Thread: Canon 7D
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      10-02-2009, 12:07 PM   #26
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Quote:
Originally Posted by spectrumphoto View Post
For me, I am just not fond of that big of a crop that the chip offers. It is a smaller chip which means smaller film plane. It will help you punch in further. Personally, I'd just carry my 300 f2.8 and throw on a 1.4x and work on my skills of getting closer to the subject but that is only my preference.
In principle I agree with you. If your subject takes up a small portion of the frame and you need to crop then the image would always look better if you could get closer - and better still if you could get close enough to use a larger sensor/film format.

That said, for wildlife - in particular little skittish birds - that often just isn't practical. Serious pros will set up elaborate bird blinds and wait for hours or days for the subject to approach close enough to get the shot they want. Ordinary mortals though will take all the focal length and resolution help they can get. Improving stalking skills certainly helps, but some birds just won't let you get closer than 50 or 100 feet, and then you want the longest lens and finest sensor resolution you can find.

We could get deep into the weeds and talk about noise, diffraction and the advantage of larger photosites, but for focal length limited bird shooting I saw a small but noticeable advantage in my old 450D compared to the 5D2, and suspect that the 7D would show a similar small advantage over the 450D.

Horses for courses. For general purpose shooting I think the 5D2's about as good as you can get short of high dollar MF systems. For birds and other small critters though it looks like the 7D will be the superior machine.
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