Customer reviews from usa.canon.com
Canon - EOS 7D Digital SLR Body - Black
Average customer rating
4.6
(413 Reviews)
Rating breakdown 413 reviews
5 Stars
318
4 Stars
49
3 Stars
18
2 Stars
15
1 Star
13
89%of customers recommend this product.
(
358 out of
403)
Customer Reviews for Canon - EOS 7D Digital SLR Body - Black
Customer Rating
5
Very hard to brat
on December 30, 2010
Posted by: Canon Cop
from Oak Lawn Illinois
I have had this 7D for over a year with nothing but great luck with it. I have gone through the all the rebel series, 40D, and 50D. Most all my lenses are now "L" series. I feel that I am ready for my next up-grade, however I would not take that step to a 5DII, or ID mk IV, or even the IDs mk III, because I am the happy with the 7D. I also do a lot of low light shooting, with excellant results (not all the noise that I see people write about). Maybe when the IDs mk IV (or what ever they will call it) comes out it will have something to offer that will cause me to move past my 7D. However until then This camera is very very hard to beat, at least for my needs. Don't even hesitate buy one, buy two.
Pros: good battery life, Nice features/settings, Quick Start-up time, excellent image quality, Superior build quality, Bright LCD, Solid Operation, Simple controls/menu, easy to use, best all around perfomance and features
Cons: some people miss some of the auto settings
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
4
good, but can be better
on December 23, 2010
Posted by: CameraTech
from Redmond, WA
I recently switched over from Canon XSi to 7D. I liked my XSi, but was at the point that image quality was starting to matter more. 7D has great flexibility and adjustability, and takes great pictures. Although there is no doubt that the Auto Focus will require a firmware update. Occasionally, the AF stops working altogether, and the only way to reset it is to either change the lens focal zoom, or turn it off and then back on. There is also another less frequent issue, when the camera indicates error between the camera and the lens. Again cycling power to the camera fixes the problem.
It’s also a bit heady, but I can live it with that. My Rebel was just perfect in size and weight.
It’s also a bit heady, but I can live it with that. My Rebel was just perfect in size and weight.
Pros: Nice features/settings, excellent image quality
Cons: Shaky operation, Heavy/Bulky, auto focus anomolies
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
5
Excellent upgrade from my aging 20D
on December 17, 2010
Posted by: Shamanistic
from Twin Cities, Minnesota
After about 6 years of faithful service, it was time to (semi) retire my Canon 20D and upgrade. And so, the Canon 7D won hands down. This was a no-brainer decision for me:
I do not really like zoom lenses, I will only use them when absolutely FORCED to do so. My Canon 10-22mm EF-S lens is the only exception (and that's because sometimes you can't back-up far enough when there is a wall in the way, ha).
A camera lens should exceed the specifications and quality of the digital sensor. Why degrade your maximum potential image quality with an inferior lens? Fixed lenses at comparable focal lengths will always trump the quality of zoom lenses (my opinion of course).
So anyhow, I already owned a bunch of fixed length EF-S (and compatible) lens and that made my decision easy: The 7D is the best Canon currently has to offer for EF-S lens users.
If you've loved your previous Canon D/SLR cameras, you won't be disappointed with this model. It's packed full of new creative ideas, what with so many new features to play around with.
If you are new to photography though, and/or have never used an D/SLR camera before, I wouldn't recommend this model even if money is no object. It has far too many features and options for the experienced photographer and too few of the same for beginners and casual photographers.
Also, this camera is great for creating technically challenging stationary video shots. You can use all your cool lenses to create stunning video.
The 7D is not a camcorder and you.wouldn't want to try to use it as such. This is not something you would want to walk around with while capturing video because, essentially, there is no live/servo auto-focus (you know how an SLR focuses and you wouldn't want that happening in your video as you panned about recording your scene). And you'll want to use a fixed exposure setting on video too because auto-exposure isn't that great while panning about, it's too steppy (or whatever it's called when suddenly your video ISO drops in half as you pan across a room and encounter an illuminated lamp in your scene, ha).
Oh, and the 60 fps video is super cool and opens up a lot of creative possibilities.
Awesome camera. The only thing that would have prevented my purchasing this model would have been the availability of a superior Canon model that was compatible with their EF-S lenses.
