7D2 Guy Buys 5D3 and Compares

[TigTillinghast]

I thought I’d make a few bullet point observations as a crop sensor guy with a 7D2 moving over to a 5D3, my first full frame sensor. I only have a couple thousand exposures on the 5D3, so these observations are still formulating, but I thought some might be interested in them, as few if any people have written about moving from the 7D2. I plan to keep the 7D2, but I won’t be surprised if its the shutter count gets overtaken by the 5D3.

Things about full frame:

- If you haven’t borrowed a full frame to try out, do it now. I had not made this a priority with everyone restating the old saw: “...it’s not the equipment, it’s the photographer…,” so I didn’t think there was a big bag of difference to be had relative to the cost. It turns out I was deeply wrong. Especially for non telephoto work, there is a boatload of difference. I spend inordinate time trying to get pictures not to be mushy under certain circumstances with the 7D2 (and previous crop bodies), and with the 5D3 I just don’t need to worry about it.

- The loss of effective focal lenth isn’t that bad for a few reasons…

~ The 5D3 takes teleconverters much, much better than the crop sensors. I can’t explain why this is, but I found with the 7D2 that often I couldn’t get a lot more detail with an extender versus just cropping. It’s different with the full-frame. As a result, I can stick a 1.4x teleconverter on a lens, and get my “crop advantage” back, although at the expense of a stop of light and worse autofocus speed/range of af points.

~ There are lenses that were really made for full frame, that were a little too long on crop, such as my Sigma 50mm Art. Now, it’s a fantastic walk-around lens with the 5diii, versus an occasional portrait lens for the 7D2.

~ Finally, I was worried about the loss of use of some of my lenses that were designed for crop bodies. Turns out that both my Tokina 11-16 and my Sigma 18-35 Art are still quite useful on the full frame body, but just with a limited focal range. The Tokina becomes a very sharp 16mm prime and the Sigma a spectacularly sharp short zoom of 28-35.

Comparisons with the 7D2:

- First off, it’s really nice to have the two different bodies share almost all buttons and menus. I jumped right into the 5D3 without needing to learn anything. I’m sure it goes the other way as well. I’m faster operating the two cameras when I take both with me for these similarities. The one thing I haven’t decided yet is if I should create custom settings unique to each body, to take advantage of their various unique features, or whether I should use them instead for a common set of settings. I usually use those custom settings for super-fast access to settings geared to a specific purpose - such as a bird in flight suddenly appearing, or a low-light indoor portrait of a child doing something goofy. Will try things out and see which strategy is least worse.

- I wasn’t prepared to see the image quality improvement after my first day of shooting full frame. It was rare that I’d get a crop shot to look perfect at 100 percent magnification, especially as I’m most often using super telephoto, and it’s not overly common now with full frame, but it happens much, much more frequently.

- The autofocus of the 5D3 is better for me than my 7D2, with the very large exception that the percent of the frame covered by AF points is much, much smaller on the 5D3. So if I’m composing a shot using the far flung AF points on the 7D2, that’s a big advantage to the crop, but for pretty much all other applications, the 5D3 appears to be more accurate. This is NOT corroborated by most reports I read on the forums, so I’m going to do more testing and see if I might gain something by having Canon look at the 7D2 AF. I have been testing this with birds in flight, mostly using the center point group with the 5D3 because my 100-400ii + 1.4TC goes to f/8 at that point, requiring center point AF. You would think this would hand the advantage to the 7D2 with a bare 100-400ii, but I’m seeing more keepers on the 5D3.

- As expected I miss the frame rate of the 7D2 when shooting the 5D3. You get spoiled at 10 fps. What I didn’t expect was the flappiness of the 5D3 shutter. Perhaps the full frame size of the shutter makes for a harder to control mechanism, but it seems to me much more violent and also much more tinny/plastic-y. It sounds as though someone is whacking a broken plastic tape cassette case an aluminum screen door. The 7D2 introduced some additional shutter control, and it is quite telling when you go from that to a 5D3. It’s one of the elements we can expect with the 5D4, once they integrate that technology. Full framers will really like it, when it arrives. I find myself switching to the quiet shutter mode, as it’s notably loud. I’m sure wedding photographers wince a lot. I’ve owned 5 Canon crops before the 7D2, and none sounded as loud as cheap as the 5D3. My first exposure had me thinking, “Oh, no, my first picture, and I’ve broken something."

- The most important new feature seen on the 7D2 that I miss on the 5D3 is a seemingly small thing, but it affected me more than anything else over these most recent 2,000 exposures: It’s the auto-ISO function. Both cameras have it, but the 7D2 added an option to push up or down the calculation of what the shutter speed should be given the focal length you’re using. So, for instance, if you are using a 400mm lens on the 5D3, the auto-ISO feature will set your shutter to a 400th of a second. But I’ll often boost that in the settings of the 7D2 because I’ll be taking pictures of flappy birds, where I really need a 600th or so of a second. The 5D3 lacks this automated flexibility, and I miss it.

- The added lever control on the 7D2 is missed, but it’s nothing too special. I had mine set to move through AF modes, and I can just use the AF point button for that now on the 5D3.

- I do miss the 7D2’s heads-up display through the viewfinder. That’s been handy, it turns out. I’m sure that’ll be added to the 5D series as well.

