Canon EOS R7 Mark II: Minor Tweaks or a Major Transformation?

[EricN]

And in spite of the popularity of the 7D II, I suspect the 70D, 80D, and 90D all outsold it by a pretty wide margin. The R7 is similar to the 90D in many respects but upscaled in a number of features. Kind of between the xxD and 7D lines both in features and price. In retrospect, it was likely a good decision for the time. The R7 has sold quite well.

Imagine so. I decided to buy a refurbished one when it was on sale for $850, and it's not bad. With the control ring on the lenses, there isn't much need for the third wheel/dial on the body. I prefer the R5, but having a second camera for when I would crop a telephoto or macro shot is convent and I may not have purchased it at a higher price.

 

[Dragon]

Imagine so. I decided to buy a refurbished one when it was on sale for $850, and it's not bad. With the control ring on the lenses, there isn't much need for the third wheel/dial on the body. I prefer the R5, but having a second camera for when I would crop a telephoto or macro shot is convent and I may not have purchased it at a higher price.

Yep. If you look at reach, the R7 barefoot has almost identical "pixels of the bird" as the R5 with a 1.4 TC and the IQ is also very similar in that comparison (thanks to the 1 stop difference in exposure and the losses introduced by the TC) My R7 pretty much stays bolted to the 200-800 with the R5 and R8 for everything else unless I need extreme portability with a range of lenses and then the M6 II still wins.

 

[Skux]

Keep the current thumb dial around the joystick but add a traditional rear dial (or a dial horizontally on the top cover), give it the same dimensions at the R5/R6 so it can use battery grip accessories and we're good

 

[David - Sydney]

I can think of two possibilities:
a "baby R1" released two years before the actual R1 doesn't seem like a good strategy
They might not have been confident that such a camera would have sold well when it was one of the first two aps-c R cameras.

Well, the R3 was released 3 years before the R1... does that count as a "baby R1"? It seems to have sold well and is great value now even though it wasn't APS-C.

 

[EricN]

Well, the R3 was released 3 years before the R1... does that count as a "baby R1"? It seems to have sold well and is great value now even though it wasn't APS-C.

Not in that way people hoped the R7 would be (much lower price and much smaller, lighter and APS-C),, but we have seen many people claiming the R3 was R1 until Canon saw a Sony camera. I suppose it depends on how you want to define "baby R1." Some people might similarly argue for a week, as we saw with "flagship."

 

[Harp]

It needs a battery grip to balance the long lenses. Not worth investing no matter the specs.

 

[AlanF]

It needs a battery grip to balance the long lenses. Not worth investing no matter the specs.

In your opinion. But others, of which I am one, find the R7 a decent piece of kit and well worth having.

 

[Michael Clark]

Canon’s EOS 7D series once held a proud spot in the bags of wildlife and action shooters — a true “baby 1D” for those who needed flagship performance with reach. And now, rumors are swirling that the Canon EOS R7 Mark II might pick up that mantle. In February, Craig suggested that the R7 II would deliver something like a baby R1.

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If history is any indicator, the EOS R7 Mark II will be the camera many were hoping for with the EOS R7, just as the EOS 7D Mark II was the camera the EOS 7D should have been.

-The Achilles heel of the 7D was its highly inconsistent AF system. AFMA could center the average, but the best it could do was make the number of misses that were front focused and the number of misses that were back focused roughly equal in number.

-It was also noticeably noisier in low light compared to other contemporary APS-C sensors.

-It had an anti-alias filter that was too strong at a time when other cameras were beginning to offer versions with either no low pass filter or a neutralized one with the second layer oriented 180° to the first instead of 90°.

The 7D Mark II had:

-A true top level AF system that was as close in performance as any phase detection APS-C system, with the narrower baseline that entails, can be compared to the contemporary 5D Mark III and even 1D X.

-It had significantly better low light/high ISO performance than the 7D.

-The low pass filter was much weaker allowing the preservation of finer detail.

-It also introduced Canon's remarkable, even if it was clumsily named, "anti-flicker" technology which was revolutionary for anyone shooting sports under flickering lights at night or indoors. This included virtually all high school stadiums and gyms, as well as many small and even medium college facilities until LEDs began to take over around 2020.