The only con I would like to mention is that stupid white box in the middle of live-display when in video mode. Get rid of it.
Pros: Nice features/settings, Quick Start-up time, Bright LCD, Solid Operation
Cons: stupid white box in middle of video display
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
5
Excellent SLR camera
on December 4, 2010
Posted by: Fashionista 79
from Pasadena Ca
I shot most of the time women`s Fashion and this camera is really good I love to shoot action shots and Canon 7D does it very well.
Pros: quiet, Nice features/settings, excellent image quality, Superior build quality, Simple controls/menu, easy to use
Cons: Short battery life
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
4
Loose the white box.
on December 2, 2010
Posted by: Aumond
from Eugene, OR
The 7D is a great idea and could be very versatile if Canon would have an option for disabling the white box in the LCD screen that also goes out with the connections. This is a very bad design.
The rest of the camera is up to Canon's standards.
Cons: Missing features/settings
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
5
Lovely Camera, a 5 star!
on December 2, 2010
Posted by: Brazuka
from Boston, MA
My first DSLR, and so far the best purchase I've ever made in the past few years! I can say with confidence that this could be easily considered Canon's Flagship camera.
Built quality is impressive, speed is unmatchable. Picture quality, lets not even go there... simply amazing! I'm a Canon fan, and I find myself comparing this camera with other brand cameras, and I still think I've made the best purchase.
Great video capabilities. Put a good L lens on it and you'll be amazed! The only regret that I have is to have never purchased it sooner.
Built quality is impressive, speed is unmatchable. Picture quality, lets not even go there... simply amazing! I'm a Canon fan, and I find myself comparing this camera with other brand cameras, and I still think I've made the best purchase.
Great video capabilities. Put a good L lens on it and you'll be amazed! The only regret that I have is to have never purchased it sooner.
Now go shoot...!! Enjoy it !!
Pros: built quality, speed, controls, features flash control, weatherproof, robust, battery life, superb lcd quality
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
4
Great overall quality - bad audio.
on November 19, 2010
Posted by: Palegolas
from Oslo
The 7D takes great pictures and shoots great movies.
The in-camera software is efficient, and it all performs great.
The different RAW resolutions is a great option. Shooting RAW produces images so much better than JPEG so I've stopped shooting JPG all together and settled for M-RAW resolution and format.
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The in-camera software is efficient, and it all performs great.
The different RAW resolutions is a great option. Shooting RAW produces images so much better than JPEG so I've stopped shooting JPG all together and settled for M-RAW resolution and format.
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I noticed that when using the bundled Digital Photo Professional there is almost always a good thing to bringing down the contrast on a RAW picture. The RAW footage contains a lot of light, and bringing down the contrasts often takes the footage to something more reminiscent of what your eyes see, and of what traditional film photographs looks like. Canon, why don't you optimize this a little already in the camera to avoid post production needs?
Bringing down contrasts traditionally makes images grayish and boring, and high contrasts has since the introduction of digital photography become a very common way to make images stand out. However Digital Photo Professional does a great job with treating low contrast RAW images. Give it a shot. It's beautiful!
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Bringing down contrasts traditionally makes images grayish and boring, and high contrasts has since the introduction of digital photography become a very common way to make images stand out. However Digital Photo Professional does a great job with treating low contrast RAW images. Give it a shot. It's beautiful!
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The video is overall of great quality.
The full HD mode is truly stunning. The roller shutter problem (image stretching when moving camera/ subjects) is not that bad! Hand held footage will suffer the most, but mostly because the dSLR form factor: sensor being in the center of the device, amplifies even the tiniest shake many times over. Add a tripod to your hand held footage to add some off centered weight and most shakiness is gone.
While the 720p mode looks great in most situations, it clearly bears a mark of lower capture resolution probably being interpolated. This can sometimes produce visible moiré or just jagginess on horizontal lines or details.
But the good thing with this is that the sensor seems to capture the data much faster and the roller shutter problem is even smaller in 720p mode.
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The full HD mode is truly stunning. The roller shutter problem (image stretching when moving camera/ subjects) is not that bad! Hand held footage will suffer the most, but mostly because the dSLR form factor: sensor being in the center of the device, amplifies even the tiniest shake many times over. Add a tripod to your hand held footage to add some off centered weight and most shakiness is gone.
