Is the Canon 7D Mark II any good in 2021?

the canon 7d mark ii was released in late 2014 and is a little over six years old now a lot has changed during that time the supreme court ruled that homosexual couples have a right to marry donald trump became president avengers end game was released after over a decade of build up bitcoin went from costing essentially nothing to over sixty thousand dollars and during all that time somehow i still haven't figured out a way to become a millionaire landscape photographer so how well does this camera hold up in today's modern photography world let's find out before i begin i want to say that this is not intended to be a comprehensive review this is a collection of my general thoughts and feelings on the camera after four years of continuous use i'll be coming at this review from the perspective of an average joe i don't spend too much time pixel peeping images of charts or anything like that i simply take images and videos with the camera and form my thoughts based on my personal real world use i first purchased this camera in 2017 refurbished directly from the canon website in that time i've not had a single issue with the camera breaking in any way i've used it in a wide variety of locations around the world from the blue ridge mountains to glacier national park to togo in west africa and i've used it in all weather conditions from rain to snow to days over 100 degrees fahrenheit i've shot weddings engagements church services portraits tons and tons of landscapes and i've even shot a few videos throughout the years so i feel like i've got the requisite experience to let you know what this camera is like and if it's worth spending your hard-earned dollars on all these years later let's start by going over some of the positives about this camera first off the price you can get it for around 600 to 700 used on ebay which is pretty decent price for what you're getting the camera is built like a tank and has a professional feel which is something you won't get from some of the other used cameras that are within this price range it's got great weather sealing and you probably won't ever need to worry about breaking this thing unless you're planning on throwing it into a pool or sacrificing it in a volcano the camera feels great in your hand and it makes you feel like a professional to use it especially if you're upgrading from a cheaper entry level camera i originally went from shooting with a canon t1i to the canon 70 mark 1 and let me tell you it feels like going from a fisher-price toy car to a lambo not that i've ever been in either one of those but i imagine it's got to be a similar feeling and as an added bonus if you're already used to canon cameras pretty much everything is going to be familiar from the button layout to the menu system and even the useless rate button is still there the camera features a high burst rate at 10 fps built in flash good auto focus capabilities dual card slots gps which is one of my personal favorite features and an optical viewfinder which sadly was recently added to the endangered species list and the last remaining wild optical viewfinder is currently being guarded alongside the last of the northern white rhinos now those are all great features what kind of images does this thing take well to sum it up it takes some pretty good ones it was pretty rare for me to wish i had a better camera when it came to the quality of images i was taking now there are some exceptions to that but i'll get to those in a minute i primarily see myself as a landscape photographer as that's the majority of what i photograph and what i enjoy taking pictures of the most therefore i primarily look at how this camera performs as a landscape photographer and as someone on a budget i was never let down most of my shots were taken on a tripod at iso 100 and i have the benefit of being able to combine multiple exposures in photoshop if i need to so it always worked nearly flawlessly for this purpose the dynamic range isn't amazing by today's standards but photoshop makes this less of an issue if you're willing to put in the extra work while post-processing now on to my two big complaints with this camera even though i'm primarily a landscape photographer i do occasionally take handheld photos at weddings live events etc and this was where i did have some problems i find that i'm able to pretty comfortably raise the iso at 800 or even around a thousand without being too worried about the image quality but raise it much above this and i start to get a bit concerned about how noisy the image is going to be in extremely challenging situations i've had shots that were so noisy that it definitely took away from the final image and it ended up having to use quite a lot of noise reduction in lightroom so that's definitely a con if you're going to be using your camera in these kinds of situations often it's not enough of a problem to be a deal breaker because this is a budget camera after all but it's definitely something to be aware of the other big problem with this camera lies in its video capabilities by modern standards the footage this thing puts out is awful it wasn't even that impressive back in 2014 when the camera came out so that's never a good sign footage is very soft and the smaller details often get lost in the blurry mess that is the end result and shots look very noisy when the iso gets raised even a little bit on top of this the camera doesn't shoot any higher than 1080 which even in 2014 was somewhat of a disappointment the autofocus works decently in video mode but it doesn't do an amazing job of tracking faces and subjects so you can't rely on that too much if you're going to be shooting videos the video functions work well enough to get by if you really have to but no one is going to opt for this camera as their first choice when shooting video even on a budget to sum it up i'm not a big fan of this camera for video in fact the poor video capabilities are the primary reason i ended up switching over to the canon r6 if you're on a budget and are planning on shooting primarily stills then the canon 7d mark ii is a viable choice to consider i've used it in a wide variety of applications and it worked great in all of them even the complaints i mentioned about the higher iso performance weren't that big of a deal and you'll be fine in the vast majority of situations i can heartily recommend it if you're looking for a professional feeling dslr to take primarily stills with however if you're looking for a budget video camera you're going to want to consider some of the other options that are out there on the market there are just far too many choices that are available that perform significantly better within this price range so what do you think has the canon 70 mark ii held up well through the years or is it finally starting to show its age go ahead and leave a comment with your thoughts on that below leave a like if you liked the video go ahead 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Channel: bfunphoto

Views: 20,661

Keywords: canon, 7d, mark ii, mark II, mark 2, Mark ll, 70, 7D, review, 2021

Id: yJJz0s8IcQo

Length: 6min 22sec (382 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 02 2021