7D and Sports

I finally got a chance to test my 7D out for a sporting event. I have done a lot with the camera while familiarizing myself with all of the controls and various settings. I was also a bit concerned due to the number of negative feedback from this forum involving the 7D’s noise and focus capabilities.

I covered the OSU vs Wisconsin game last Saturday it was a late game and half of the field was in shadow and the other sunlight we did have tv lights to help a little with the fill. I must say I am very pleased with the results I didn’t experience any of the issues that some of the other users have experienced with their 7D’s. So far I have noticed that the Mark III acquires focus faster than the 7D but the 7D tracks better than the mark III (under the conditions I was shooting in). I had the custom function C.Fn III – 1 set one stop to the right of slow and used the AF point expansion setting with the center point as the primary. The camera also does a better job on exposure metering especially when an object would transition from the sunlit to shadow area of the field.

Image quality was impressive the noise structure is a bit different on the 7D than the mark III but when printing the images looked extremely nice if I blew the images up to 300 or 400 % on my monitor there was some noise but I am more concerned with how the images print than what they look like at 300% magnification. Even though I will have to test the camera under more conditions, so far the 7D is a definite thumbs up for me.