While the 720p mode looks great in most situations, it clearly bears a mark of lower capture resolution probably being interpolated. This can sometimes produce visible moiré or just jagginess on horizontal lines or details.
But the good thing with this is that the sensor seems to capture the data much faster and the roller shutter problem is even smaller in 720p mode.
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Mostly the compression looks really good. However in blurry mid grays there is apparent banding and compression artifacts going on. And looking at the bitrate, it's very high, makes me wonder if there could be some serious work on the h.264 encoder, making higher quality on a somewhat lower bitrate. Canon, what say you?
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The audio however, is another story. The built-in microphone captures the sound in mono through four tiny little needle sized holes in the shell. It sounds like you can imagine. Very simple, not very atmospheric.
Connecting an external microphone you can achieve much better results, and in stereo as well. However, even the most untrained ear will spot the weakness straight away. NOISE! This is especially apparent when using high quality external microphones. The built-in automatic gain controllers are constantly at work, and you cannot switch them off. It appears the pre-amp in the 7D is very noisy. And the automatic gain isn't always something you want when you're shooting something other than just hobby footage. And should you be using external gear to treat the sound before it goes into the camera - the in-camera automatic gain control and noisy preamp is destroying your fine audio work.
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Connecting an external microphone you can achieve much better results, and in stereo as well. However, even the most untrained ear will spot the weakness straight away. NOISE! This is especially apparent when using high quality external microphones. The built-in automatic gain controllers are constantly at work, and you cannot switch them off. It appears the pre-amp in the 7D is very noisy. And the automatic gain isn't always something you want when you're shooting something other than just hobby footage. And should you be using external gear to treat the sound before it goes into the camera - the in-camera automatic gain control and noisy preamp is destroying your fine audio work.
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Planning to use the 7D for live-footage with streaming footage to video cards/ devices? Not a great idea, since the big, fat, white focus/zoom-square covers the middle of the screen - and even sends that out on all video signals as well. Please Canon - make an option to remove the white focus/zoom square! It drives me mad! The camera supports Live-View over USB, so theoretically developers could write a bridge between the live-view stream to a computer operating system's video architecture and live streaming could be possible! However at this time - I haven't found any software for Mac OS X doing this. I found a solution for Windows but I haven't been able to test it since I'm on a Mac. I think this is something Canon themselves should provide.
Live View is streaming in a resolution somewhere between SD and HD, it looks pretty good - and would be extremely useful should Canon provide a solution for live-view to QuickTime video-in for example.
Keeping in mind that any dirty 10 years old holiday DV-camera supports this through firewire it's a big step back for live-video these days when flash cards, h.264 and USB are pro. Live streaming cameras are hard to come by.
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Live View is streaming in a resolution somewhere between SD and HD, it looks pretty good - and would be extremely useful should Canon provide a solution for live-view to QuickTime video-in for example.
Keeping in mind that any dirty 10 years old holiday DV-camera supports this through firewire it's a big step back for live-video these days when flash cards, h.264 and USB are pro. Live streaming cameras are hard to come by.
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Overall I think it's a great camera. High quality build, photos and movies. It's fantastic to see how far dSRL cameras has come in just the last couple of years.
The shortcomings on the audio may be an issue to virtually everybody. The shortcomings on using it for live-video purposes may be an issue to users with more professional interests.
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The shortcomings on the audio may be an issue to virtually everybody. The shortcomings on using it for live-video purposes may be an issue to users with more professional interests.
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Thank you.
/Palegolas
/Palegolas
Pros: multiple raw resolutions, high quality hd video, high quality raw footage, high quality bundled photo software
Cons: noisy audio, automatic audio gain always on, compression artifacts issues in blurry mid grays, unsuitable for live video use
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com
Customer Rating
5
Especially good with long fast glass
on November 18, 2010
Posted by: Ray
from Washington, DC
This site named "PhotoFramd" has a wealth of good 7D information. If you have read some of the comments about soft focus, they have an article there that is almost certain to help. I do sports photography and often need auto focus. This replaced my aging 20D.
I would recommend this to a friend!
Written by a customer while visiting usa.canon.com