Florian Wardell
Active member
Hello, beautiful people.
The Canon 7D was the first dSLR I ever owned. I learned how to shoot on my mom's Leica M6 and M5, but my need for digital files has led to the 7D, and I've had some trouble with it.
First, I was very disappointed with excessively soft images. My only lens is the 18-135 IS, a great all-rounder (but certainly no Zeiss prime), which at first made me think I had to buy a more expensive piece of glass. I didn't mind, because I was planning on investing in some nice lenses anyways, but I did send the camera to Canon, just to make sure.
It paid off, they changed out my autofocus system, and it is razor sharp now.
After a few weeks and hundreds of shots, something else began to bother me: banding.
Visible on uniform backgrounds between 200 and 800 ISO, it was always there, ruining beautiful shots and making PP more complicated that it should be.
At first I thought it was my PP skills that needed to be tuned, but no: my cheap Lumix point-and-shoot (which could handle raw!) was simply cleaner, if a bit noisier.
So I put the 7D aside and focused on my exams. Two weeks ago, I remember to send it to Canon, but my warranty was expired - by 4 days. Thankfully Canon was cool about it and accepted to change the CMOS assembly for free anyways.
I just got it back today, and I think the banding is gone. I can still manage to find some by darkening overblown highlights, but I think realistic scenarios should now be banding free.
So, what have I learned?
First, there's no reason not to send the camera back to Canon. Their warranty service is excellent, the technician called me to make sure he understood the issue. I don't know if the service is similar in the US, but the French Canon people were amazing.
Also, regardless of what the 7D mafia may say on DPReview forums, banding is an issue, and the autofocus can be faulty.
If you think about it, my 7D's two most important systems were faulty: the autofocus (one of the selling points) and the sensor. Canon surely needs to fine tune their QA techniques, such faults aren't really acceptable on a $1000+ camera.
Finally, here are some shots I wanted to share with you. All pre-banding repair, with 7D.
C&C welcome. Thanks for reading!
The Canon 7D was the first dSLR I ever owned. I learned how to shoot on my mom's Leica M6 and M5, but my need for digital files has led to the 7D, and I've had some trouble with it.
First, I was very disappointed with excessively soft images. My only lens is the 18-135 IS, a great all-rounder (but certainly no Zeiss prime), which at first made me think I had to buy a more expensive piece of glass. I didn't mind, because I was planning on investing in some nice lenses anyways, but I did send the camera to Canon, just to make sure.
It paid off, they changed out my autofocus system, and it is razor sharp now.
After a few weeks and hundreds of shots, something else began to bother me: banding.
Visible on uniform backgrounds between 200 and 800 ISO, it was always there, ruining beautiful shots and making PP more complicated that it should be.
At first I thought it was my PP skills that needed to be tuned, but no: my cheap Lumix point-and-shoot (which could handle raw!) was simply cleaner, if a bit noisier.
So I put the 7D aside and focused on my exams. Two weeks ago, I remember to send it to Canon, but my warranty was expired - by 4 days. Thankfully Canon was cool about it and accepted to change the CMOS assembly for free anyways.
I just got it back today, and I think the banding is gone. I can still manage to find some by darkening overblown highlights, but I think realistic scenarios should now be banding free.
So, what have I learned?
First, there's no reason not to send the camera back to Canon. Their warranty service is excellent, the technician called me to make sure he understood the issue. I don't know if the service is similar in the US, but the French Canon people were amazing.
Also, regardless of what the 7D mafia may say on DPReview forums, banding is an issue, and the autofocus can be faulty.
If you think about it, my 7D's two most important systems were faulty: the autofocus (one of the selling points) and the sensor. Canon surely needs to fine tune their QA techniques, such faults aren't really acceptable on a $1000+ camera.
Finally, here are some shots I wanted to share with you. All pre-banding repair, with 7D.
C&C welcome. Thanks for reading!
The heated discussions here were never about defective sensors; they were about non-defective, ones, like the one that you own now. And you seem to agree with "the mafia" that banding is not a problem (with your new sensor).
