Canon EOS 7D Mark II: Fans Have a Reason to Rejoice

Canon EOS 7D Mark II

Five years after the original 7D, Canon fans finally have a reason to celebrate. The 7D’s update is here and it doesn’t disappoint. Imagine a camera that is mashup of the 5D Mark III, the 1D X and the 70D all rolled into one high performance DSLR. Except, on paper, the 7D Mark II is, in fact, better than this.

Though the sensor’s resolution is the same as the 70D (20.2MP), the company says that it is newly designed and improved. From the 70D, the camera gets Canon’s Dual Pixel CMOS AF focusing system, for smooth AF during video recording, with improvements to speed. The big improvement is in its focusing, with a brand new 65-point AF mechanism, all of which are cross type. This is probably the best AF system in the APS-C DSLR world, at least, on paper. In terms of its AF capabilities, it seems to even beat the 5D Mark III and the 1D X. The 7D Mark II uses the 1D X’s AI Servo AF III for excellent subject tracking and face detection.

Dual DIGIC 6 processors gives this camera more processing power than any other available EOS DSLR today, including the 1D X which has dual DIGIC 5+ processors. Some more notable features include an ISO range of 100–25,600, shooting speed of 10fps and a buffer of 31 RAW images.

Canon EOS 7D Mark II

All of this is in a camera that is only slightly bigger and heavier than the original 7D. The Mark II shoots Full HD 60fps video, has a headphone jack and can stream a clean video signal to an external recorder using HDMI.

What remains to be seen is whether Canon has improved the video quality in any significant way. With Sony, Panasonic and now Samsung all providing good quality videos and 4k capabilities, Canon’s video status has been under attack.

Canon EOS 7D Mark II

The 7D was a classic and a cult camera. Five years in, the 7D Mark II looks like a reason to celebrate for the users of those cameras and we can’t wait to test it.  Priced at USD 1799 (approx. Rs. 1,10,000) for the body only, the 7D might just be the camera to pull Canon out of the photographic rut, in the APS-C segment.

It will be interesting to see when and whether Nikon will respond with a D400.