A Few More R7 Thoughts

EOS R7, RF-S 18-150

I dug out the Nikon F to Canon EF adapter I had buried since I sold off my EOS A2e 15-ish years ago, stuck it on my Tamron 90/2.8 Macro and did a little testing.

The basic manual lens experience is pure Sony. You set focal length for IBIS only at first glance, I will have to check on if it affects auto ISO since that seems really biased to keeping things at 1/80 or higher. No reporting in EXIF either :-(

The focus peaking implementation is excellent. WAY better than the OM-1. Magnification was already on the focus point button as well. 

This creates an oddity, the support tools for shooting manual lenses are WAY better on the OM-1. 20 lens data slots, with custom naming, all data written to EXIF, and Auto ISO respecting the FL data, but the actual shooting experience with manual lenses is better on the R7, even considering the OM-1's much better EVF. I've never quite got along with manual lenses on m43 for some reason, but the experience on APS-C and FF is generally better. Still not going all-in on adapting though, although an RP might be a fun add for FF adapting and pancake use, since I'm planning on getting the RF pancakes anyways.

I've been reading the reviews, and especially the forum angst over the perceived decontenting of the R7 vs the OM-1, X-H2(s), D500 and 7DII. This really seems to revolve around a few things.

1. The AF isn't as good as the R3 despite marketing claims

2. The buffer is too small

3. The build/EVF isn't up to par

4. No CFE B card

I'll be honest, I think Canon messed up the marketing a bit and this is the result. Namely they played up the speed camera aspect too much and the resolution camera aspect too little. 

I don't see the R7 as a true 7DII successor, but rather a different interpretation of what the EOS 7 line should be. The two key items for me are the choice in sensor (32.5MP) and the price point ($1499). The R7 in my opinion sits on top of the range of enthusiast APS-C mirrorless more than at the bottom of Pro crop mirrorless. It beats the pants off the A6600 and X-S20, which IMHO are the two closest competitors. It does cost more, but not that much more ($1-200 at MSRP). The build also reverts to something closer to the old Elan 7 than to the 7D's.

It's also more of a landscape body with good action usability than a pure action/wildlife body. It just needs landscape lenses. That 32.5MP sensor offers both excellent DR and (almost) best in class resolution.  In crop, there's nothing else anywhere near that fast with that resolution, anything with more resolution is half the speed, anything with comparable or better speed is lower resolution (20 or 26MP)

I think that if Canon had set out to make a baby R3, as the 7DII was a baby 1D and the D500 a baby D5, they would have used a 24MP sensor, if only for the inherently faster readout from the same basic sensor tech compared to the 32.5MP sensor. More data takes more time to read out and that has knock-on effects. The sensor readout speed and sensor resolution are the causes of items 1 & 2, the AF isn't as good because it's getting data slower, and the buffer is too small because the files are big. The OM-1's huge buffer can be directly tied to the 20MP resolution and 12 bit depth of its files, and even the X-H2s is only dealing with 26MP files vs 32.5 for the R7. The R7 is simply more of a generalist camera than a pure speed camera and it shows. 

The reality is the R7 is the only crop body that puts anywhere near those pixels per second out from a non-stacked sensor (the R7 does 975MP/s, the OM-1 1000 and the X-H2s 1040). The 40MP Fuji's can just match the R7 in mechanical shutter for fps ( X-H2 - 600MP/s) and everything else is slower than that in terms of MP/s (Fuji's are king there with the X-T4 and X-S20 doing 520MP/s, while the E-M1.3 does 360MP/s)

The build/EVF and card layout come down to price point. Only Nikon has delivered a sub-$2k CFE-B capable camera (Z6/Z6II when discounted). Crop is still pretty much an SD-only world, at least in the sub-$2k range with a couple of much more expensive exceptions and Canon even stuck with dual SD on the more expensive and faster R6II. That said, the R7 would certainly benefit from CFE-B in a way that the R6II won't, thanks again to those big 32.5MP files.  While the EVF is certainly nothing to brag about, again it compares quite well to the closest priced bodies, the A6600 and X-S20 are both worse, with the same panel specs, but either a poor implementation (A6600) or smaller magnification (X-S20). You have to go up to an X-T5 to get a better EVF in crop, and that's a much lower performance body all-round, but with better build and EVF, so you win some and lose some there. 

Overall, I see the R7 as the R5 on a beer budget, not an R3 on a beer budget. And I think with that focus, the performance is extremely acceptable. 

The other side of this is I think the R7's balance of features fits me a bit better than the OM-1 did. The OM-1 is more pure speed camera, and I'm a landscape guy who wants some speed on demand. The R7 is a resolution body (by crop standards) with plenty of speed if needed and just about best in class AF for APS-C (rivalling the OM-1 and exceeding everything else). For landscape use the only real advantage of the OM-1 is the LiveND feature, while the R7 gets me shots that would require use of the very situational High-Res mode on the OM-1 and of course I can just use actual ND filters as needed.