Canon EOS 7D II Fast Track Guide

Have any of you guys got this book and what are your thoughts ?

A relative who, like me, has to scrape to get by, spent nearly fifty bucks to present me with this for Christmas; they were so proud to present it to me that I sure hope they never read this.

I looked it up on Amazon and have to wonder about the intelligence of those who left such regaling reviews and wonder whether they were paying attention at all or even read the book.

I have never before read such a lazily put together volume.

Much of the book is copied word for word from earlier books for entirely different cameras.

There are several explanations describing how to use the cross keys, up-down buttons, and touch screen --- none of which are on a 7DMkII.

Numerous references are made to pictures that do not exist, are there but wrongly captioned, or a completely wrong picture that has nothing to do with what is being described.

There are several references to the mode dial, describing modes that are not on the 7DMkII.

Many paragraphs even start out naming the wrong model of camera.

I have never before seen a book that was so lazily put together; I expected a lot better from Busch; as, I know for fact that he can do better.

I keep it well dusted and in a prominent place and brag on it every time they are around and it would destroy them (and me) if they ever knew the truth.


I would like to hear from others who have this volume or any other similarly thrown together volumes from the same author; I hope he enjoyed a big steak dinner with the fifty that he shystered from my very well meaning relative.

I wish everyone reading this had a free copy at hand to refer to so that they could see for themselves.

This exact review (word for word) was left on Amazon in january 2021....

BlackRR wrote in post #19563335
This exact review (word for word) was left on Amazon in january 2021....

I left that review after Christmas 2020, the year I received it.

It isn't exactly word for word here as I wanted to know what you guys thought about someone selling such a high-priced book with so many obvious flaws and getting away with it.

I was careful to word that review to conceal the fact that I received it as a gift, just in case the giver were to ever read those reviews and put two and two together.

I just wish I had bought the book myself and the giver had kept their money as I would have returned it to where it came from and demanded my money back.

As it stands, I wouldn't hurt their feelings for any price.

Do you have a copy ?

No, no copy here. I've just experimented over the years until I became familiar with what did what...starting with film about 30 years ago.

Curently have a 7D2, and added a 5D2 to it about 2 years ago (both gipped).

Originally brought a 7D for motorsport photography and upgradded to the 7D2 about 6 years ago.

That's very surprising because David Busch's books are usually pretty good. When I got back into photography around 2012, I bought his book to go with my Rebel T2i. I also got the one for the Sony a6400 a couple of years back.

Much of the text in these kinds of books is boilerplate (shutter speed, aperture, AV mode, TV mode, flash sync), and I'm sure the book for each new camera starts as a search-and-replace in the text of the previous model. But I've never come across a feature description or illustration in one of the books that clearly doesn't apply to that camera.

I've only bought the light blue "Guide to Digital Photography" books, not the purple "Fast Track Guides", so I don't know how the editions compare.

One possibility is that Mr. Busch never specifically sat down and wrote this book, but it was instead pieced together by his publisher from other books he's written. That doesn't justify its inaccuracies, but it might explain them if the people doing it didn't really know cameras.