CCC Forum

Some recent wildlife images shot with the 7D mark 2 - enjoyed using the camera a lot.







Sadly I can't upload all of them because 400kb is seemingly too large a file size... in 2015 :/
Here's the review in case anyone is interested - http://davidcandlish.photography/canon-7d-mark-2

Nice work.

I see from your review that you found you got the best results when using Canon glass on the 7D2, but other than the dragonfly shot do not say what lens you were using.

The AF was best with the 70-200 and other Canon glass, absolutely - the birds were shot with the Tamron 150-600

I am not surprised that AF performance with third party lenses lagged behind Canon's. A few years ago I tried Sigma's 150-500 as a potential lower cost alternative to the 100-400 that did not rely on a trombone style zoom and that tended to hunt, particularly at the long end. After that, I was never tempted to bother with anything other than Canon's optics.

To be honest, unless you have an AF system like the 7D and you're going to make use of it (i.e. you're a sports/wildlife shooter) the non-Canon performance isn't so bad. It's noticeable but far from a problem. If I was shooting professionally or "must get the shot" then definitely the official Canon lenses are the way to go. The biggest eye opener was how much better the 70-200 f/2.8 II was on ANY body, let alone the 7D2. It's the next lens on my wishlist, absolutely awesome!

On balance, I'd rather have the reach of the 150-600 and suffer from the occasional missed shot if the focus hunts too long. For instance, most of the shots of that kingfisher are blurred not because of AF but because the thing was just so damn fidgety! Same for the yellow bird (black-naped oriole), they are both extremely skittish.

What's interesting is I've been using the 760D too recently and using the same 150-600mm lens I noticed the same odd behaviour on both. Specifically, I'll be focused on a bird and then suddenly for one frame the lens jumps to just past infinity, then back to perfect focus again. It's like it has a minor crisis of confidence and just wants to be sure it's accurate! That said, it's on one-shot focus mode when that happens and not AI servo; I've not had that problem with AI servo. That for me screams dodgy lens AF-implementation.

Personally for me I loved having the AF of the 7D2 at my disposal but it actually made me appreciate my decision to get the 6D - by which I mean at the time I was debating 6D vs 5D3 and the AF was the single biggest niggling point. Now I've used a proper AF system I can see why people like them but the way I shoot I don't miss it day to day. If anything, I'd be inclined to get either a 7D2 for cheaper or perhaps wait for the 5DSR and crop in. We shall see

The problem with the AF on third party lenses is that Canon, Nikon et al do not publish details of the interface with the camera, so it has to be reverse engineered other lens manufacturers. Sometimes there is a connection the purpose of which is not immediately obvious as it has been reserved for future use and it is possible that this is contributing to the behaviour of your Tamron lens. I note that Tamron has had to issue a service advisory as a number of its products do not work correctly with the new Canon 5Ds models, which suggests that its AF implementation is not as well implemented as it could have been. This is a problem which Sigma has experienced in the past when it did not fully replicate the AF interface, but more recent products now appear to have full OEM compatibility.

http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/20 ... sr-cameras

I do agree with your observations about the AF on the 7D2, which is far in advance of anything else at the price point and will be a definite boon to anyone shooting fast moving subjects such as sports or wildlife. For less demanding situations, AF reached the point of suffiency a long time back and even Fuji has been able to refine the AF on its cameras to the point where performance is generally usable.