Summary of 5D3 things that need improvement (and is likely to receive in the next refresh):

- Auto ISO having option to increase or decrease from rule of inverted focal length

- Shutter feel/slap/noise

- Frames per second

- AF point dispersal across the frame

- Better weather sealing (I don’t have an issue with the 5D3, but Roger over at Lens Rentals took apart a 7D2 and saw that it was extra sealed, which is comforting)

Verdict on which body works best for wildlife at a distance:

My sense right now is that this depends on light conditions. When light is low, the 5D3 really shines. When light is plentiful, the extra 1.6 crop factor can be such an advantage without losing autofocus points and speed from a teleconverter. I do find I really need to “expose to the right” a bit with distant wildlife on the crop, as otherwise the metering system will use the generally lighter backgrounds to severely under-expose the subject. This is the worst possible thing for a crop telephoto shot, as bringing the shadows out in Lightroom is going to look pretty noisy on an already-dark shot with crop sensor pixels.

All this means that I need quite bright light to use my crop to its advantage over the 5D3. Mid-day sun bright. The sorts of wildlife I shoot tend to be morning and evening creatures, so I’m often looking at very sub-optimal light (in terms of brightness at least). The 5D3 so far is giving me better images in those conditions. I would hate to have to choose one over the other, but if I had to right now, I think I’d choose the 5D3. When a 5D4 comes out, it will likely be a no-brainer.

I have heard of some people actually moving from the 5D3 to the 7D2, and I’d be interested to hear from them their rationale, as they clearly will disagree with one or more points above.

 

[MaxCh]

Thank you for the post. I spend a lot of time wondering whether I needed to upgrade from t3i to 5D3 or 7D2. I basically had to decide whether it was more important for me to have 10 FPS or better low-light capabilities. I eventually went with 7d2 but I still wonder sometimes if this was the right move for me. Sometimes when I take a picture in low-light at 6400 ISO I am asking myself how much better the image would look like if taken with 5d3.

I thought I’d make a few bullet point observations as a crop sensor guy with a 7D2 moving over to a 5D3, my first full frame sensor. I only have a couple thousand exposures on the 5D3, so these observations are still formulating, but I thought some might be interested in them, as few if any people have written about moving from the 7D2. I plan to keep the 7D2, but I won’t be surprised if its the shutter count gets overtaken by the 5D3.

Things about full frame:

- If you haven’t borrowed a full frame to try out, do it now. I had not made this a priority with everyone restating the old saw: “...it’s not the equipment, it’s the photographer…,” so I didn’t think there was a big bag of difference to be had relative to the cost. It turns out I was deeply wrong. Especially for non telephoto work, there is a boatload of difference. I spend inordinate time trying to get pictures not to be mushy under certain circumstances with the 7D2 (and previous crop bodies), and with the 5D3 I just don’t need to worry about it.

- The loss of effective focal lenth isn’t that bad for a few reasons…

~ The 5D3 takes teleconverters much, much better than the crop sensors. I can’t explain why this is, but I found with the 7D2 that often I couldn’t get a lot more detail with an extender versus just cropping. It’s different with the full-frame. As a result, I can stick a 1.4x teleconverter on a lens, and get my “crop advantage” back, although at the expense of a stop of light and worse autofocus speed/range of af points.

~ There are lenses that were really made for full frame, that were a little too long on crop, such as my Sigma 50mm Art. Now, it’s a fantastic walk-around lens with the 5diii, versus an occasional portrait lens for the 7D2.

~ Finally, I was worried about the loss of use of some of my lenses that were designed for crop bodies. Turns out that both my Tokina 11-16 and my Sigma 18-35 Art are still quite useful on the full frame body, but just with a limited focal range. The Tokina becomes a very sharp 16mm prime and the Sigma a spectacularly sharp short zoom of 28-35.

Comparisons with the 7D2:

- First off, it’s really nice to have the two different bodies share almost all buttons and menus. I jumped right into the 5D3 without needing to learn anything. I’m sure it goes the other way as well. I’m faster operating the two cameras when I take both with me for these similarities. The one thing I haven’t decided yet is if I should create custom settings unique to each body, to take advantage of their various unique features, or whether I should use them instead for a common set of settings. I usually use those custom settings for super-fast access to settings geared to a specific purpose - such as a bird in flight suddenly appearing, or a low-light indoor portrait of a child doing something goofy. Will try things out and see which strategy is least worse.

- I wasn’t prepared to see the image quality improvement after my first day of shooting full frame. It was rare that I’d get a crop shot to look perfect at 100 percent magnification, especially as I’m most often using super telephoto, and it’s not overly common now with full frame, but it happens much, much more frequently.

- The autofocus of the 5D3 is better for me than my 7D2, with the very large exception that the percent of the frame covered by AF points is much, much smaller on the 5D3. So if I’m composing a shot using the far flung AF points on the 7D2, that’s a big advantage to the crop, but for pretty much all other applications, the 5D3 appears to be more accurate.

I wonder if having to deal with a much smaller area on 5d3 frame makes it a bit more accurate

This is NOT corroborated by most reports I read on the forums, so I’m going to do more testing and see if I might gain something by having Canon look at the 7D2 AF. I have been testing this with birds in flight, mostly using the center point group with the 5D3 because my 100-400ii + 1.4TC goes to f/8 at that point, requiring center point AF. You would think this would hand the advantage to the 7D2 with a bare 100-400ii, but I’m seeing more keepers on the 5D3.

- As expected I miss the frame rate of the 7D2 when shooting the 5D3. You get spoiled at 10 fps. What I didn’t expect was the flappiness of the 5D3 shutter. Perhaps the full frame size of the shutter makes for a harder to control mechanism, but it seems to me much more violent and also much more tinny/plastic-y. It sounds as though someone is whacking a broken plastic tape cassette case an aluminum screen door. The 7D2 introduced some additional shutter control, and it is quite telling when you go from that to a 5D3. It’s one of the elements we can expect with the 5D4, once they integrate that technology. Full framers will really like it, when it arrives. I find myself switching to the quiet shutter mode, as it’s notably loud. I’m sure wedding photographers wince a lot. I’ve owned 5 Canon crops before the 7D2, and none sounded as loud as cheap as the 5D3. My first exposure had me thinking, “Oh, no, my first picture, and I’ve broken something."

