Bad Time for buying a new body.

For me the reason i want to move on is i suspect a problem with my body (T2i),
when i first bought it I had an accident I fell into a rock-bed photographing waterfalls in Hamilton.
The camera hit the rock bed making the mode selection unable to turn Which I was able to fix.
The lcd flickers off and on at times.

Because it was fall damage not really covered in the warranty .
I have considered sending it in..but I suspect repair costs would be close enough that i should just move on and upgrade, then get my lenses re-calibrated to the new body if any are off.

My problem is that I have situations where there is no way a shot should miss and i get oof shots that are not caused from shutter speed poor lighting or shallow depth of field.

I went out the other morning and had a mother red-winged blackbird flapping protectively around me.
Suspecting that i was close to the nest I settled down on one knee and waited for her to land on some nearby weeds to complain at me a bit about 4 yards away.
I took several shots with a 70-200mm at 200mm f8. 1/200 sec - 1/250. iso 200 I should have been at iso 400 given the shutter speed.. but I have taken many many clear perched bird photo's in the past at 1/200
With an aperture of f.8 the bird should have been in focus.
Single point af on the centre of the birds breast feathering the half press until it appeared to have the focus locked on.
Bottom line is the pictures should have been in focus and they where all misses I have shot enough birds to know when my equipment isn't working and when a bird is still enough to nail the shots. This is just one of many recent examples at this point its time to move on to make photography enjoyable for me again.

For a crop body, the T2i/550D really does it for me. I'm also more of a manual shooter so it doesn't really matter if the focus features and automatic features work for me. Base quality of the sensor on the T2i/550D is similar to the base quality on even the newer cameras or even the 7D. For a crop body, I feel that the minimum amount of camera for the sensor technology is acceptable and hence, I shoot with the 550D for all my 1.6x crop. It's just lighter and more portable and if I smash it, I'm not going to be too upset (unless they stop producing the 550D). I don't have a need for a swivel screen, or advanced AF, or even AF on such a camera hence, it's best to go with the lightest and cheapest version of the sensor. I would probably be happy if they stripped the on-camera-flash, the mode dial (just have M, Bulb, Av, Tv, C1, C2, C3), and mirror. A simple and elegant solution is always going to be best.

Nick - I think you especially would love the 7D? Used a t2i for two years, upgraded, and the 7D has made me so happy since. Not afraid to use Iso 3200, even, most of the time.

John, no doubt. Allegedly the 70d may actually be better than the current 7d(basiclly it will be the 7d with digic 5 and flip screen...aledgedly) and the 7d successor will be stupid fast fps etc. if that is not the case, then a used 7d will be a bargin with the mark2 out, if it is then 70d.

Believe it or not, I am not this methodical with my life outside of work/business and am very impulsive and happy go lucky. However, as this thread implies, I do believe that if you are a hobbyist canon shooter with money in apsc lenses and are due for a new prosumer body, this fall should be worth the wait. Logic would tell me that canon cant let another model year go by without pulling out some stops to silence recent years fanfare of the D7000 etc. If canon had been kicking nikons ass the last few years then I wouldn't expect as much.

Nick3434 wrote in post #14587438
Things annoying me on xsi and why I am ready to move on. All of these are things I never had a problem with until I reached a certain point, mainly about the last 5 months.


Focus in general, but I pretty much only use center point auto focus, recompose when I can, or crop when it is a moving object. Ai servo mode is very ehh at best, and for my surfing pics this last winter the fps stood out.

Viewfinder. Looking through a 7d viewfinder is quite a different experience.

These two things alone suggest that you should get a 7D, particularly if you get one from CLP for $1100. No other crop camera in Canon's lineup has a viewfinder as good as the 7D's, and it really is wonderful to see in the viewfinder exactly what you're going to get in the resulting shot (due to 100% viewfinder coverage).

This is probably more a matter of postprocessing than anything else. What are you using to do your postprocessing with? Lightroom 3 and up could easily reinvigorate your high ISO shots. That said, I find the 7D's high ISO to be excellent.

Yes, the 650D/70D may wind up having better out-of-the-box IQ than the 7D, and it may even perform noticeably better at high ISO, but the real question is what ISO performance level is enough for your needs. The 7D's is usable all the way up to 12800 and it'll do nicely at 6400, and while there may be occasions where you might want to go higher than that, I expect that would be relatively rare.

The 7D's image quality is excellent as well, but it is a bit of a demanding camera in terms of postprocessing if you want the very best out of it. If you want critically sharp images at 100% magnification and a low noise signature at ISO 100, you have to work at it a bit. If you're using Lightroom, you can create a preset that will get you almost exactly where you'll want to be, and you can then tweak a couple of the values involved to get the rest of the way there for the specific image you're processing.

Buy used now, by time the rumors become true the value on the camera will probably drop $100-$200 depending on the price of the new camera bodies, and which model you buy now. I would shoot for the 7D since, find a decent use one for ~$1000, sell it if something better comes out that you want. No sense in buying new now.

