If Canon will significant improve the ISO and make it 10fps, 21MP, 31 All across point focus, then the 5D III owner will put 5D III under the hummer

I had one of the early 7D and I can attest to the serious problems that the early cameras had with sharpness and focus. I got rid of that body a couple years ago. After the recent price drop I decided to give it another shot and bought a new recently manufactured body. While it appeared that the sharpness issues had been resolved, for the most part, even the newer makes are mostly unimpressive. Focus on this camera when tracking moving subjects is still sub-par. When shooting a typical sporting event it is not uncommon to get a 50% in-focus burst even when the subject is moving toward you (as opposed to moving across the plane). The center point focus is really the only one that is usable for moving subjects as none of the other focus setting can produce consistently in-focus shots of moving subjects. Contrary to what some have proclaimed, the focus system is not so advanced that is difficult for the user to find the right settings, it is just that this camera’s focusing system is simply not very good for moving subjects. In fact, I found that the 9-point focus system on the 40d and 5DmkII, respectively, were just about as good as the 70d’s for moving objects. Of course, neither of those cameras fps are close to the 7D’s.

This camera has probably been Canon’s most hyped body and for those that had the mistaken impression (like me) that is was a viable and dependable backup to your 1D series camera it has been a complete bust. If you think this is a great body then that’s fine since it is your opinion but I really think the only person that could objectively say that this is a great camera is someone that has never shot with a higher performance camera. I would take a used 1DmkII over this camera every day of the week.

That being said, Canon is producing some amazing camera now, such as the 5DmkIII, which is worth every penny in my opinion. It’s a little slow in fps for some sports action but given that the focusing system is incredibly good I would say that I get many more in-focus shots from it then with 7D and almost as many than with the 1DmkIV, even though that camera shoots almost twice as many fps.

Let’s hope that Canon does not release the 7dmkII with all of the noise problems the 7D has. If it’s a 1.6x crop then you can’t expect it to be as good as a 5D or 1D but it has to be significantly improved in relation to original 7D or I can’t buy it. Given that the 1D cameras have all gone to “full crop” senors my suggestion to Canon would be to adopt the 1.3x cropped used in the previous 1Ds.

Also, Canon really has got to step up their releases on new cameras. It is really annoying watching Nikon releases all of these new bodies and Canon still having cameras on that market that are 3.5+ years old (7D) and nearly 3 years old (60D). Given current technology advances these camera are well out dated. If the 7D is able to adopt the focus system of the 5DmkIII and at least borrow some of the clean file technology up to, say ISO 8000, then this camera will be a winner, if not, the 7dII will be every bit the dog that the 7d is for more advance and professional shooters (my apologies to dogs for the insult).