What are the shortcomings of the EOS R7 that need to be addressed by the EOS R7 Mark II for it to become a usable APS-C tool for sports, action, and wildlife shooters that the 7-Series has always seemed to be marketed towards?

-At the top of the list for many would be compatibility with a vertical grip!

-A sensor with faster readout to reduce the horrendous rolling shutter effect when using electronic shutter would also be high on the list.

-A more "pro" level EVF instead of the consumer level EVF found in the R7 would be another key area that needs improvement.

But history doesn't always predict the future very accurately. So we'll see if the R7 Mark II will address the biggest shortcomings of the R7.

 

[Michael Clark]

\"the Canon EOS 7D series was pretty close to a baby version of the EOS-1D X line. We’d love to see that return to the lineup.”

In build quality only

I'd agree with you for the 7D. AF inconsistency was awful. The sensor was too noisy. The low pass filter was too strong.

The 7D Mark II was a lot closer to its 5D Mark III and 1D X contemporaries.

Roger Cicala, who was always quick to find the weak points of any piece of gear he evaluated, even gushed about how its AF system just nailed focus on every shot. The sensor was much better in low light. The low pass filter was nowhere near as strong.

And the 7D Mark II introduced Canon's "anti-flicker" technology almost two years before the 1D X Mark II and 5D Mark IV were introduced with it. This was revolutionary for anyone shooting under flickering stadium or indoor gym lights.

 

[Michael Clark]

The 7D was a baby 1D. That's the history of the model.

In marketing, yes. In fact, only the 7D Mark II met that claim. The 7D had glaring weaknesses.

 

[Michael Clark]

An APS-C body that's identical with a full-frame body except for the sensor size would also be the same price (or even more due to lower demand at that price level). The cost saving of the sensor is not that much compared to the overall cost of developing, stocking and supporting a new model. I suspect relatively few people would buy an R7 that cost the same as an R5.

On the other hand, the R&D has already been done for the ergonomics and much of the new technology inside the R5 Mark II. That R&D money need not be spent again.

 

[Michael Clark]

Yes. So my questions are, how did that make business sense? And why did it cease to be later? And if this rumour is true, why has the situation seemingly reversed again?

The 7D came out in late 2009. The 7D Mark II came out in late 2014. This indicated it was always a lower priority than the 5-Series and 1-Series which were getting refreshes every four years like clockwork during the same time period.

By the time a 7D Mark III would have been on the horizon, Canon was feverishly placing almost all of their development resources into RF mount lenses and EOS RF mount cameras. The 7D Mark III was the victim of the shift from DSLR to mirrorless FF bodies sooner, due to market pressures, that Canon had initially planned.

Likewise, once the EOS R and EPS RF, which were stopgap measures to get something to the FF MILC market ASAP, the R5 and R6 (the 6D and 6D mark II had become great profit generators in Canon's late 2010s lineup) became Canon's top priority. When they had trouble creating an RF mount camera up to what they desired for 1-Series standards, they spent resources on the R3 while continuing to develop the R1. The R7 was again lower in the pecking order and didn't get introduced until mid-2022, almost eight years after the 7D Mark II. Even then, the R7 is more the successor to the 90D than to the 7D Mark II.

It remains to be seen if the R7 Mark II will go back to the level of the 7D Mark II in terms of build quality and a larger viewfinder than other APS-C cameras or not.

 

[neuroanatomist]

The 7D Mark II had:

-A true top level AF system that was as close in performance as any phase detection APS-C system, with the narrower baseline that entails, can be compared to the contemporary 5D Mark III and even 1D X.

What does the size of the image sensor have to do with the baseline for DSLR phase detect AF? (That’s a rhetorical question, the two are independent.)

The AF system uses a separate sensor, and it’s the size of that sensor that determines the maximum possible baseline (though line pairs do not need to be maximally spaced). In this case, most likely the AF sensors in the 7DII and 5DIII are approximately the same size. That’s why the AF points on the 7DII cover a much larger portion of the frame than on the 5DIII or 1D X.