- The most important new feature seen on the 7D2 that I miss on the 5D3 is a seemingly small thing, but it affected me more than anything else over these most recent 2,000 exposures: It’s the auto-ISO function. Both cameras have it, but the 7D2 added an option to push up or down the calculation of what the shutter speed should be given the focal length you’re using. So, for instance, if you are using a 400mm lens on the 5D3, the auto-ISO feature will set your shutter to a 400th of a second. But I’ll often boost that in the settings of the 7D2 because I’ll be taking pictures of flappy birds, where I really need a 600th or so of a second. The 5D3 lacks this automated flexibility, and I miss it.

- The added lever control on the 7D2 is missed, but it’s nothing too special. I had mine set to move through AF modes, and I can just use the AF point button for that now on the 5D3.

- I do miss the 7D2’s heads-up display through the viewfinder. That’s been handy, it turns out. I’m sure that’ll be added to the 5D series as well.

Summary of 5D3 things that need improvement (and is likely to receive in the next refresh):

- Auto ISO having option to increase or decrease from rule of inverted focal length

- Shutter feel/slap/noise

- Frames per second

- AF point dispersal across the frame

- Better weather sealing (I don’t have an issue with the 5D3, but Roger over at Lens Rentals took apart a 7D2 and saw that it was extra sealed, which is comforting)

Verdict on which body works best for wildlife at a distance:

My sense right now is that this depends on light conditions. When light is low, the 5D3 really shines. When light is plentiful, the extra 1.6 crop factor can be such an advantage without losing autofocus points and speed from a teleconverter. I do find I really need to “expose to the right” a bit with distant wildlife on the crop, as otherwise the metering system will use the generally lighter backgrounds to severely under-expose the subject. This is the worst possible thing for a crop telephoto shot, as bringing the shadows out in Lightroom is going to look pretty noisy on an already-dark shot with crop sensor pixels.

All this means that I need quite bright light to use my crop to its advantage over the 5D3. Mid-day sun bright. The sorts of wildlife I shoot tend to be morning and evening creatures, so I’m often looking at very sub-optimal light (in terms of brightness at least). The 5D3 so far is giving me better images in those conditions. I would hate to have to choose one over the other, but if I had to right now, I think I’d choose the 5D3. When a 5D4 comes out, it will likely be a no-brainer.

I have heard of some people actually moving from the 5D3 to the 7D2, and I’d be interested to hear from them their rationale, as they clearly will disagree with one or more points above.

 

[TigTillinghast]

- The autofocus of the 5D3 is better for me than my 7D2, with the very large exception that the percent of the frame covered by AF points is much, much smaller on the 5D3. So if I’m composing a shot using the far flung AF points on the 7D2, that’s a big advantage to the crop, but for pretty much all other applications, the 5D3 appears to be more accurate.

I wonder if having to deal with a much smaller area on 5d3 frame makes it a bit more accurate

I was thinking the same thing. If that's the case, I'd still rather have the AF points more spread out. It's quite a constricting range for fast birds in flight.

 

[MaxCh]

- The autofocus of the 5D3 is better for me than my 7D2, with the very large exception that the percent of the frame covered by AF points is much, much smaller on the 5D3. So if I’m composing a shot using the far flung AF points on the 7D2, that’s a big advantage to the crop, but for pretty much all other applications, the 5D3 appears to be more accurate.

I wonder if having to deal with a much smaller area on 5d3 frame makes it a bit more accurate

I was thinking the same thing. If that's the case, I'd still rather have the AF points more spread out. It's quite a constricting range for fast birds in flight.

I suppose one way to test it would be to limit your 7D2 AF area by choosing a ZONE AF mode and to see if this makes a difference. Is large zone AF similar to AF frame on 5d3? Although one problem with this approach is that zone AF makes 7d2 focus on the nearest subject (I don't really understand the reason for that)....

 

[fishy wishy]

The 5D III has a fairly sharp sound signature. This is the sound of the shutter blades themselves rather than the mirror. I read that they are of carbon fibre. I did not notice bad motor whine.

Do you think the focus point coverage of the 5D III is over the same area of the frame as the APS-C portion equivalent of the 7D II?

 

[TigTillinghast]

Fishy, no, I don't think the 5D3's AF point area covers an equivalent surface area as that of the 7D2, with the perceived difference being the percentage of sensor covered. The 7D2's coverage is much wider than the roughly one and a quarter linear factor that creates the 1.6x crop factor when both axes are multiplied by each other.

In the 7D2 propaganda that Canon put out on its launch, there was much about the spread.

 

[hansmoleman]

With my new 5D3, it works just right out of the box. You don't have to keep screwing with the settings like with the 7D2. The AF system is so accurate, I can't make it misfocus.

The 7D2 is a spray and pray camera. You have the quick 10fps so you can get a pile of images to sort through in order to get keepers.

 

[RogerZoul]

With my new 5D3, it works just right out of the box. You don't have to keep screwing with the settings like with the 7D2. The AF system is so accurate, I can't make it misfocus.

The 7D2 is a spray and pray camera. You have the quick 10fps so you can get a pile of images to sort through in order to get keepers.

That's for you...for me, I get shots in focus with lots of keepers.

 

[J A C S]

It sounds as an honest opinion; something that you do not see often here.

About the AF - it has been discussed. There was even a thread in the PST forum about the reasons for that, trying to quantify the difference. This has been my experience, too, going from the 50D to the 5D2.

 

[riknash]

With my new 5D3, it works just right out of the box. You don't have to keep screwing with the settings like with the 7D2. The AF system is so accurate, I can't make it misfocus.

