Well, It's official. I ordered the EOS 7D and will begin reading and shooting and reading some more on Thursday. Just in time for the Easter Bunny. I would like to again thank all of you on the forum for your guidance and help in making the decision. I am sure I will have more questions. I still have the trusty EX-1, but now I will have an added camera to take along on shoots.

Phil Hanna

Congratulations Phil, I've had mine for just about a week now. Very Exciting! If you haven't seen this already, here are Canon's tutorial clips to check out before it arrives. There are only a couple that are about video.

http://www.usa.canon.com/dlc/controller?act=GetArticleAct&articleID=3167

Sitting here (all day!) waiting on the UPS guy... It is out on the truck for delivery since 5 AM this morning. I will review the lessons. Mush appreciated.

Phil

First thing you've got to do is turn off all the auto stuff, and there's some that's hard to find, one called picture enhancement or something like that. Don't have my camera with me at the moment so I can't look it up but somebody here will know what I'm talking about. If you're shooting 24p video, set your shutter to 1/50.

When I get a new camera the second thing I do (after turning off all the auto stuff) is to check for a dead pixel. Stop down or aim toward a dark area and pan around and look for a little white spot. If you see anything funky, record it and play the clip back. If the spot moves, that's bad. If it doesn't move it's probably gunk on the lens or LCD. The dead pixel thing seems more rare on the 7D than on most 1/3" chip video cameras for some reason.

I also checked out mine for heating. I recorded for about an hour and a half, stopping only a couple of seconds for the 12 minute limit and to quickly dump footage (all I had was a 16 gig card at the time). No heating issues at all, but it's something to check out. Obviously you've got to charge the battery first...a good thing to do while reading the manual, although except for explaining the picture settings it's not worth much in the video world.

I hope UPS has come through for you by now. I remember when I got mine I pulled in the driveway about 5 seconds behind the UPS truck. Since I got mine in late September I've shot 9 commercial programs, including some documentary style work. My XH A1 hasn't been out of its bag since the 7D arrived, except to take off the shotgun mic.

My XH A1 hasn't been out of its bag since the 7D arrived, except to take off the shotgun mic

this is what the 7d is doing to alot of camcorders.....its shelving them LOL unless you spend over 5k on a camcorder, the 7d will be better in most ways...

Well, I am now official. Got the 7D tonight and have had a fun time playing around with it. Where do I sign up for the PhD course? This this has a lot to learn. The card does not get here until tomorrow, so I can only take a shot and look at the LCD. Stuff looks great and works awesome in low light.
Phil

go to walmart and get a scandisk CF card, they have a udma 30MBps card....39.99....this way you can have a backup card and take some pics tonight...

also as long as you keep the iso below 1600 there is virtually no noise...but at 1600 i would use a lense with an f/2.8 or faster and then you will have great low light and low noise...

My XH A1 hasn't been out of its bag since the 7D arrived, except to take off the shotgun mic.

Really?? I just took it out for a test shot and I gotta say, I still love the feel and the control I have right out of the body!. The zoom on the xha1, white balancing, lcd screen, xlr input.

I saw both of them on my hd tv and gotta say both looked stunning.

Didn't say I didn't like it, I just haven't used it since I got the 7D. I'm not going to sell it, though, because I like it.

Be careful using cheap CF cards. Canon specs say you need a UDMI card. If you don't use a UDMA card you could have problems.

The Sandisk Extreme III 30Mbs card is their earliest UDMA one, as far as I know. It doesn't say UDMA on it, but if it says Extreme III and 30Mb/s, then it is UDMA. The've also had an Extreme III card that does NOT say 30Mb/s, and it is not UDMA. Confusing. It looks like they've quit producing the Extreme III 30Mb/s and are up to the Extreme 60Mb/s now. It does say UDMA on the label, and I believe most do now if they are UDMA.