Posted by Mark Seaver on April 3, 2016 at 11:20 AM
I bought a 7D2 last December both as a back up for my 5D3 and for use as I work on bird/wildlife photography. During a recent visit with Mike Ramy in Florida, mostly taking bird photos from a slowly moving boat, I have a two impressions comparing the cameras that I'd like to share.
1. The autofocus of the 7D2 is considerably faster and easier to use than the 5D3. I was using case 6 and the all 65 points on the 7D2 vs case 1 and 61 points selectable on the 5D3. My chosen method of autofocus worked well for flying birds as long as there was a clean background (sky and water). When the birds were flying with a background of vegetation, autofocus usually missed the bird and picked the background.
2. The 7D2 is much more sensitive to overexposure than the 5D3. Slight overexposure on the 7D2 regularly resulted in pure white blobs that often showed color fringing in darker pixels adjacent to the blown area. With the 5D3, apparently over exposed highlights can often be darkened in raw to show some detail and I've never seen color fringing due to over exposure.
One other improvement in the 7D2 is that the level display can be set to show all of the time in the viewfinder, while in the 5D3, it has to be accessed by a separate button.
The 7D2 is noticeably more noisy than the 5D3, but that's to be expected from the smaller pixels. In spite of that, I'd say that the noise level is acceptable (with moderate noise reduction) at higher ISO settings. Here's an expanded look at the head area of a Tri-colored heron (full image posted in Avian) at iso 1600 with noise reduction in Lightroom (50 Lum, 50 smooth)
Discussion
3 replies1. The autofocus of the 7D2 is considerably faster and easier to use than the 5D3. I was using case 6 and the all 65 points on the 7D2 vs case 1 and 61 points selectable on the 5D3. My chosen method of autofocus worked well for flying birds as long as there was a clean background (sky and water). When the birds were flying with a background of vegetation, autofocus usually missed the bird and picked the background.
2. The 7D2 is much more sensitive to overexposure than the 5D3. Slight overexposure on the 7D2 regularly resulted in pure white blobs that often showed color fringing in darker pixels adjacent to the blown area. With the 5D3, apparently over exposed highlights can often be darkened in raw to show some detail and I've never seen color fringing due to over exposure.
One other improvement in the 7D2 is that the level display can be set to show all of the time in the viewfinder, while in the 5D3, it has to be accessed by a separate button.
The 7D2 is noticeably more noisy than the 5D3, but that's to be expected from the smaller pixels. In spite of that, I'd say that the noise level is acceptable (with moderate noise reduction) at higher ISO settings. Here's an expanded look at the head area of a Tri-colored heron (full image posted in Avian) at iso 1600 with noise reduction in Lightroom (50 Lum, 50 smooth)