The 7D2 is a spray and pray camera. You have the quick 10fps so you can get a pile of images to sort through in order to get keepers.

That's for you...for me, I get shots in focus with lots of keepers.

The AF accuracy of the 7DII seems to be inconsistent with some reporting keeper rates below 50% to others up in the high 90's as illustrated between you both. My copy of the 5D3 also has a high and consistent keeper rate whereas the 7DII isnt quite as good. I do think that the 7DII isn't as forgiving with any misalignment between the lens and camera body.

 

[RogerZoul]

With my new 5D3, it works just right out of the box. You don't have to keep screwing with the settings like with the 7D2. The AF system is so accurate, I can't make it misfocus.

The 7D2 is a spray and pray camera. You have the quick 10fps so you can get a pile of images to sort through in order to get keepers.

That's for you...for me, I get shots in focus with lots of keepers.

The AF accuracy of the 7DII seems to be inconsistent with some reporting keeper rates below 50% to others up in the high 90's as illustrated between you both. My copy of the 5D3 also has a high and consistent keeper rate whereas the 7DII isnt quite as good. I do think that the 7DII isn't as forgiving with any misalignment between the lens and camera body.

That may be the case...I only have one 7DM2 so I can't be a judge of all units, or even more than 1. I know Phil Lanoue (sp?) has issues with his, and I have met him in person, so I don't discount his experience one bit. But in my use, I end up deleting keepers because they are so similar and I don't need a zillion shots of a Kingfisher doing exactly the same thing. On the other hand, some of the other people may not be up to using the camera, either, and since the a given lens on a 5DM3 will have less reach than that same lens on a 7DM2, it could very well be that folks just can't handle that greater reach. I've shot with the 5DM3 (rented one twice in a attempt to decide if I should buy one) and I find the 7DM2 much better still, not that the 5DM3 is a bad camera, as it is not!

 

[fwampler]

I thought I’d make a few bullet point observations as a crop sensor guy with a 7D2 moving over to a 5D3, my first full frame sensor. I only have a couple thousand exposures on the 5D3, so these observations are still formulating, but I thought some might be interested in them, as few if any people have written about moving from the 7D2. I plan to keep the 7D2, but I won’t be surprised if its the shutter count gets overtaken by the 5D3.

Things about full frame:

- If you haven’t borrowed a full frame to try out, do it now. I had not made this a priority with everyone restating the old saw: “...it’s not the equipment, it’s the photographer…,” so I didn’t think there was a big bag of difference to be had relative to the cost. It turns out I was deeply wrong. Especially for non telephoto work, there is a boatload of difference. I spend inordinate time trying to get pictures not to be mushy under certain circumstances with the 7D2 (and previous crop bodies), and with the 5D3 I just don’t need to worry about it.

- The loss of effective focal lenth isn’t that bad for a few reasons…

~ The 5D3 takes teleconverters much, much better than the crop sensors. I can’t explain why this is, but I found with the 7D2 that often I couldn’t get a lot more detail with an extender versus just cropping. It’s different with the full-frame. As a result, I can stick a 1.4x teleconverter on a lens, and get my “crop advantage” back, although at the expense of a stop of light and worse autofocus speed/range of af points.

~ There are lenses that were really made for full frame, that were a little too long on crop, such as my Sigma 50mm Art. Now, it’s a fantastic walk-around lens with the 5diii, versus an occasional portrait lens for the 7D2.

~ Finally, I was worried about the loss of use of some of my lenses that were designed for crop bodies. Turns out that both my Tokina 11-16 and my Sigma 18-35 Art are still quite useful on the full frame body, but just with a limited focal range. The Tokina becomes a very sharp 16mm prime and the Sigma a spectacularly sharp short zoom of 28-35.

Comparisons with the 7D2:

- First off, it’s really nice to have the two different bodies share almost all buttons and menus. I jumped right into the 5D3 without needing to learn anything. I’m sure it goes the other way as well. I’m faster operating the two cameras when I take both with me for these similarities. The one thing I haven’t decided yet is if I should create custom settings unique to each body, to take advantage of their various unique features, or whether I should use them instead for a common set of settings. I usually use those custom settings for super-fast access to settings geared to a specific purpose - such as a bird in flight suddenly appearing, or a low-light indoor portrait of a child doing something goofy. Will try things out and see which strategy is least worse.

- I wasn’t prepared to see the image quality improvement after my first day of shooting full frame. It was rare that I’d get a crop shot to look perfect at 100 percent magnification, especially as I’m most often using super telephoto, and it’s not overly common now with full frame, but it happens much, much more frequently.

- The autofocus of the 5D3 is better for me than my 7D2, with the very large exception that the percent of the frame covered by AF points is much, much smaller on the 5D3. So if I’m composing a shot using the far flung AF points on the 7D2, that’s a big advantage to the crop, but for pretty much all other applications, the 5D3 appears to be more accurate. This is NOT corroborated by most reports I read on the forums, so I’m going to do more testing and see if I might gain something by having Canon look at the 7D2 AF. I have been testing this with birds in flight, mostly using the center point group with the 5D3 because my 100-400ii + 1.4TC goes to f/8 at that point, requiring center point AF. You would think this would hand the advantage to the 7D2 with a bare 100-400ii, but I’m seeing more keepers on the 5D3.

