I Live For Video

Here is my own personal take of why I bought the Canon 7D…

I have worked with both the 5D and the 7D and let me tell ya, you won’t be disappointed with either purchase.  After a lot of research and pulling my hair out about how much to go into debt, I decided to go with the 7D.  Mainly because of the video frame rates it can shoot at and also the price.  For $1900 you can get the camera and a kit lens, which is a really nice lens.  The two cameras are pretty identical, but there are a few differences.

For video:

Canon 5D only shoots in 1080p 30fps, not 29.97fps.  There are rumors going around the blogosphere that Canon is going to release a firmware update early this year that allow the 5D to shoot in 1080p 24fps, but no release date has been set yet.

The Canon 7D, on the other hand, can shoot in 1080P 29.97 and 24fps and can also shoot in 720p 60fps.  The 60fps is great if you want to shoot anything in slow motion, granted it’s not extreme slow motion, but it is able to stop it down by 50% without any frame loss, which is pretty nice.

Both shoot video at the same bit rate and in the h264 video codec, which is great for compression.  It also makes it very easy to transfer to the editing suite of your choice, mine being to render it as the Apple ProRes codec then using in Final Cut Pro.

Currently there is a firmware program called Magic Lantern that is only available for the 5D, rumors have said that it will be available for the 7D soon, but nothing as of yet.  This program gives the 5D a leg up on shooting video from the 7D b/c it adds the ability to see and adjust the audio levels, allows you to view zebra striping for over exposure, has on screen crop guides for different resolutions and also allows you to turn off the AGC (auto gain control.)

For photos:

Not sure if this is why you are buying it, but both take amazing photos.  The 7D shoots at 18 mp and the 5D at 22 mp, which really won’t matter, unless you are wanting to blow up some images to crazy banner size images.  Both shoot in RAW format as well as JPEG and both with many options.  The RAW photos I have taken come out at about 20″ x 16″ so that’s large enough for anything that I may print off for photos.

The 7D does win when it comes to burst photography over the 5D.  The 7D is able to shoot at 8 fps bursts or photos and the 5D can only shoot at 3.9 fps.

That’s really all I know about the photos, I’m just getting into the photography aspect of the camera, mostly bought it because of the video.

One of the big factors between the two that people tend to say is the breaking point is the image sensor size for each camera.  The 5D has a full frame sensor which is said to be equivalent to shooting 35mm film.  It’s image sensor is larger than the 7D so it can shoot in low light much better then the 7D.  Although, I have not fully tested my 7D in low light, the videos I have shot, I have not had any problems with it, and I can always boost the levels a bit in post if needed.

Because the 5D’s image sensor is full frame you do not need to worry about any image cropping, unlike the 7D that has a 1.6x crop b/c of it’s sensor.  Really it’s not that big of a deal, unless you want to get an extreme wide shot, but it also adds to the telephoto of the shot, so if you want to get something farther away the 7D is a little better at that without changing lenses.  Basically what the crop means is that if you have a lens, like the base lens that comes with the kit, that shoots at 28-135mm, b/c of the crop it is actually shooting at 44-216mm.

I think that’s most of what I was going through when I was debating the two cameras.  What it really came down to for me was the ability to shoot at multiple resolutions at multiple frame rates and also that I could get a 7D for $1900 with a kit lens where as the 5D with a lens was around $3300.  Don’t get me wrong, both cameras are amazing, and both shoot amazing photos and videos, but for me just getting into the HD DSLR video market the 7D made more sense for a purchase.

Hope this has been helpful to others that may be pondering the choice…

Prost netz!