I currently have a 60D which is pretty limited shooting RAW. Is it worth it to pick up a used 7D for 6-700 bucks for RAW now? Or should I wait til the builds are a little less volatile? I'm really on the verge of bartering some music equipment for a BMCC.
Before the live view was fixed and the vertical resolution was limited to 600 I would have told you to wait but with the latest build I would say yes go for it.
I had very little issue getting it to work, as long as you read carefully how to install it you will be fine.
I will point out some pros and cons as best I can to why you should or shouldn't get one.
PRO
Write speeds reported up to 90mb/s
Dual ISO 14 bit Recording, I can't stress how awesome this is.
Continuous Raw at Native Resolution 1728x972 with fast CF cards.
No moire or aliasing in crop mode.
7D is a very well build and we'll thought out camera in its layout and features.
Still in my opinion one of the best still cameras around if still pics matter to you also.
CON
Dual Processor means its hard to hack, ML builds are always behind other cameras.
No final build of ML, 7D is still very much in alpha.
No 1080p.... Yet crosses fingers.
Occasional pink frames in footage, easy to cut out to be honest.
A few bugs that cause lockup s, annoying but not the end of the world.
No FPS override in crop, yet.
Aliasing and moire in non crop mode is very noticeable when filming patterns.
External monitor support in this build is very broken, don't even plug one in till fixed.
Even though I have listed more cons they are minor issues and the pros really do in my opinion make this camera the second best for raw behind the 5D III, I would say if you could afford the 5D III get that as it's better supported but for cost the 7D is simply amazing for video since raw and dual iso was unlocked.