Eric T wrote in post #14589032
Buy used now, by time the rumors become true the value on the camera will probably drop $100-$200 depending on the price of the new camera bodies, and which model you buy now. I would shoot for the 7D since, find a decent use one for ~$1000, sell it if something better comes out that you want. No sense in buying new now.

I'd get one from CLP. The $100 (or less) extra you pay gets you a 90 day warranty from Canon. That, I think, is easily worth it for such a piece of equipment, particularly one that some people have had significant problems with.

I process with aperture and nik plug ins. I hate pp and kinda suck at it, but I really like the nik software. I am not opposed to getting Lightroom, but I am happy with what I have. I remove noise with nik define, it is excellent. I don't want to shoot at 6400, I just want very usable and workable photos at 1600 and maybe 3200, which is impossible for the xsi regardless of software.

I really don't want a 7d. I just think that the September announcements for canon will be interesting, and another 3 months on top of 3 years of 450 ownership will not kill me. I plan on having my next body a very long time. Hell, I plan on having the xsi a long time too!

I was thinking the same, but I really don't want to buy new...the price savings on the CLP is just not worth getting the latest camera. I plan on either get a refurb 60D or 7D when I do finally get one.

You can always sell the refurb and get the "newest" refurb at at later day.

With the cost savings from the refurb price I can get better lenses and not feel like I'm over-spending too much

That is pretty solid advice as well Jen. I too hate to buy new, except I bought everything I have used and cheap except a few lenses(sigmas that I love, but just in case as recorse) so I figured maybe it would be OK to treat myself if the latest and greatest is really that much better.

If not, I think despite the hate on here for the 60d, it is a pretty nice camera, and furthermore it is flat out awesome at the clp price. You make a good point in a clp 60d today, and in a year or so if inclined get a used 70d or whatever........hmmmmm​mmmmm. Lots of options.

Nick3434 wrote in post #14590678
I process with aperture and nik plug ins. I hate pp and kinda suck at it, but I really like the nik software. I am not opposed to getting Lightroom, but I am happy with what I have. I remove noise with nik define, it is excellent. I don't want to shoot at 6400, I just want very usable and workable photos at 1600 and maybe 3200, which is impossible for the xsi regardless of software.

Nik DFine is indeed excellent. If that's not getting you the results you want, then Lightroom probably won't. Even so, you might consider grabbing Lightroom and using it in "trial" mode for a month. If you find it breathes new life into your XTi, then it may be worth buying.

Well, the real question is why don't you want a 7D? It sounds like it would meet your needs perfectly (the viewfinder, the autofocus, and the high ISO are all what you seem to be looking for). There's certainly nothing wrong with waiting to see what Canon comes out with next, but the 650D should show us what the sensor will be capable of, and for taking still shots it's hard to see how Canon could improve substantially on the 7D in other areas, except perhaps in its quality control (that some people get 7Ds which prove to be a consistent problem while others have no problems with theirs while doing the same thing is a quality control problem, not an indictment of the camera itself).

Furthermore, whatever Canon comes out with next will cost substantially more than a 7D does right now, particularly if you pick up said 7D from CLP. Everything Canon has introduced of late, even the 650D, has been priced notably higher than its predecessor.

So you can certainly wait, and there's certainly no harm in that at all, but I don't really see any substantial advantages to it, either, given the needs you've outlined.

I bought the original 6mp 300d rebel with non is 18-55 kit when it launched in 2003 at $1000 us when the Canadian dollar was about 130 cents for every us dollar + 14 % tax = 1300 before tax, ended up paying about 2200 for the camera mem card uv, filter, prot plan etc all in total after tax.

Definitely get a lot more bang your buck today.

Martzart - you may want to go ahead and send it in and see what it will cost. That's a nice camera. I still have mine. Depending on the details you may be surprised and get a repair that doesn't cost too much. They look it over and quote you a price before actually doing it. I don't think they charge you if you decide not to fix it. Even if it costs $400, you still would have a camera you could get roughly $700 for. That's $300 you lose just getting rid of it. I wouldn't use it for the CLP when a simple broker P&S can get you the same discount.

Nick3434 wrote in post #14590678
I just want very usable and workable photos at 1600 and maybe 3200, which is impossible for the xsi regardless of software.

If you expose correctly at 1600 on an XSi it should be fine. You will probably need some fast glass to get it there, though. 3200 of course is impossible since it can't go that high.

Generally speaking if you underexpose at high ISO and push in post you will run into noise issues.

Ok, define works awesome and I love it. Exposed correctly can I get nice family moments that look fine on my laptop or small prints, sure. If I need to hand hold a small aperture shot for work that I only have one chance to get what I need, meaning I may get home and realize I need to work a little harder at processing then no way for something to represent to a client, or at least not for my eye.

Would a 7d be great, sure. Do I feel I should buy one at this point considering what this thread is all about, for me personally, no. If a 70d is $1800, I won't get it. Again, I am just waiting it out. I will have this next body forever and I see the potential for long term VALUE, not price, depending on how good the body is and what it costs.

Believe me, I am captain getting things used and on the cheap, but to answer this thread, I think that in the summer of 2012, value may be in waiting to see if canon releases a Nikon killer for $1300 or so. Last year at this time I would have bought a used 7d no questions asked.