- As expected I miss the frame rate of the 7D2 when shooting the 5D3. You get spoiled at 10 fps. What I didn’t expect was the flappiness of the 5D3 shutter. Perhaps the full frame size of the shutter makes for a harder to control mechanism, but it seems to me much more violent and also much more tinny/plastic-y. It sounds as though someone is whacking a broken plastic tape cassette case an aluminum screen door. The 7D2 introduced some additional shutter control, and it is quite telling when you go from that to a 5D3. It’s one of the elements we can expect with the 5D4, once they integrate that technology. Full framers will really like it, when it arrives. I find myself switching to the quiet shutter mode, as it’s notably loud. I’m sure wedding photographers wince a lot. I’ve owned 5 Canon crops before the 7D2, and none sounded as loud as cheap as the 5D3. My first exposure had me thinking, “Oh, no, my first picture, and I’ve broken something."

- The most important new feature seen on the 7D2 that I miss on the 5D3 is a seemingly small thing, but it affected me more than anything else over these most recent 2,000 exposures: It’s the auto-ISO function. Both cameras have it, but the 7D2 added an option to push up or down the calculation of what the shutter speed should be given the focal length you’re using. So, for instance, if you are using a 400mm lens on the 5D3, the auto-ISO feature will set your shutter to a 400th of a second. But I’ll often boost that in the settings of the 7D2 because I’ll be taking pictures of flappy birds, where I really need a 600th or so of a second. The 5D3 lacks this automated flexibility, and I miss it.

- The added lever control on the 7D2 is missed, but it’s nothing too special. I had mine set to move through AF modes, and I can just use the AF point button for that now on the 5D3.

- I do miss the 7D2’s heads-up display through the viewfinder. That’s been handy, it turns out. I’m sure that’ll be added to the 5D series as well.

Summary of 5D3 things that need improvement (and is likely to receive in the next refresh):

- Auto ISO having option to increase or decrease from rule of inverted focal length

- Shutter feel/slap/noise

- Frames per second

- AF point dispersal across the frame

- Better weather sealing (I don’t have an issue with the 5D3, but Roger over at Lens Rentals took apart a 7D2 and saw that it was extra sealed, which is comforting)

Verdict on which body works best for wildlife at a distance:

My sense right now is that this depends on light conditions. When light is low, the 5D3 really shines. When light is plentiful, the extra 1.6 crop factor can be such an advantage without losing autofocus points and speed from a teleconverter. I do find I really need to “expose to the right” a bit with distant wildlife on the crop, as otherwise the metering system will use the generally lighter backgrounds to severely under-expose the subject. This is the worst possible thing for a crop telephoto shot, as bringing the shadows out in Lightroom is going to look pretty noisy on an already-dark shot with crop sensor pixels.

All this means that I need quite bright light to use my crop to its advantage over the 5D3. Mid-day sun bright. The sorts of wildlife I shoot tend to be morning and evening creatures, so I’m often looking at very sub-optimal light (in terms of brightness at least). The 5D3 so far is giving me better images in those conditions. I would hate to have to choose one over the other, but if I had to right now, I think I’d choose the 5D3. When a 5D4 comes out, it will likely be a no-brainer.

I have heard of some people actually moving from the 5D3 to the 7D2, and I’d be interested to hear from them their rationale, as they clearly will disagree with one or more points above.

The 5dm3 makes a great general purpose camera. I'm finding though that I'm using my 7dii much more though. Both the AF-On button and * button are programmable on the 7D ii. That one thing makes all the difference in sports shooting.

 

[fwampler]

With my new 5D3, it works just right out of the box. You don't have to keep screwing with the settings like with the 7D2. The AF system is so accurate, I can't make it misfocus.

The 7D2 is a spray and pray camera. You have the quick 10fps so you can get a pile of images to sort through in order to get keepers.

No. You are wrong. Bet you haven't even used a 7DII. I have both and you are so wrong.

 

[fishy wishy]

It sounds as an honest opinion; something that you do not see often here.

About the AF - it has been discussed. There was even a thread in the PST forum about the reasons for that, trying to quantify the difference.

Can you help with a link, it is not simple to find this on the information supplied.

 

[J A C S]

It sounds as an honest opinion; something that you do not see often here.

About the AF - it has been discussed. There was even a thread in the PST forum about the reasons for that, trying to quantify the difference.

Can you help with a link, it is not simple to find this on the information supplied.

Here.

 

[Steve W]

I thought I’d make a few bullet point observations as a crop sensor guy with a 7D2 moving over to a 5D3, my first full frame sensor. I only have a couple thousand exposures on the 5D3, so these observations are still formulating, but I thought some might be interested in them, as few if any people have written about moving from the 7D2. I plan to keep the 7D2, but I won’t be surprised if its the shutter count gets overtaken by the 5D3.

Things about full frame:

- If you haven’t borrowed a full frame to try out, do it now. I had not made this a priority with everyone restating the old saw: “...it’s not the equipment, it’s the photographer…,” so I didn’t think there was a big bag of difference to be had relative to the cost. It turns out I was deeply wrong. Especially for non telephoto work, there is a boatload of difference. I spend inordinate time trying to get pictures not to be mushy under certain circumstances with the 7D2 (and previous crop bodies), and with the 5D3 I just don’t need to worry about it.

- The loss of effective focal lenth isn’t that bad for a few reasons…

~ The 5D3 takes teleconverters much, much better than the crop sensors. I can’t explain why this is, but I found with the 7D2 that often I couldn’t get a lot more detail with an extender versus just cropping. It’s different with the full-frame. As a result, I can stick a 1.4x teleconverter on a lens, and get my “crop advantage” back, although at the expense of a stop of light and worse autofocus speed/range of af points.

~ There are lenses that were really made for full frame, that were a little too long on crop, such as my Sigma 50mm Art. Now, it’s a fantastic walk-around lens with the 5diii, versus an occasional portrait lens for the 7D2.

