Some actual first impression of the R7 (with first images)

Alastair Norcross wrote:

I got my R7 today, and spent an hour or two customizing it to my initial liking. I'm sure I'll continue to tweak my settings as I get to know it. I have my four directional buttons set up the same as on my R: up switches between screen and EVF (I don't like to rely on the sensor to do that automatically); left switches between one shot and servo; right brightens the screen; down turns the screen off. I have also set my AF-ON button to toggle tracking on and off (and turned off tracking as the default). My movie shooting button does direct AF area selection (and I've narrowed down the available options somewhat--will probably continue to tweak that). My ISO button toggles silent shooting mode (which automatically engages e-shutter). The star button gives me direct access to drive mode. My AF point button engages auto level, which, interestingly, only works with e-shutter or full mechanical, and not EFCS. If you are in EFCS, which I am by default, turning on auto level puts you into full mechanical. If you are in e-shutter, perhaps by engaging silent mode, it stays there. My DOF preview button is set for eye detection AF. This is an interesting feature. If you are in one of the AF area modes that's not full screen, engaging tracking gives you eye detect (assuming you have that enabled), but it only looks for eyes within the area that you are currently using (makes sense). But, if you hold down the button for eye detection AF while in one of these restricted modes, it will look for eyes anywhere in the whole frame, while you have the button held down. This could be very useful if you are using one of the restricted modes when an eye appears at the edge of the frame, and you want to grab it quickly. From my initial testing, it works very well.

So, first impressions. This is a very well thought-out camera. The level of customization is great, and some of the options available have clearly been designed with real photographers in mind. The camera is a little smaller and lighter than my R. Enough to be noticeable (in a good way), but not a lot. Although the EVF is lower resolution than the R, I can't honestly tell the difference. I can tell that the EVF is miles ahead of the detachable EVF for my M6II, which has the same resolution. What that tells me is that screen resolution itself is not the most important feature of an EVF, by a long way, and people who whined about the lower resolution without ever trying it out need to try it for themselves. It's actually a great EVF. I do have it set to smooth and suppress low frame rate, which probably improves how it looks. No freezing, stuttering, or anything like that yet. It probably takes more battery power, but I have plenty of spares, so I'm not worried about that.

Ergonomically, I like it a lot. I actually love the new placement of the joystick inside the dial. It feels very natural, and I very much doubt whether I will have a problem with accidental changes. I also love the three position on-off switch. I guess that really shows that ergonomics are very personal. Jordan Drake didn't seem to like either of those things. But then he is pretty much a video-centric guy. I'm approaching this camera from the point of view of a photographer, who pretty much ignores the video side of things.

I've taken a few test shots so far, just the usual cats, wife, and squirrel that was tormenting one of our cats. I've used it with the 18-150 kit lens, the RF 85 F2, and the RF 24-105L. All seem to perform well with it. DXO now supports the R7, which is great, but they don't yet have a module for the RF 18-150. Deep Prime seems to work with that lens, but not the lens corrections. Everything works with the other two. Here are some samples, mostly crops, resized to 2000 pixels on the longest side. I'm not interested in giving scientific lab tests for this camera. Just in using it, and giving an idea of what kind of results someone like me can get on the first day with it:

Not bad for ISO 12,800 (the highest I currently have auto ISO set to) with the kit lens, given that DXO doesn't have a module for this lens yet.

The next three are with the RF 85 F2 wide open at more moderate ISO levels:

And finally some outdoor shots with the RF 24-105L:

I was impressed with how quickly and easily the camera grabbed the eye on this squirrel. These are pretty heavy crops:

I should have set a faster shutter speed here. He was moving.

I'd changed the minimum shutter speed to 1/500, but the squirrel had gone, and my cat was his usual lazy self.

One more absurdly high ISO shot, and quite a crop too.

This is my first camera with animal eye AF, and it's quite a revelation. Not only that, but the human eye detect seems to work better than both my R and my M6II. I love the feature that lets you switch quickly between detected eyes using the joystick. I haven't done any fast burst shooting with it yet. I've kept it in 3fps for e-shutter and EFCS. I'll be testing out the fast sports tracking soon, I hope (that's the main reason I bought it).

So far, so good.

Yes so far so good, have you used DXO Pure Raw on these shots. I have started using it on R5 and now R7, it is amazing software.