Reworking the lineup

Haha, in my dreams Good point about the AF though; I think if I were to get the 5dmk2, I'd be keeping the 40D.

This entire thing has made me realise that I need to sit down and have a serious think about what kinds of photography I spend most of my time on, and base my gear choice around that. The 7D was a fantastically placed product, but really just didn't work for me (for whatever reason). I think the irony is for me... if they'd made this a 12MP camera, then you probably wouldn't see a lot of these issues, and I would still have a 7D. I think they really shot themselves in the foot with that.

I'm hoping in the coming weeks/months Canon will address some of the issues, in which case I might consider buying another one.

Actually, a 1D mkIII may work out for you if you don't mind older model. It's in the price range of the 5D2 or even less used. Also since you're going to NY, you should visit B&H or Adorama in NYC and try out some gear. You'll probably save a bunch. I don't know how much a 5D2 in UK is but it may be closer to a 1D mkIV in the US.

Indeed buying new gear in the UK for a holiday in the US (aka land of cheap gear) seems a bit backward.

Not really cheap any more, unfortunately. Take the 7D for example. From what I can currently see, if I bought direct from B&H it would cost me £1130 plus NYC sales tax. Then if I get clobbered with VAT on the way back, it would actually be more expensive than buying from Jessops. If you're willing to risk eBay there are a couple dealers such as DigitalRev selling for about £1050 so that's probably the cheapest route of all.

I found the same thing with the 50D. Now I am much better with my 50D. I think the 40D is just easy. The images it produces are almost perfect out of the camera. You could shoot Jpeg all day and the shots would be perfect. My 50D schooled me hard core, but my post processing has really improved. I felt just like you. In the end I now love my 50D and will upgrade when
I am ready.

Okay, so sorry for the thread necromancy but I want to update this thread with some more details.

About two weeks after I returned the 7D I started to have some regrets. Mainly I was worried that I hadn't given the 7D enough time, and maybe I'd just gotten a dodgy one. In fact, I missed using it so much that I bought another one.

Wow, what a difference. To make sure this was not from the same batch I bought one from Kerso (which had the added bonus of being about £110 cheaper too :-p). It was like a totally different camera. Sharp images time after time, real nice looking bokeh, the whole works. Really, really pleased.

For anyone having trouble with the 7D:

• Give the 7D some time. It's a very finickity camera to use, and in my limited experience you really need to nail the settings.
  
• But at the end of the day, if you're still not getting good photos, get it replaced. It does seem like there are some dodgy ones out there.
  
• One thing I've found is that Lightroom 3 beta's RAW conversion is far superior to 2.x. So if you're using this, try LR3 instead. Also the luminance noise filtering is absolutely incredible - I've shot some ISO 6400 images that basically looks noiseless in A4 prints after some basic PP work.