R7 birding in the field: handling, high ISO noise, rolling shutter and buffer

[Messier Object]

A few days ago I took my R7 out for the first time to photograph birds (Sydney, Australia)

(Skip to * if you're not interested in birds)

I was hoping to catch some of my favourite tiny birds in a local temperate rainforest, but recent river flooding seems to have scoured the area removing much of the insect populations - not a tiny bird to be seen or heard. However the layers of leaf litter and dead palm leaves had been swept away and a new layer of sandy mud had been laid like new carpet making walking easier and more quiet. it still stuck to my boots like glue

After some patient searching and waiting and and some good luck I did find a large bird - surely no real test for the AF system but my first chance in the wild to try out the R7.

The Superb Lyrebird wiki has a chicken-sized body and large powerful legs and feet for scratching and digging for any invertebrates it can find. The male is famed for it's magnificent lyre-shaped tail plumage and elaborate displays as well as an amazing ability to mimic any sound - bird, beast or man-made from telephones to chainsaws often strung together in a medley of sound.

This was a female. It does have the two lyric tail plumes but unlike the male they are smaller and surrounded by dull brown feathers

This girl was slowly working her way along the forest floor so I sat down on the mud ahead of her. She knew I was there of course but didn't seem too concerned

*

OK, enough about the bird (I guess you can tell that the birds are more important to me than the camera gear)

I was using the R7 with the Canon EF300mm f/2.8 L IS II.
Initially I had the 1.4xIII attached but took it off when I saw the large bird.

I usually shoot in M-mode with Auto WB and I manually choose ISO, A and Shutter speed on the fly to suit the subject and lighting. The bird was walking slowly so I had plenty of time to select my settings

Here's an initial 'environmental' shot to record how dark the forest seemed to me at the time - difficult to see details on the bird - colour etc and impossible to see what it was eating

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adjusting the exposure to see the bird (the magic of digital photography)
yeah, got that worm shot

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here she stopped for a nice side-on pose keeping an eye on me while digging

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and here she came out into some brighter light and I was able to drop back to ISO1600 and watch the digging technique without the aid of the camera's EVF. She kept her head steady, with one foot doing the digging and the other fixed for balance

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My impressions of the camera . . .

1. Handling
it's going to take some time to get used to this small camera with its tight button and control layout. I miss the battery grip of the 7DII but the hand strap attached to the tripod socket did give a nice secure hold on the camera when walking on the slippery ground. I'm hoping for a full-width 3rd party plate to be made

2. Buttons and Controls
Certainly the dial positions differs from what I'm used to and I did find my thumb reaching for the 7DII control wheel a few times, but the new rear dial and the concentric joystick button work well. My custom buttons for Drive mode, Silent shutter, ISO and AF mode etc worked well and intuitively matched my other cameras

3. AF
The large bird was an easy AF target and the eye detect had no problems. I did need to make use of the Focus Limiter on the 300mm though. This camera seems to like racking focus all the way in close which was rather annoying at times. (I wish it had electronic customizable Focus limiters like my Olympus). In hindsight I should have made use of the AF preset on the 300mm

4. Buffer
I was shooting in short 15 FPS bursts just to see how it went and I did see that red lamp flashing quite a bit but the new UHSII SD cards I put in it worked well. So doing short bursts at 15 FPS with static birds - not an issue for me. (I wish we could set our own Frame rates for High Medium and Low speed drive. 15 is too fast for most of my needs, 10 would be much better)

5. High ISO noise
The highest I went to was 6400. With the 7DII I'd normally go to ISO3200 but I was curious to see how the R7 would go and I wanted to see how Topaz would deal with it (I'm a recent Topaz adopter)

I run Lightroom 6.14 so all the files have been converted to DNG before import to Lr.
I did basic tonal adjustment and cropping in Lr before editing in Topaz Denoise AI. I find Topaz to be 'convenient' but it can be imprecise and patchy around fuzzy feather edges and it seems to be a bit of pot luck as to which of the NR Models will work best.
Anyway I found ISO6400, with these images at least, to be acceptable, but maybe not with tiny soft birds

6. Rolling Shutter
On the walk back to my car I spotted a family group of Superb Fairywrens but they were camera shy and I didn't have time to persist,. I fired off a few shots for fun - all of them ended in the trash but I kept this one as it displays wing and tail curvature that I've never captured before - (I have over 1,000 images of this species in my archive).

The bird is dropping down from a fencepost and is just lifting his wings and has swished his tail. Looks like RS effect to me. I'll have to go back through my e-shutter images of this bird taken with my Olympus cameras - they have the same sensor read time as the R5 - and see if I can spot anything like this

That's it.


I thought it was time for me to contribute something here

Peter

 

[martinhb]

I'm interested in the R7 & how it performs in real life situations so thank you for your interesting & detailed report. That EF 300 F/2.8 is a nice piece of optics, more incredible is that it was introduced in 2010 & still be functional on the R7.

 

[Steve Fink]

Nice review and images, thanks! I thought that there is a low drive mode. Good to know that there isn't one. I would like a 7 to 10 per second speed as well. I have the version 1 of that lens, which I believe is slightly heavier. I am concerned about the lopsided weight of camera to lens. I have large hands being tall, so I was concerned about the pinky finger hanging over the edge too.

