RHChan84 wrote in post #17606858
Now that the 7D2 is out, I'm highly considering it for xmas.
I'm coming from a 60D and I love it. But I want higher ISO, AF, and FPS.
Is it justied to go to the 7D2?
I mainly do sports for kids football from grade 1 to 8. I'm still learning a lot about photography and I don't know if the 7D2 is too much for me to handle right now.
With the 60D, I get about 85-90% focused shots and I find the FPS is good enough for me so far. I would say maybe 5% of the shots are missed due to lower FPS.
What I do want improvmeent from is ISO, I sometimes do night games and I can't keep my shutter speed above 1/800, F4, ISO6400 and it gets blurry due to players being fast. Even at ISO6400, it does get noisey and I tend to over e pose very slightly to darken it and remove some noise but still struggle.
Heya,
It's a fairly substantial upgrade in the AF & FPS. It's a minor upgrade, maybe 1 stop (barely 1 stop actually) of ISO performance over the 60D. Basically shooting the 7D2 at the same ISO you're shooting on your 60D, will be a lot like as if you were shooting at just a bit more than ISO 3200 (think closer to ISO 4000 or so, etc). A wee bit less noise. You're not getting a massive increase in ISO. So keep that in mind. But the increased AF aggressiveness and settings, the much faster FPS (you nearly double here, this is a huge upgrade when it comes to sports and this alone is worth any camera swap to get you between 8 and 10 FPS for sure), and the much improved low light AF (via center point, up to -3 EV) is a substantial thing.
Most of what you're looking to improve will improve with older cameras, like an old 1D2, 1D3 or 7D for $250~800 depending on condition, if you want to stick to a budget. But you're not getting an increase in ISO performance.
The 7D2 is where you get all those features, and a small bump in ISO performance. So if that price is ok with you, for those changes, then yes it's worth it for you.
Personally, I would maximize glass before maximizing camera though. So instead of trying to shoot low light sports with an F4 lens, I'd more likely be trying to use an F2.8 lens, or even an F2 lens (prime). That's 1 stop of ISO. That's more ISO gain than if you bought the 7D2 completely, because 1 stop of aperture light is greater than the 1 stop of ISO performance you get from a new sensor here. And if you shot with a prime for some of this, the gain is even more (upwards of 2 stops). I'm referring to lenses like the 85 F1.8, 100 F2 and 135 F2 since they're affordable and sensible. Otherwise, if you need a zoom for flexibility which I totally get, then look for changing out your current 70-200 F4L to a 70-200 F2.8L (non-IS, the non-IS is sharper wide open and you will be shooting wide open and IS will not do anything for you in this kind of shooting situation anyways). That's 1 stop for a very minor change in lenses in terms of cost. Then if you did change cameras, you get that near 1 stop ISO increase in performance. Combined, you get 2 stops roughly of improvement going that route, or up to a maximum of nearly 3 stops if you went with a prime & new sensor.
What that means:
F2.8 zoom + new sensor: your 1/800, ISO 6400, F4 becomes 1/800, F2.8, ISO 3200 which leaves a lot of wiggle room to go back to ISO 6400 and speed up the shutter for even better action freezing and still over-exposing a bit (ETTR) for noise control.
F2 (prime) + new sensor: your 1/800, F4, ISO 6400 becomes 1/800, F2, ISO 1600, which leaves TONS of wiggle room in the ISO department which means you don't even need a new sensor, but if you had a new sensor, you could take that ISO up 2~3 more stops and get a lot more shutter speed, while still retaining a lot of room to ETTR to control noise.
Very best,
