A Little Feedback
I picked up a 7D in early May and have taken in excess of 15,000 images with it.
It has not been a disappointment to me. There were no surprises in either a positive or negative sense.
I tend to stress the camera. By that I mean that I use it at extreme settings. For example, I use a micro spot setting for autofocus. To find this setting you have to dig into the manual and turn off some other focusing choices. The manual states that autofocus may not function properly at this setting. I have found that admonition to be valid. Sometimes I turn off the autofocus on my lens and focus manually. The default autofocus settings are just not good enough for me.
Sometimes (in wildlife photography) I stumble upon a subject that I know is not going to wait for me to fine tune the camera's settings before I take an image of it. So I fire the shutter and later do some fine tuning in Canon's DPP software. I have had a few glitches when making such adjustments. The 7D has much less leeway than does the 5D II. I can't compare to other models than the 5D II. In fact, on some occasions I have taken both bodies with me and have switched them when I am entering an area where the light levels are too low for the 7D.
The big advantage of the 7D for me is in the reach. A 600mm lens becomes a 960mm lens on the 7D, but remains a feeble 600mm on the 5D II. I can crop more on the 5D II and close this gap a little. And even though the 5D II has an older focusing system, when it finds the subject in spot focusing, it is more accurate than the 7D.
I have also fiddled with the wireless flash feature. I have used an off-shoe cord for the 580 II flash on a stroboframe, but it simply snapped into two pieces twice (the current model is supposed to be weatherproof, but it is cheap plastic and the connecting piece to the flash just breaks when it is side-mounted. So now I have been using the wireless transmitter. The 7D is supposed to support using the 580 II as a slave when the popup is engaged and appropriate settings are made. However, the separate wireless transmitter allows for second curtain and Hi-Speed synch, whereas the popup control doesn't allow for such settings. ETTL works for both.
In general I avoid such discussions as the value one puts on a product is directly linked to that person's individual utilities and these vary from person to person. Hence, what is important to me may not be important to you and vice versa. That is, qualifiers such as "good", "bad", "best", "worst" are all subjective in nature and linked to one's utilities.
