Cracking Day

Yesterday evening (after my Blip) the new camera arrived! Excellent.

Taken 3 years to build up to to buying a Canon 7D (just in time for it to be discontinued). But what a joy today was shooting with it. Average numbers shot, not pleased about that as I was loving using the camera.

But what a difference.

It's been interesting having the 35-350L on the 50D this year because at times it's totally missed focus and hasn't wanted to really correct itself in any meaningful amount of time. Maybe 1 in 50 shots were a problem. Today, 5,000 shots and I think I missed focus twice.

Using the 35-350L on the 400D earlier in the week was also surprisingly more accurate as well. I'm kinda figuring the 400D couldn't focus fast enough to make a mistake. Whereas the 50D just seemed to get confused when tracking for more than a few seconds.

No such problem today though as I said.

The focussing on the 7D has more points which finally allows me to do something I couldn't do with the previous two cameras - I can drift focus from the centre deliberately. For instance, the tracking focus has more points to track through, so you can let the subject frame itself on the left or right of the viewfinder briefly and the camera tracks it perfectly.

Another big plus is that with two cyclists maybe a metre apart from each other can be captured more easily. Use the centre focus point on one of them, and then drift the frame to one side. The camera now perfectly tracks one cyclist whilst you can re-centre between the two cyclists - and not have the camera decide to re-focus on the wall that's 100 yards behind them. The 50D and 400D couldn't do this due to having so few focus points.

And finally, the bit I've wanted for ages are squares in the focus that show that the camera really is tracking something. Again, the previous cameras in Servo mode gave no indication what they focussed on - you relied on your eyesight to make sure it stayed in focus.

All in all a really good day.

Cyclist looked happy.