7D and Kites in flight

I gave my 7D a liitle workout with Red-Kites in flight ... THANKS David ....So far I am amaze dwith the AF performance of this camera. Single point and Single point with expansion worked best, to select a group or all AF points was much less reliable. High IOS -and here I talk about ISO higher than 400 - could better .
And.... 18 MP are pretty demanding when one really wants to have the advantage of more SHARP pictures on the bird. See also



I have difficulties with the new focusing-screen, in particular with lenses faster than f=4 I have problems to judge whether the picture is in focus or not.

When I use remore flasj with the build-in-flash as master every now and then one shot is totally overexposed, when I use another 580 EX everything is fine.

So far I am happy camper
7D 320 ISO (abou8 Mp of the full frame) 1/2000 f=5.6 500mm (canvas added to th right)

http://www.hofmann-photography.de/BAN/7D_GH-8046-2.jpg

Great shot!!! Could you provide your A/F custom function settings for first 4 custonm functions. Thanks!

Thanks Michael!

For this shot I had CFN III/1 on slow but the keeper rate was only better with busy background - with shots like this I had better luck keeping it on 0

CFN III/2 on default didn't play around with the other settings

CFN III/3 on 1 - with the default 0 I definitely got less keepers ( about 30% less)
CFN III/4 on 0 – I only use this on 1 when I set CFNIII to fast … worked pretty good with other bodies but I didn’t try it with the 7D
I tried to keep it simple and will try other settings the next couple of days more samples from the first day BIF HERE

Regards
Geraldo

Thanks, Geraldo.

P.S. I looked at your BIF samples and there are so great ones!

Thanks Michael,

Well I was surprised that the 7D could get a sharp picture at all ,..... according to all many experts on dpreview its simply not possible ... but it was the same with the40D/50D 1 DMarkIII ,....

The gallery was from a 2 hour shooting and actually I had only 30-minutes where the light was okay to take pictures. Today I analyzed the shots the keeper rate is on 1D MarkII level... thats pretty impressive IMHO. In terms of noise ... Capture One 5 does a pretty good job in reducing noise and keeping the details ... if you didn't try it allraedy it is worth to try it.

I will update the gallery with comments as I will test it the next couple of days.

Regards Geraldo

Yeah I would say that 90% of those guys on dpreview complaining about focus have no clue what they are talking about. One person even posted screenshots of pictures with the focus selection and it was obvious what he was doing wrong.

I am still learning BIF, this week was my first attempt. I have now set my camera to use Center Focus as well and I seem to be getting a better keeper rate....however its much harder for me to track. But this is not the cameras fault it is mine...I need to practice more!

I have been using a 7D since they first came out and find the AF to be excellent. It seems significantly better than our 40D. I do think a pro body will do better but for 2 1/2 times the cost it should be better!

Nice image by the way.

I had a play at BIFs with the 7D Yesterday and it compared very favourably with my 1D MKIII