Birders R7 Review

Rocket13 wrote:

Adam2 wrote:

Rocket13 wrote:

For the price I find the R7 EVF very nice, the ability to have an idea of final exposure before clicking is a game changer for me.

Yes, it's ok though the EVF suffers from distortion around the edges. Not in the league of the R3/R5 but the R7 is $1500

I am shooting adapted EF 100-400MKII even though I have read some complaints about it maybe be focusing slow I have not seen that but do not have RF glass to compare with, but do not see any difference compared to my 80D or 90D.

RF glass works great with the R7, EF is hit or miss.

Eye detect, again when I am close enough to subject works as advertised

Not exactly compared to the R5/R3. It has problems with ED for BIF and I (and others) find that turning it off yields better, more consistent results. Also there are some issues with tracking/ED on static subjects which yields AF inconsistency. Turning tracking off in those circumstances yields better results.

Subject detect, right now I am shooting case 2 for most things works great, on birds such as blue heron if looking right at you and eye detect cant grab it struggles finding the head and wants to lock onto the body if this happens I use a button I assigned to shut off subject detect and just use center focus point.

You pointed out what was indicated above. Tracking is problematic for static subjects when ED is used.

Focus in general, compared to 80 and 90d way ahead especially birds in flight .

Ok

Iso performance, more than acceptable for a crop camera what its not is R3/5/6 of course its crop and cheaper. I do find if I really need to push iso I can switch to jpeg and the camera does a fantastic job with noise but does not give those creamy jpegs of the past still plenty of detail left.

It's about a stop worse by objective measures, still it is extremely good.

Build, by the pictures I thought was going to be tiny and cheap feeling, but its not much smaller then my 90D and quite comfortable even with my long fingers and seems to be on par with my 90D as far as buid goes.

Reasonably good and I've used it in light rain without issues though the weather sealing is supposed to be much less than other R bodies.

Layout, at first I thought I would not like it but I shoot a ton of auto iso so with the wheel being where it is I find it quite natural feeling for adjusting ev up or down.

There are a lot of ways to conform the camera and while the wheel is fine in its location, missing a third wheel or dial is still an issue.

Photo quality, I shoot mostly craw, again comparing to80 and 90D I find it outstanding which of course is related to the outstanding AF and better understanding of pre shot exposure mentioned above.

Ok.

Quite candidly, I understand your enthusiasm though I can't endorse your review. Sorry.

That's fine, I am far from a pro and my review is based on comparing to my 80 and 90D. I do not have any other systems to compare with. I just shot my grandsons baseball game from behind right field fence and and had a very very small amount of total misses using eye and subject detect while they were batting and base running. Again compared to my 80D and 90D very nice improvement for the price.

My experience with the R7 so far is similar to yours. The AF system is amazingly good. I haven't tried the R3, so obviously I can't say whether the R7 matches the R3 AF (it would be surprising if it did, given the price difference). It is better, by a lot, than the AF on any other camera I've used extensively. The few complaints about it may be due to defective cameras, or, more likely, to not being familiar enough with the system yet. There is a tendency to attribute poor or disappointing results to the camera, rather than one's own abilities. I have found, with pretty much every camera I've owned, that my AF misses diminish steadily as I become more familiar with the camera. When I've pointed this out in the past, I have sometimes been met with indignant claims about years of experience and skill levels, none of which are at all relevant. I've also been accused of being an uncritical fan of Canon products. I certainly am a fan of Canon products. I wouldn't have continued to purchase and shoot with them for the last 46 years, if they hadn't served me very well for that time. As for being uncritical, it's true that I tend to focus on the positive aspects of modern technology (of which there are many), rather than complain that it isn't even more amazing than it is. That might come from growing up with manual everything cameras and lenses, the early ones not even having built-in light meters, and teaching myself the fundamentals of photography as a teenager with a makeshift darkroom in the cellar of my childhood home. Coming from that background, to complain that a camera that costs the same in inflation-adjusted dollars as my manual focus SLR from the 70's doesn't keep focus precisely on a flying bird's eye for all 15 shots that the camera takes every single second seems rather churlish, not to say entitled.