 

[Michael Clark]

And in spite of the popularity of the 7D II, I suspect the 70D, 80D, and 90D all outsold it by a pretty wide margin. The R7 is similar to the 90D in many respects but upscaled in a number of features. Kind of between the xxD and 7D lines both in features and price. In retrospect, it was likely a good decision for the time. The R7 has sold quite well.

The 90D has outsold the 7D Mark II by default ever since since the 7D Mark II was discontinued near the end of 2021.

The 7D Mark II was introduced in 2014 when the cheaper 70D had been on the market for only about a year. The cheaper 80D followed in 2016 and was almost two years newer than the 7D Mark II. By the time the 80D was supplanted by the 90D the 7D Mark II was 5 years old. The 90D has remained on the market through the present. The 7D Mark II was discontinued at the end of 2021, over 3 years ago.

I wonder how many of those 80D and 90D bodies were bought by the same folks who had a 70D, then upgraded to the 80D, then upgraded to the 90D?
I wonder how many of those 90D bodies were bought by 7D Mark II owners who wore it out and opted for the newer 90D?

 

[Michael Clark]

What does the size of the image sensor have to do with the baseline for DSLR phase detect AF? (That’s a rhetorical question, the two are independent.)

The AF system uses a separate sensor, and it’s the size of that sensor that determines the maximum possible baseline (though line pairs do not need to be maximally spaced). In this case, most likely the AF sensors in the 7DII and 5DIII are approximately the same size. That’s why the AF points on the 7DII cover a much larger portion of the frame than on the 5DIII or 1D X.

View attachment 224275

The width of the semi-silvered part of the reflex mirror is narrower in APS-C cameras than in FF cameras.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the PDAF array, which has microlenses over the entry into the PDAF array that can aim light wherever it is desired.

 

[neuroanatomist]

The width of the semi-silvered part of the reflex mirror is narrower in APS-C cameras than in FF cameras.

It has absolutely nothing to do with the PDAF array, which has microlenses over the entry into the PDAF array that can aim light wherever it is desired.

And yet…the fractional area of the FoV with AF points is much greater for the 7DII than for the 5DIII. Completely the opposite of a ‘narrower baseline’.

 

[Michael Clark]

Well, the R3 was released 3 years before the R1... does that count as a "baby R1"? It seems to have sold well and is great value now even though it wasn't APS-C.

The R3 was a stopgap while Canon continued to try and make the R1 a world beater in all categories. It was also priced well above the 7-Series in either EF or RF mount, and still is even at the current discount compared to when released.

 

[Michael Clark]

And yet…the fractional area of the FoV with AF points is much greater for the 7DII than for the 5DIII. Completely the opposite of a ‘narrower baseline’.

The 7D Mark II has a larger percentage coverage of a smaller frame. The actual physical width of the coverage area is smaller.

The slit in the reflex mirror where light is allowed to pass through the reflex mirror, bounce off the secondary mirror, and into the PDAF array is narrower, thus limiting the widest difference between rays from one side of the lens and the other more than in FF DSLRs.

 

[neuroanatomist]

The 7D Mark II has a larger percentage coverage of a smaller frame. The actual physical width of the coverage area is smaller.

The slit in the reflex mirror where light is allowed to pass through the reflex mirror, bounce off the secondary mirror, and into the PDAF array is narrower, thus limiting the widest difference between rays from one side of the lens and the other more than in FF DSLRs.

Oh yes, that's right. The APS-C slit is just...So. Much. Narrower.



Maybe if you round the slit width to the millimeter value of the nearest commonly-used full frame focal length, that will help you? IIRC, that was your preferred method for rounding numbers in reference to front element diameters, and you seemed to think it was far superior to the typical, accepted rules of mathematics.

Thanks for playing. Bye now.

 

[Michael Clark]

Oh yes, that's right. The APS-C slit is just...So. Much. Narrower.

View attachment 224276

Maybe if you round the slit width to the millimeter value of the nearest commonly-used full frame focal length, that will help you? IIRC, that was your preferred method for rounding numbers in reference to front element diameters, and you seemed to think it was far superior to the typical, accepted rules of mathematics.

Thanks for playing. Bye now.

Try actually measuring the width of the semi-silvering on a FF 5D Mark IV mirror and comparing it to the width of the semi-silvering on the 7D Mark II mirror. But then you'd have to admit you are wrong.