~ Finally, I was worried about the loss of use of some of my lenses that were designed for crop bodies. Turns out that both my Tokina 11-16 and my Sigma 18-35 Art are still quite useful on the full frame body, but just with a limited focal range. The Tokina becomes a very sharp 16mm prime and the Sigma a spectacularly sharp short zoom of 28-35.

Comparisons with the 7D2:

- First off, it’s really nice to have the two different bodies share almost all buttons and menus. I jumped right into the 5D3 without needing to learn anything. I’m sure it goes the other way as well. I’m faster operating the two cameras when I take both with me for these similarities. The one thing I haven’t decided yet is if I should create custom settings unique to each body, to take advantage of their various unique features, or whether I should use them instead for a common set of settings. I usually use those custom settings for super-fast access to settings geared to a specific purpose - such as a bird in flight suddenly appearing, or a low-light indoor portrait of a child doing something goofy. Will try things out and see which strategy is least worse.

- I wasn’t prepared to see the image quality improvement after my first day of shooting full frame. It was rare that I’d get a crop shot to look perfect at 100 percent magnification, especially as I’m most often using super telephoto, and it’s not overly common now with full frame, but it happens much, much more frequently.

- The autofocus of the 5D3 is better for me than my 7D2, with the very large exception that the percent of the frame covered by AF points is much, much smaller on the 5D3. So if I’m composing a shot using the far flung AF points on the 7D2, that’s a big advantage to the crop, but for pretty much all other applications, the 5D3 appears to be more accurate. This is NOT corroborated by most reports I read on the forums, so I’m going to do more testing and see if I might gain something by having Canon look at the 7D2 AF. I have been testing this with birds in flight, mostly using the center point group with the 5D3 because my 100-400ii + 1.4TC goes to f/8 at that point, requiring center point AF. You would think this would hand the advantage to the 7D2 with a bare 100-400ii, but I’m seeing more keepers on the 5D3.

- As expected I miss the frame rate of the 7D2 when shooting the 5D3. You get spoiled at 10 fps. What I didn’t expect was the flappiness of the 5D3 shutter. Perhaps the full frame size of the shutter makes for a harder to control mechanism, but it seems to me much more violent and also much more tinny/plastic-y. It sounds as though someone is whacking a broken plastic tape cassette case an aluminum screen door. The 7D2 introduced some additional shutter control, and it is quite telling when you go from that to a 5D3. It’s one of the elements we can expect with the 5D4, once they integrate that technology. Full framers will really like it, when it arrives. I find myself switching to the quiet shutter mode, as it’s notably loud. I’m sure wedding photographers wince a lot. I’ve owned 5 Canon crops before the 7D2, and none sounded as loud as cheap as the 5D3. My first exposure had me thinking, “Oh, no, my first picture, and I’ve broken something."

- The most important new feature seen on the 7D2 that I miss on the 5D3 is a seemingly small thing, but it affected me more than anything else over these most recent 2,000 exposures: It’s the auto-ISO function. Both cameras have it, but the 7D2 added an option to push up or down the calculation of what the shutter speed should be given the focal length you’re using. So, for instance, if you are using a 400mm lens on the 5D3, the auto-ISO feature will set your shutter to a 400th of a second. But I’ll often boost that in the settings of the 7D2 because I’ll be taking pictures of flappy birds, where I really need a 600th or so of a second. The 5D3 lacks this automated flexibility, and I miss it.

- The added lever control on the 7D2 is missed, but it’s nothing too special. I had mine set to move through AF modes, and I can just use the AF point button for that now on the 5D3.

- I do miss the 7D2’s heads-up display through the viewfinder. That’s been handy, it turns out. I’m sure that’ll be added to the 5D series as well.

Summary of 5D3 things that need improvement (and is likely to receive in the next refresh):

- Auto ISO having option to increase or decrease from rule of inverted focal length

- Shutter feel/slap/noise

- Frames per second

- AF point dispersal across the frame

- Better weather sealing (I don’t have an issue with the 5D3, but Roger over at Lens Rentals took apart a 7D2 and saw that it was extra sealed, which is comforting)

Verdict on which body works best for wildlife at a distance:

My sense right now is that this depends on light conditions. When light is low, the 5D3 really shines. When light is plentiful, the extra 1.6 crop factor can be such an advantage without losing autofocus points and speed from a teleconverter. I do find I really need to “expose to the right” a bit with distant wildlife on the crop, as otherwise the metering system will use the generally lighter backgrounds to severely under-expose the subject. This is the worst possible thing for a crop telephoto shot, as bringing the shadows out in Lightroom is going to look pretty noisy on an already-dark shot with crop sensor pixels.

All this means that I need quite bright light to use my crop to its advantage over the 5D3. Mid-day sun bright. The sorts of wildlife I shoot tend to be morning and evening creatures, so I’m often looking at very sub-optimal light (in terms of brightness at least). The 5D3 so far is giving me better images in those conditions. I would hate to have to choose one over the other, but if I had to right now, I think I’d choose the 5D3. When a 5D4 comes out, it will likely be a no-brainer.

I have heard of some people actually moving from the 5D3 to the 7D2, and I’d be interested to hear from them their rationale, as they clearly will disagree with one or more points above.

The 5dm3 makes a great general purpose camera. I'm finding though that I'm using my 7dii much more though. Both the AF-On button and * button are programmable on the 7D ii. That one thing makes all the difference in sports shooting.

 

[Blue II]

I thought I’d make a few bullet point observations as a crop sensor guy with a 7D2 moving over to a 5D3, my first full frame sensor. I only have a couple thousand exposures on the 5D3, so these observations are still formulating, but I thought some might be interested in them, as few if any people have written about moving from the 7D2. I plan to keep the 7D2, but I won’t be surprised if its the shutter count gets overtaken by the 5D3.

