Thursday, August 20, 2009

The force is strong in the 7D



The rumors are getting stronger, 7D seems imminent. Here are the reasons:

  • Previously, as reported by canonrumors, there were some leaks on Best Buy. Apparently some employee mistakenly listed certain unannounced Canon products on their online store. Some of these products are G11, SX20, SX120 and S90. All these have been announced yesterday. Apparently 7D was also one of the leaked products. So the chances of it being real is quite high.
  • The leaked photo above has been scrutinized by members of the dpreview.com forums. They adjusted the levels of the picture in photoshop which would expose and patching or cut&paste. There were nothing suspicious so the photo look genuine.
  • The rumors for 19th August and 1st September came at the same time. The 19th August rumor was genuine. There is a very high chance that the announcement of new Canon dSLR should be real.

BTW, some of the rumored specs of the 7D and my thoughts on them:

  • 12mpx FF Sensor - probably an improved on from the old 5D. That sensor is still as good or better than most of the recent ones.
  • More AF Points - I am doubtful about this, it should be the same 9pt AF. Afterall, FF cams are mostly for landscape/portait or wedding photographers. These guys don't need too many AF points. I think the rumor of the the 60D having more points is more credible
  • 1080p Video and live view - This is obvious. Even 500D has it.
  • Digic IV - This is obvious, even G11 has it (although it is probably a different processor called the same name)
  • 3" OLED - I doubt it, it should be the same 920k dot screen
  • 3.9 fps - Unless purposely slowed down, the Digic IV processor should be able to have faster fps. Unless the mirror mechanism hits a limit at 3.9fps.
  • Flash - This is a possibility, since everyone has been complaining about the 5D series's lack of flash while D700 has one.
  • ISO 100-25600 - This is possible. The old 5D with Digic II could do ISO 3200 pretty well albeit having some chroma noise. I did an experiment to remove the chroma noise before and the picture still retains a lot of details as if it is 1-2 stops lower. I expect the 12mpx sensor to be usable up to at least ISO6400 or 12800. I expect the improved 12mpx sensor to be better than the 5D2's 21mpx sensor in terms of noise control. Why? Well, simply because the photosites are much bigger.
  • HDR mode - I am wondering whether this will be a 'tone curve assist' kind of trick by Digic or there will actually be successive bracketed shots taken and merged like Pentax K7.
  • $2700? - I think a better price range should be $1700. That would be closer to the D300s pricing. If I don't remember wrongly, Canon does not have a good offering in between the 50D and 5D2. The 500D has been pitched against the Nikon 5000D. The 50D has been pushed down towards Nikon D90 and there is nothing against the D300/D300s currently.
If executed well, I think the 7D will create a new low end FF market... really exciting.

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