As I mentioned a while ago on the blog, and as I’m sure most Canon shooters are aware, Canon are releasing the 70D, you can now read a full hands on preview from DP review of the camera, and there’s some interesting new spec’s for surf photographers:
http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canon-eos-70d
Be sure to read through the preview at the link above if you’re interested, but here’s the bits that interested me in terms of surf photography:
- 20.2MP – Higher resolution than the 60D and 7D
- 7fps continuous shooting, burst depth 65 JPEG / 16 RAW – just less than the 7D but more than the 60D
- 19-point AF system – like the 7D but with improved live view AF mode
- Fully-articulated touchscreen – like the 60D, I find this really useful for shooting video in particular
- Built-in Wi-Fi – I can think of a few good uses for this in surf photography – imagine sending the photos from the beach to a tablet in the car park so surfers getting out of the water can be shown pic’s of the surf they just had whilst you’re still shooting.
What I really love about DP Review is the comparisons they make, they line it up with the 60D and show you the differences, looking at the photo’s it looks like I’d be able to slip the 70D into my Aquatech CR-60 housing and use all the controls straight away, it uses the same 2.5mm jack plug for the remote so even the pistol grip will plug straight in and just work.
It’s got a touch sensitive screen too, but I can’t think of any really good uses for that within surf photography just yet.
No news on the UK price for it yet.
Conclusion
I’m still on the look out for a second hand 7D.
Anyone who’s buying a new camera for sports shooting, especially surfing, is going to go for the 70D I imagine, the only place it comes off worse is frames per second, but its 7fps vs the 7D’s 8fps isn’t a huge deal to me and it should be cheaper to get one new than the 7D (unless you can get a good deal).
Now this one’s been announced the second hand price of the 7D is going to take a bit of a dip (though not as much as I’d hoped), and I’m hoping to capitalise on that to get a nice used body, then if and when they announce a successor to the 7D at the top end of the APS-C range I’ll think about grabbing one.