Things about full frame:

- If you haven’t borrowed a full frame to try out, do it now. I had not made this a priority with everyone restating the old saw: “...it’s not the equipment, it’s the photographer…,” so I didn’t think there was a big bag of difference to be had relative to the cost. It turns out I was deeply wrong. Especially for non telephoto work, there is a boatload of difference. I spend inordinate time trying to get pictures not to be mushy under certain circumstances with the 7D2 (and previous crop bodies), and with the 5D3 I just don’t need to worry about it.

- The loss of effective focal lenth isn’t that bad for a few reasons…

~ The 5D3 takes teleconverters much, much better than the crop sensors. I can’t explain why this is, but I found with the 7D2 that often I couldn’t get a lot more detail with an extender versus just cropping. It’s different with the full-frame. As a result, I can stick a 1.4x teleconverter on a lens, and get my “crop advantage” back, although at the expense of a stop of light and worse autofocus speed/range of af points.

~ There are lenses that were really made for full frame, that were a little too long on crop, such as my Sigma 50mm Art. Now, it’s a fantastic walk-around lens with the 5diii, versus an occasional portrait lens for the 7D2.

~ Finally, I was worried about the loss of use of some of my lenses that were designed for crop bodies. Turns out that both my Tokina 11-16 and my Sigma 18-35 Art are still quite useful on the full frame body, but just with a limited focal range. The Tokina becomes a very sharp 16mm prime and the Sigma a spectacularly sharp short zoom of 28-35.

Comparisons with the 7D2:

- First off, it’s really nice to have the two different bodies share almost all buttons and menus. I jumped right into the 5D3 without needing to learn anything. I’m sure it goes the other way as well. I’m faster operating the two cameras when I take both with me for these similarities. The one thing I haven’t decided yet is if I should create custom settings unique to each body, to take advantage of their various unique features, or whether I should use them instead for a common set of settings. I usually use those custom settings for super-fast access to settings geared to a specific purpose - such as a bird in flight suddenly appearing, or a low-light indoor portrait of a child doing something goofy. Will try things out and see which strategy is least worse.

- I wasn’t prepared to see the image quality improvement after my first day of shooting full frame. It was rare that I’d get a crop shot to look perfect at 100 percent magnification, especially as I’m most often using super telephoto, and it’s not overly common now with full frame, but it happens much, much more frequently.

- The autofocus of the 5D3 is better for me than my 7D2, with the very large exception that the percent of the frame covered by AF points is much, much smaller on the 5D3. So if I’m composing a shot using the far flung AF points on the 7D2, that’s a big advantage to the crop, but for pretty much all other applications, the 5D3 appears to be more accurate. This is NOT corroborated by most reports I read on the forums, so I’m going to do more testing and see if I might gain something by having Canon look at the 7D2 AF. I have been testing this with birds in flight, mostly using the center point group with the 5D3 because my 100-400ii + 1.4TC goes to f/8 at that point, requiring center point AF. You would think this would hand the advantage to the 7D2 with a bare 100-400ii, but I’m seeing more keepers on the 5D3.

- As expected I miss the frame rate of the 7D2 when shooting the 5D3. You get spoiled at 10 fps. What I didn’t expect was the flappiness of the 5D3 shutter. Perhaps the full frame size of the shutter makes for a harder to control mechanism, but it seems to me much more violent and also much more tinny/plastic-y. It sounds as though someone is whacking a broken plastic tape cassette case an aluminum screen door. The 7D2 introduced some additional shutter control, and it is quite telling when you go from that to a 5D3. It’s one of the elements we can expect with the 5D4, once they integrate that technology. Full framers will really like it, when it arrives. I find myself switching to the quiet shutter mode, as it’s notably loud. I’m sure wedding photographers wince a lot. I’ve owned 5 Canon crops before the 7D2, and none sounded as loud as cheap as the 5D3. My first exposure had me thinking, “Oh, no, my first picture, and I’ve broken something."

- The most important new feature seen on the 7D2 that I miss on the 5D3 is a seemingly small thing, but it affected me more than anything else over these most recent 2,000 exposures: It’s the auto-ISO function. Both cameras have it, but the 7D2 added an option to push up or down the calculation of what the shutter speed should be given the focal length you’re using. So, for instance, if you are using a 400mm lens on the 5D3, the auto-ISO feature will set your shutter to a 400th of a second. But I’ll often boost that in the settings of the 7D2 because I’ll be taking pictures of flappy birds, where I really need a 600th or so of a second. The 5D3 lacks this automated flexibility, and I miss it.

- The added lever control on the 7D2 is missed, but it’s nothing too special. I had mine set to move through AF modes, and I can just use the AF point button for that now on the 5D3.

- I do miss the 7D2’s heads-up display through the viewfinder. That’s been handy, it turns out. I’m sure that’ll be added to the 5D series as well.

Summary of 5D3 things that need improvement (and is likely to receive in the next refresh):

- Auto ISO having option to increase or decrease from rule of inverted focal length

- Shutter feel/slap/noise

- Frames per second

- AF point dispersal across the frame

- Better weather sealing (I don’t have an issue with the 5D3, but Roger over at Lens Rentals took apart a 7D2 and saw that it was extra sealed, which is comforting)

Verdict on which body works best for wildlife at a distance:

My sense right now is that this depends on light conditions. When light is low, the 5D3 really shines. When light is plentiful, the extra 1.6 crop factor can be such an advantage without losing autofocus points and speed from a teleconverter. I do find I really need to “expose to the right” a bit with distant wildlife on the crop, as otherwise the metering system will use the generally lighter backgrounds to severely under-expose the subject. This is the worst possible thing for a crop telephoto shot, as bringing the shadows out in Lightroom is going to look pretty noisy on an already-dark shot with crop sensor pixels.

