The review of my new Canon 7D DSLR has been delayed largely due to the weather here in the lovely Pacific Northwest. As you might imagine, it’s been raining. Raining quite a bit, actually, and I’ve been hoping to first test the camera out on a sunny day. This past Saturday actually had some sunshine, and I was able to do some comparison shots with my 30D. One of the first things that I discovered was that I’m not very good at manually focusing the new camera, so I’ll need to work on that before I can really get into comparing image quality.
However, in the meantime, I can say that the 7D’s viewfinder is impressive. It’s very bright and sharp (and that’s why I’m surprised by my focusing problems). The LCD screen is equally impressive. Both the viewfinder and LCD screen are way beyond the 30D’s. I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything if I use the camera and my 400mm lens instead of my binoculars to look at a bird. Now I’m not saying that the camera is a replacement for my binoculars — I’m sure the view through the bins is still better, and I’ll probably start noticing the difference the more I use the camera — but I won’t be terribly disappointed if I can only look at a bird through the 7D.