The Canon EOS 7D is Canon's top of the range APS-C camera. Below it sit the compact forms of the EOS 1100D, EOS 600D and EOS 60D and above it the full-frame glory of the £200 more expensive EOS 5D MKII.
The big difference between the 5D MKII and the 7D is inside. The 5D MKII is the cheapest of Canon's line-up to offer a full-frame sensor – the 7D has approximately the same size image sensor as cameras such as the 600D, Nikon D5100 or Sony Alpha 77.
There's also a slight difference in resolution - the 5D MKII has the edge with its 21.1MP sensor, versus the 7D's 18MP APS-C CMOS.
Build quality is basically indistinguishable from the 5D MKII. The body – with the exception of the memory card and battery doors – is made from tough-feeling magnesium alloy. Every point of contact is coated in thick, tactile rubber, making the 7D easy to hold on to through a pair of gloves.
And, unlike Canon's smaller consumer range – the EOS 1100D, or EOS 600D for instance – the grip is practically sized for grown up hands, and feels like the body will be perfectly balanced paired with one of Canon's L-series telephoto lenses.
It's been weather and dust-proofed as well. The battery and memory card doors have a thin layer of rubber where the door meets the body to prevent contaminants getting in.
Your comments (5) Click to add a new comment
jimmyosram
December 22nd 2011
5. The "Best Prices for 7D" window are quoting 550D prices
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teamonkey50
August 22nd 2011
4. The reason you were'nt getting the full 8fps & were only getting 7.2fps was you werent using a udma 6 or 7 CF card with a 60 & 90 MBPS transfer rate.By using one of the fast cards 8fps is easy to achive & goes past the 126 jpeg max as the high speed cards clear the buffer & can get well over 250 jpegs before it slows down
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snapsbydave
February 12th 2010
3. @daverein hi mate - 8MB/sec is straight from Canon's manual, so as long as your card is at least that fast you *should* be ok. No harm in trying it out in a shop, though.
@500f4 Thanks for the feedback - obviously prices change quite fast in the world of DSLRs and the prices in the copy relate to things as they stood when I wrote the review. If the 7D is now that much closer to the D300s you're probably right...
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daverein
December 10th 2009
2. I am trying to work out what speed memory card would be required to shoot video at the highest resolution. 8 MB/s (as suggested in your article) is between a 66x and a 100x card. Does this mean that a 100x or a 133x card would be more than sufficient?
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500f4
November 9th 2009
1. While I have not had the opportunity to work with the 7D yet, it appears to be an easy choice for shooting action when compared to the 5D II or the 50D. Your review states that the Canon 7D is £400 more than the Nikon D300s, but checking Jessops pricing I see that you are incorrect as it is only £250 more at the time of writing. In North America though, the Nikon has been reduced to meet the 7D pricing. As the recently lightly updated Nikon is unable to match the 7D in many other areas (resolution, frames per second, video capabilities) it appears making the Canon the obvious choice for those not having a large commitment in existing lenses.
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