All this means that I need quite bright light to use my crop to its advantage over the 5D3. Mid-day sun bright. The sorts of wildlife I shoot tend to be morning and evening creatures, so I’m often looking at very sub-optimal light (in terms of brightness at least). The 5D3 so far is giving me better images in those conditions. I would hate to have to choose one over the other, but if I had to right now, I think I’d choose the 5D3. When a 5D4 comes out, it will likely be a no-brainer.

I have heard of some people actually moving from the 5D3 to the 7D2, and I’d be interested to hear from them their rationale, as they clearly will disagree with one or more points above.

The 5dm3 makes a great general purpose camera. I'm finding though that I'm using my 7dii much more though. Both the AF-On button and * button are programmable on the 7D ii. That one thing makes all the difference in sports shooting.

 

[dachshund7]

Don't have any experience with the 7DII. What programmability do the AF-On and * provide that the 5DIII does not? Maybe is more genealized? On the 5DIII each can be set to 1 of 5-6 things.

The main thing is the ability to program different modes. For example, AF-ON can be center AF point while the * is all AF points with ITR. And your shutter button can be a third method. Makes it very quick and easy to switch between modes on the fly.
--
Steve

You get quite a bit more customization with AF-ON and *, with several autofocus parameters for AI Servo. I'm learning all this now, and it creates kind of a nervous tick. Quickly moving objects make me stop and think, "what AF button should I use?" when I don't even have the camera with me. Well, welcome to my old age.

i went from the 6D to the 7dII, and having both is a real treat. I can use my lenses for what they were designed for. Someday I'll even get a good bird picture. In that old saying, "it's not the equipment...", after using the 6D it's clear that for sports and wildlife, it's a big help to have the camera built for it. For other types of photography, in my opinion FF is great to have.

 

[fwampler]

Don't have any experience with the 7DII. What programmability do the AF-On and * provide that the 5DIII does not? Maybe is more genealized? On the 5DIII each can be set to 1 of 5-6 things.

The main thing is the ability to program different modes. For example, AF-ON can be center AF point while the * is all AF points with ITR. And your shutter button can be a third method. Makes it very quick and easy to switch between modes on the fly.
--
Steve

You get quite a bit more customization with AF-ON and *, with several autofocus parameters for AI Servo. I'm learning all this now, and it creates kind of a nervous tick. Quickly moving objects make me stop and think, "what AF button should I use?" when I don't even have the camera with me. Well, welcome to my old age.

i went from the 6D to the 7dII, and having both is a real treat. I can use my lenses for what they were designed for. Someday I'll even get a good bird picture. In that old saying, "it's not the equipment...", after using the 6D it's clear that for sports and wildlife, it's a big help to have the camera built for it. For other types of photography, in my opinion FF is great to have.

You'll get a lot better with just a little practice. I bought a "used" 400 5.6L to use with my 7Dii. Put up a couple of bird feeders near my deck and am having a blast shooting anything that happens to move nearby :>). So far have lots of bird species, musk rat (live near small creek), Blue Heron's, Night Heron, helicopter flying over, jet liners, vultures and hawks. Anything that moves. My 7Dii helps make this all possible. My 5Diii lacks too much reach for the small birds. Lack of IS is not a problem since I shoot at 1/1000 up and the 7dii is very clean. I shoot raw and convert with DPP 4.x.x. That is a top-notch converter. I have the AF-On and the * programmed each for an AF mode. I then save that to C1. Do the same again for 2 more combinations and save to C2, etc C3. This is much better than dipping snuff.:>) So you can see for my needs the 5dm3 is a little out of luck. If the 7dii had been available in a timely manner I wouldn't even have the 5d3. But, it is an excellent camera. I just don't shoot many landscapes and the kids and grandkids are grown.

 

[RogerZoul]

Don't have any experience with the 7DII. What programmability do the AF-On and * provide that the 5DIII does not? Maybe is more genealized? On the 5DIII each can be set to 1 of 5-6 things.

The main thing is the ability to program different modes. For example, AF-ON can be center AF point while the * is all AF points with ITR. And your shutter button can be a third method. Makes it very quick and easy to switch between modes on the fly.
--
Steve

You get quite a bit more customization with AF-ON and *, with several autofocus parameters for AI Servo. I'm learning all this now, and it creates kind of a nervous tick. Quickly moving objects make me stop and think, "what AF button should I use?" when I don't even have the camera with me. Well, welcome to my old age.

i went from the 6D to the 7dII, and having both is a real treat. I can use my lenses for what they were designed for. Someday I'll even get a good bird picture. In that old saying, "it's not the equipment...", after using the 6D it's clear that for sports and wildlife, it's a big help to have the camera built for it. For other types of photography, in my opinion FF is great to have.

You'll get a lot better with just a little practice. I bought a "used" 400 5.6L to use with my 7Dii. Put up a couple of bird feeders near my deck and am having a blast shooting anything that happens to move nearby :>). So far have lots of bird species, musk rat (live near small creek), Blue Heron's, Night Heron, helicopter flying over, jet liners, vultures and hawks. Anything that moves. My 7Dii helps make this all possible. My 5Diii lacks too much reach for the small birds. Lack of IS is not a problem since I shoot at 1/1000 up and the 7dii is very clean. I shoot raw and convert with DPP 4.x.x. That is a top-notch converter. I have the AF-On and the * programmed each for an AF mode. I then save that to C1. Do the same again for 2 more combinations and save to C2, etc C3. This is much better than dipping snuff.:>) So you can see for my needs the 5dm3 is a little out of luck. If the 7dii had been available in a timely manner I wouldn't even have the 5d3. But, it is an excellent camera. I just don't shoot many landscapes and the kids and grandkids are grown.