EOS 7D gets better with v2 firmware
From August 2012 EOS 7D owners will get some valuable enhancements to their cameras – for free. In a somewhat strange move Canon has issued a press release announcing that version 2 firmware is coming and bringing a lot of updates to the camera. Hurry up August I want to improve my camera for free.
The updates improve both stills and movie functions, finally EOS 7D gets manual audio levels, but also a bigger buffer when shooting RAW. I like the addition of the feature to limit the maximum ISO setting with ISO Auto. The other features are pretty cool too, my images from the EOS 5D3 and EOS-1D cameras have BWP4 as the first four characters of the filenames thanks to custom filename options, now the EOS 7D can have the same. In-camera rating is something that i’m using on the EOS 5D Mark III when shooting models and portraits. A quick review on the back of the camera with the subject and I tag all the pictures that they instantly like. It helps when the edit starts to find the pictures that resounded with the subject on the shoot.
Canon EOS 7D firmware v2 – new features:
- Improved maximum burst for RAW images (up to 25)
- In-camera RAW image editing
- In-camera Image Rating
- In-camera JPEG resizing
- Maximum Auto ISO setting (ISO 400-6400)
- Manual audio level adjustment in movie recording
- GPS compatibility
- File name customisation
- Time zone settings
- Faster scrolling of magnified images
- Quick control screen during playback
Good news, and I hate to be the guy who is never happy but it would be great if Canon also fixed the AE Bracketing limit of 3 to at least 7 though. Shouldn’t be hard, no?
I have to agree with Steve. The AEB shot adjustment would be a great time saver for covering a wider exposure range for HDR in one easy hit. Saves me having to take a series of 2 or 3 sets with exposure compensation to get the same range.
It would seem to be an easy addition to make in a firmware update – perhaps something for v2.01 release? 😉
Good to see firmware being used to improve / add new functionality to a camera though, rather than having to correct bugs. It should definitely be the norm and not the exception!
[…] So taking a trusty EOS 7D with firmware 1.2.5 as a test camera I set about working out what actually works and what is not working, along the process I found a mid-ground of things that work but aren’t officially supposed to. I’m really hoping that some of the mid-ground things are moved to the “it works” category when the new firmware v2 comes in August. […]
[…] took the step of pre-announcing version 2.0 firmware for the EOS 7D a few weeks ago, well now it’s August and the update is ready for customers to download and […]