Attn Gear Heads, 7D mkII announced

[TheAnimus]

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PROD...d-mark-iiA.HTM

[Bobster]

I'm in!

[TheAnimus]

It has to be said the jump to 10fps is amazing. I mean it's a 25% improvement. That's quite something.

The increased number of focus points could be good, but as someone who almost always uses centre lock, this isn't much interest.

What is interesting to notice, is that they are finally allowing you to focus at f8. Sony and Pentax users can tell you how helpful this feature is.

However, I really hope they push the sensor tech forward. Whilst I don't use canon, their image quality is far below the price, and frankly, this means the others are being lazy. Two years back, I could buy a K-30 for under £300, this camera has better still image quality than the new 70D. Think you can buy anything with that quality at £300 any more? Nope. There was no competition, so they upped the price of their replacement which offered negligible image improvements.

I hope it does cut the mustard, things are rather stagnant at the moment.

[Saracen]

Hmmm.

New models bringing new features and real improvements are, of course, always a good thing. If I were looking to buy a camera at that price point right now, I'd be interested. And bearing in mind my investment in other Canon bits (lenses, flash, etc), it'd almost certainly be a Canon.

BUT .... I feel there's a lot of feature and pixel-chasing going on. And I have to question just what I gain over my current model? What pictures can I take that I can't right now? Even allowing better image quality, what difference does that improvement make to what I do with my photos?

Every time I think about a new camera, I ask myself those questions, and so far, the answer has come back as nowhere near enough to justify the cost.

Money is not endless. If I buy this out of my photo budget, that means other thing(s) I can't buy. So, given that I'm satisfied with what my current camera does, I'm not interested .... other than in an academic sense, 'cos I'm not interested in upgrading for upgrading's sake, which is what it would be, for me.

[TheAnimus]

My point is Saracen, that in other devices we are seeing innovation, massive downwards pressure on pricing and the like.

Whilst it's great they've improved the FPS, and added many focus points, I think that we aren't seeing much of a change. My 4 year old K-5 has image quality that is so close to what we have today, at the same price point.

Compare that to how things were 10 years ago, we've lost the pace of improvement. I was frankly stunned by this picture, coming from a phone. But it still lacks dynamic range, yet DXO rate it as having 10.4. How long until we see such devices having DR above 12? (That is better than say a 70D, and probably about what this will have). One of the reasons I've been, underwhelmed by my 'upgrade' to a k-3, was the drop in DR to 13.4. I really feel it when looking at the RAWs.

I also think that the 'community' isn't really helping in this space. I think the biggest innovation we've seen lately has been the Sigma entering the high end market, and the OLPF trick Pentax are doing. I still don't own the Sigma yet, a friend said they were buying it for my Birthday, but that's slipped past now.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

My point is Saracen, that in other devices we are seeing innovation, massive downwards pressure on pricing and the like.

Whilst it's great they've improved the FPS, and added many focus points, I think that we aren't seeing much of a change. My 4 year old K-5 has image quality that is so close to what we have today, at the same price point.

Compare that to how things were 10 years ago, we've lost the pace of improvement. I was frankly stunned by this picture, coming from a phone. But it still lacks dynamic range, yet DXO rate it as having 10.4. How long until we see such devices having DR above 12? (That is better than say a 70D, and probably about what this will have). One of the reasons I've been, underwhelmed by my 'upgrade' to a k-3, was the drop in DR to 13.4. I really feel it when looking at the RAWs.

I also think that the 'community' isn't really helping in this space. I think the biggest innovation we've seen lately has been the Sigma entering the high end market, and the OLPF trick Pentax are doing. I still don't own the Sigma yet, a friend said they were buying it for my Birthday, but that's slipped past now.

BTW,have you seen this phone with a 1" sensor:

http://connect.dpreview.com/post/710...-1-inch-sensor

[TheAnimus]

Yup exactly!

People have often said designing the lens to be cross sensor makes things harder, Ricoh have tried this a fair bit. It will be interesting to see how the quality is with these.

I see the low end DSLR market fading out completely, just like compacts have had to evolve.

[Bobster]

Focus and low light capabilities are the most important thing to me, the 7D2 can apparently focus in moonlight!

DxO marks etc. mean nothing to me, the real world application is what matters..

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

£1600 for an APS-C body. Hmm.

[Bobster]

£1600 for an APS-C body. Hmm.

it won't be that on release.. those prices never stick, the 7D was quoted as 1400.. but it came in at 1200..

[TheAnimus]

Focus and low light capabilities are the most important thing to me, the 7D2 can apparently focus in moonlight!

But then wouldn't you have already a 5D, or use a system (Sony/Pentax) that have had f2.8 sites that work to f8, and have had for half a decade.

I can see they are making a great action photography camera, so many focus points, that market leading FPS. But the point is overall I think this is more of the slow down of progress in bodies.

DxO marks etc. mean nothing to me, the real world application is what matters..

The real world is what one tries to capture in bench marks, they allow people to quantify and objectively compare.

I mean that shot I linked was taken with something that has a ~40 DxO score. It doesn't preclude that we can take great pictures with a low number. It's just I feel we should have better progress, these devices should be cheaper. I find it sad that all the innovation is coming in the phone market. I mean my mobile phone has had more progress in making improvements in quality, than bodies. Look at it this way, the quality gap in DR between my 1020 and say a 70D is now smaller than the gap between a 70D and k-5ii. Bodies are not improving much.

The one I'd love is more dynamic range. It can be used to work around issues in lenses, it makes many patterns for CA removal easier. I'd also like more advanced home calibration options, Sigma are being interesting in this area, however I'd rather have it driven by in-camera loop.

I don't find it exciting, this years devices have all been tiny incremental changes, I feel the manufactures aren't interested in doing anything new, I'm still incredibly disappointed that no one competed with Pentax on the K-30 level, two years ago, I could buy a better camera for £300 than I can this year. That's just madness.

[Bobster]

But then wouldn't you have already a 5D, or use a system (Sony/Pentax) that have had f2.8 sites that work to f8, and have had for half a decade.

I tried Sony, hated the cameras
Pentax are too small in my hands

And I don't fancy spending extra money on lenses by changing to a full frame system..

[peterb]

The Sony A7S seems to have the best low light capability at the moment - something like the equivalent of 250,000 ISO rating iirc.

I saw a 30 min video shot by a professional filmaker using them with very impressive results.