--
Steve
Minds are like parachutes, they only work when they are open - Unknown

 

[thomste]

Unless I misunderstood what you are after, there is a low speed drive on the R7

 

[Steve Fink]

Unless I misunderstood what you are after, there is a low speed drive on the R7

Perhaps I misinterpreted the OP's desire when he said:

" (I wish we could set our own Frame rates for High Medium and Low speed drive. 15 is too fast for most of my needs, 10 would be much better)".

What are the medium and low speed drive rates? Personally I don't need 15 FPS either. I looked up the spec list but it doesn't give numbers, instead it list Continuous High+, Continuous High, and Continuous Low. I'd like to know approximate numbers. All I see is that the max for Mechanical is 15 FPS and electronic at a max of 30 FPS.

 

[Messier Object]

Unless I misunderstood what you are after, there is a low speed drive on the R7

the available drive rates are

electronic: 3, 15, 30 fps

mechanical: 3, 6.5, 15 fps

e-1stCurtain: 3, 8, 15 fps

I have rare need for 30 fps and even 15 is too fast for most of my bird photography

Ideally we could assign our own rates for Low, High and HIgh+ frame rates

I would use 5, 10, 18 for electronic shutter and 3, 6, 15 for mechanical.

Peter

 

[Messier Object]

Unless I misunderstood what you are after, there is a low speed drive on the R7

Perhaps I misinterpreted the OP's desire when he said:

" (I wish we could set our own Frame rates for High Medium and Low speed drive. 15 is too fast for most of my needs, 10 would be much better)".

What are the medium and low speed drive rates? Personally I don't need 15 FPS either. I looked up the spec list but it doesn't give numbers, instead it list Continuous High+, Continuous High, and Continuous Low. I'd like to know approximate numbers. All I see is that the max for Mechanical is 15 FPS and electronic at a max of 30 FPS.

R7 Instruction Manual

 

[Steve Fink]

Thanks I missed that! I don't have the best vision at the moment and will be getting cataract surgery later this year. I hope that the manual is a hard copy instead of reading online. Is it a hard copy manual?

 

[Steve Fink]

Thanks Peter for further details! I have vision issues at the moment.

 

[thomste]

Thanks I missed that! I don't have the best vision at the moment and will be getting cataract surgery later this year. I hope that the manual is a hard copy instead of reading online. Is it a hard copy manual?

The user guide book in the box is only basic stuff. For the full manual you have to download the PDF from the Canon website....but you can always print it if you prefer to have a hard copy

 

[Alastair Norcross]

Unless I misunderstood what you are after, there is a low speed drive on the R7

the available drive rates are

electronic: 3, 15, 30 fps

mechanical: 3, 6.5, 15 fps

e-1stCurtain: 3, 8, 15 fps

I have rare need for 30 fps and even 15 is too fast for most of my bird photography

Ideally we could assign our own rates for Low, High and HIgh+ frame rates

I would use 5, 10, 18 for electronic shutter and 3, 6, 15 for mechanical.

Peter

Thanks for the details. I loved the ability to customize the shooting speed in the 7DII. I expect that I will mostly use the 8fps in EFCS option on my R7 (in the dim distant future, when my preorder is filled). I found 10fps on the 7DII to be a bit faster than I needed. The 8fps of the 7D was perfect. On my M6II, which does 14fps, 7fps, and 3fps, I mostly use 7fps for action shooting. I can still remember when the top of the line pro sports camera, the 1DII, did 8fps. I had the 20D, which did 5fps, and seemed pretty fast to me. That's the same speed as my ever so slow R (it actually doesn't seem that slow to me). I used to wonder how those sports pros sorted through all the shots they took at 8fps!

--
“When I die, I want to go peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror, like the passengers in his car.” Jack Handey
Alastair
http://anorcross.smugmug.com
Equipment in profile

 

[Alastair Norcross]

Thanks I missed that! I don't have the best vision at the moment and will be getting cataract surgery later this year. I hope that the manual is a hard copy instead of reading online. Is it a hard copy manual?

The user guide book in the box is only basic stuff. For the full manual you have to download the PDF from the Canon website....but you can always print it if you prefer to have a hard copy

The advantage of reading a pdf on a device (tablet, laptop, etc.) for those with poor eyesight is that you can make the text as large as you want.

 

[Messier Object]

Thanks I missed that! I don't have the best vision at the moment and will be getting cataract surgery later this year. I hope that the manual is a hard copy instead of reading online. Is it a hard copy manual?

Sorry to hear that.

I also have rapidly developing cataracts and will need correction within 2 years.

At the moment I’m wanting single focus intra-ocular lenses for distance viewing in both eyes - I’m already used to wearing glasses for reading, computer and TV viewing, and with a camera I’ll be able to switch view between viewfinder and most of my subjects - birds and landscapes.

The Manual I have is a .pdf

Peter

 

[Steve Fink]

Sorry to hear that.

I also have rapidly developing cataracts and will need correction within 2 years.

At the moment I’m wanting single focus intra-ocular lenses for distance viewing in both eyes - I’m already used to wearing glasses for reading, computer and TV viewing, and with a camera I’ll be able to switch view between viewfinder and most of my subjects - birds and landscapes.

The Manual I have is a .pdf

Peter

Thanks and good luck!