mark II is just short of being my ideal camera.  The only 2 things I want that it lacks is a touchscreen for touch AF and a sensor big enough to capture raw video at 1920 width.  It's unfortunate that the CF slot is fast enough to record full 1920x1080 raw like the 5D3, but the sensor is just a hair too small to reach 1920.  The max width will be 1824, which is obviously close but still not pixel-for-pixel after stretching (unless I'm misunderstanding something about how ML raw video works).  Because of these 2 things, I don't think it's worth the money to me, even if ML was ported to it. I guess I keep waiting! 

[dmilligan]

but the sensor is just a hair too small to reach 1920.  The max width will be 1824, which is obviously close but still not pixel-for-pixel after stretching (unless I'm misunderstanding something about how ML raw video works).

Well, even having 1920 pixels doesn't mean you'll get a full true 1920px output, because of the CFA, and the demosaicing process, which is already having to do interpolation. I doubt there would be any noticeable difference from 1824.

You would actually much more likely notice a difference between something recorded at much higher than 1080p resolution in raw and then downscaled to 1080p after demosaicing, compared to something recorded directly at 1080p raw resolution.

This is all because each raw pixel only contains one color value (either red green or blue), and the values of the other colors must be interpolated from the neighbors. "Normal" image/video data contains 3 color values per pixel, and no interpolation is needed. In this sense it's even sort of a "lie" to call the 5D3's 1080p, true 1080p since there's still interpolation going on.

Typically the demosaicing interpolation is very good, because there is normally a very strong correlation between the color channels. However, it's not perfect and if you're going to nitpick about the difference between 1824 and 1920 (a difference of less than 1%), then I'm going to nitpick about demosaicing.

Lets not even get into potential line skipping/aliasing issues

[Pelican]

I think the camera has so much potential, with ML it could be a jackpot...
The CF and SD card interface is already fast enough for RAW video and there is an USB 3.0 to get more speed.
I'm happy to help any developer with testing, dumping, etc.
I have Sandisk 160 MB/s CF and 95 MB/s SD for speed test. 

[DigitalVeil]

I think the camera has so much potential, with ML it could be a jackpot...
The CF and SD card interface is already fast enough for RAW video and there is an USB 3.0 to get more speed.
I'm happy to help any developer with testing, dumping, etc.
I have Sandisk 160 MB/s CF and 95 MB/s SD for speed test. 

Pelican, you made the original 7D port right?

[Pelican]

No.
g3gg0 did it.
I couldn't even port ML from 2.0.3 to 2.0.5 on 7D...
But I can help to the more skilled developers with testing, finding stubs, etc.
Unfortunately none of them interested to do it.

[DigitalVeil]

No.
g3gg0 did it.
I couldn't even port ML from 2.0.3 to 2.0.5 on 7D...
But I can help to the more skilled developers with testing, finding stubs, etc.
Unfortunately none of them interested to do it.

Gotcha.  It's a shame there hasn't been interest in the 7D2 yet, it could be the first camera capable of recording max-res raw at 48fps or even 60fps with no squashing.

[Pileot]

Now that I have spent more time with it...

The SD card slot is FAST. Not sure how fast, but its fast. I have SD cards I benchmark on my computer at 80MB/s (write) and on the 5D3 I noticed they were slow to write. As we know the 5D3 had horrbile write speeds to the SD slot. On the 7D2 however I notice no slowdown. I do not hesitate to write jpg to the SD and raw to the CF slot.

The buffer is large however it can fill fast at 10FPS. It also clears fast with high speed cards (my CF is personally benchmarked at 110MB/s write)

The biggest upgrade that people can notice off the bat is the viewfinder.... OMG the viewfinder is nice. I love how customizable it is.
Under the hood, the 7D2 autofocus system is super awesome. There are a tonne of settings, like the 5D3, but once you have it dialed in you can set it to react the way you need it to for that scenario. My hit to miss ratio is better than ever!

I can't wait for developers to start working on this gody. I would gladly chip in if a dev decided they were going to go at it full time.

[Pelican]

The SD card slot is FAST. Not sure how fast, but its fast.

You can see how fast it is:

It seems that the 7D2 is the first Canon camera with SD slot faster than 45MB/s

SD SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s - http://www.cameramemoryspeed.com/canon-7d-mark-ii/fastest-sd-cf-card-comparison/
74.9MB/s 

So CF + SD will be about 175 - 200MB/s

[Pelican]

Two full resolution sample shots from me:
http://pel.hu/pic/7D005282_Full.jpg
(1/320, f/5.6, ISO 200, 300/2.8L IS, handheld)
http://pel.hu/pic/7D005225_Full.jpg
(1/800, f/5.6, ISO 100, 300/2.8L IS, handheld)

[Danne]

That is sharpness!

[Frank7D]

Nice!

[rpt]

Very sharp!