760D impressions

Phil Endecott wrote:

Hi everyone, here are my first impressions of my new 760D. I'm going to post this in a couple of parts, you might want to wait until I've posted everything.

I bought a 400D back in 2006 and have been happy with it, and have bought several EF-S lenses. But it's getting old: I've been aware for a while that newer cameras have better sensors (especially for low-light conditions) and some other nice features. I decided recently that this was the year to upgrade.

My first thought was that I would get a 750D, but careful reading of the dpreview review revealed that it doesn't have an eye sensor to blank the LCD! That would be a step backward for me so I looked at the 760D instead. But at £650, it's not much cheaper than the 70D (£730) so I thought I should consider that as well. For me the main benefits of the 70D would be the increased battery life (about double that of the 760D) and the weather proofing. The main benefit of the 70D's sensor seems to be for focusing for live view and video, which is not something that I'm much interested in. The disadvantage of the 70D is about 200g extra weight and the higher price. On balance, the 760D won.

My first impressions were positive. Things that I quickly noticed compared to the 400D included:

- Bigger LCD

- Touch screen, particularly useful in "playback"

- Faster paging through images in playback

- Auto ISO! Yes, the 400D didn't have auto ISO; generally I would remember to increase the ISO when it was dark, but often I would forget to change it back again afterwards and take a lot of unnecessarily grainy photos.

- A minor annoyance, which I suspect I'll get used to, is the swapped position of the power switch. I was very used to lifting the camera by the grip with my right hand and turning it on with my right thumb. Now I have to turn it on with my left hand.

- Being able to view images on my iPad using WiFi is useful - but it could be much better if Apple supported NFC pairing.

So I took it out for some test photos. I started with the "green square" auto mode, but immediately discovered one of the reasons why I had never used that on the 400D: I pointed the camera at a building facade, partly sunlit and partly shaded, and it popped up the flash! Firing the flash for "fill in" illumination in that case would have done nothing except waste battery and draw peoples' attention to me.

To be continued soon, but I need to upload some photos...

Funnily enough i was in a similar position with my 650D but went the other way and got the 70D. I too now have to get used to the power switch & mode dial on the wrong side and like the 750D it has no eye sensor! I was shocked to find this out and surprised i missed this fact... It has no WB button either! At first i wasn't sure of the images but seems it's wearing-in a bit now and looks fairly good so at some point i'll too post my first impressions. It's a nice camera, yet slightly retarded in some ways. (Have to get used to the weight too!)

Being so similar would i have been happier with the 760D? Probably not.