Canon EOS 7D: Nikon’s Worst Nightmare Has Begun

Canon EOS 7D

Bruce Wayne saw bats flying towards him out of a very bright light, haunting him every night during his sleep. The image above shows what is currently haunting every Nikon executive in their sleep at night, causing them to wake up screaming like girly men while bathing in their own sweat. For Bruce Wayne, things got better. But for Nikon, the worst is yet to come.

I know I’m a bit late with my introduction of our new 7D camera, but I have been very busy here at the office with all kinds of preparations for what is yet to come. We are heading for some very exciting times and let me assure you that the 7D is just the beginning. If you’re thinking about getting a 7D, be prepared to have your patience tested to the extreme. While the 7D should hit stores by the end of the month, chances are that this camera will be continuously backordered until the end of time.

We’ve just released the official 7D brochure, so you might want to download it and start drooling. You’ll notice that the marketing department got a little carried away while compiling the text for the brochure, and frankly, I don’t really blame them this time because the 7D is an exciting product. But when you see stuff like the following, please forgive them:

On Page 3: “Canon EOS SLR cameras have consistently featured cuttingedge AF technologies and the EOS 7D takes them a step further.”

I had to chuckle when I read that. OK fine I admit, I LOLed. Consistently featured cutting edge AF, huh? Yeah… I printed that line on a large banner and it is now hanging high up on the wall behind me in my office. Funny how people can so easily forget about the Great Fiasco of 2008. I think most of them just got so traumatized that they blocked 2008 out of their memory completely. Just thinking about 2008 sends chills down my spine every time so trust me when I say that it’s not easy for them. I mean really, all of you who are regular readers know that not too long ago I was crying here on my blog in despair, mentioning how I was coming home drunk every night because the future seemed very dark for us here at Canon. I was just totally wasted every night. But at least it wasn’t so bad that I woke up in the morning to find a tiger in my bathroom, a baby in the closet and David Sparer asking me why he’s missing a tooth, all while not being able to remember what happened to me the previous night.

Bradley Cooper and Chase Jarvis (right) - Separated at birth?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you have to really do yourself a favor and go out to see the movie “The Hangover,” starring Chase Jarvis as Bradley Cooper as Phil. Even if it’s just to see Chase taking Mike Tyson’s tiger from behind while yelling “Let’s fuck this tiger!!” I know it sounds bizarre, but seriously, I’m not kidding. On top of that you even have Canon Inc.’s Masaya Maeda, Director and Chief Executive of Image Communication Products Operations, making an appearance when he leaps out of the back of a car, totally naked, and starts beating the crap out of Chase with a crowbar.

Chase lying on the ground after taking a beating from Maeda

"You gonna fuck on me!!??"

There’s just something really funny about watching a gay looking Canon executive beating the crap out of a Nikon photographer.

Hangovers aside, things are starting to look pretty good for us here at Canon thanks to the Japanese at Canon Inc. in Tokyo finally listening to us. Even Vincent Laforet, peace and blessings be upon him, mentioned in a recent interview that Canon is finally starting to listen. If you’ve looked at the specs, you know that the 7D really introduces many exciting new features for Canon users. It’s funny how the 7D comes with a brand new and fucking awesome viewfinder design with an intelligent LCD display, getting rid of the focusing screens, when I just wrote about the state of the art “‘On-demand’ Viewfinder Gridlines Projection System” two months ago. Unfortunately though, the 7D still features the very advanced “Eyepiece Closing ‘Mechanism’“, arguably one of humanity’s greatest achievements, but I guess that it would have been too good to be true if that was also replaced with something better. 

However, the introduction of the 7D has led to the discovery of one of the most important formulas since E=MC2, a formula that holds great promises for the future. You can see it below in all its glory:

There’s not much else I can say about this right now, I just hope you and Canon Inc. know your math.

Overall we’re getting some great responses about the 7D. Jeff Ascough posted some sample images and mentions being very pleased with the 7D so far. I also got an email from someone who’s been on our case for a long time now. For some reason the content of the email cracked me up, so I’m just going to include it here without permission and be done with it:

Hell has frozen over! John Harrington has posted a TFP request for female models on his website!

My first positive blog post about Canon in a very long time: http://www.kareldonk.com/karel/2009/09/08/canon-eos-7d-looking-very-promising/

I’m just going to call that guy “Moses” from now on, as his predictions appear to be spot on. And when he writes positive about Canon, you know Nikon is going to have serious issues. Even Rob Galbraith had to admit that “Canon has a winner on their hands with the EOS 7D.” And then he went on to mumble something about the autofocus system. I don’t know what the fascination is with Galbraith and our autofocus systems. The guy just refuses to let it go. At some point he even mentions the following:

We also used the EF 85mm f/1.2L II, and focus was all over the place. The same lens exhibited the same unstable AF on an EOS 5D Mark II, suggesting the problem was more a function of the lens than the camera.

Am I the only one who slapped my hand on my forehead, shook my head and asked myself why Galbraith had to include this in his article? This is about the same as saying the following:

We also poured a couple of gallons of sulfuric acid on the 7D and it started going haywire before completely dying on us. The sulfuric acid had the same effect on the EOS 5D Mark II, suggesting the problem was more a function of the sulfuric acid than the camera.

Sometimes I fear for the future of humanity. I really do.

Now, I know a lot of you have written in to complain about the noise in images taken with a 7D and if I want to be honest, I can only admit that personally it also worries me a little. But let me remind you of what I said a while ago in reply to a Tech Tips question:

What is it with all the noise on the recent cameras? I thought image quality was important to Canon. Now I have to spend time cleaning up noise even at ISO 100. It’s getting crazy you guys better do something about this!

Thank you for your suggestion. If you’ve been following this blog long enough you already know my personal opinion regarding noise in images: I don’t like it myself. However, at Canon we think that noise is an important part of digital photography and certainly with regards to image quality. More noise in larger images is actually an improvement that contributes a lot to good image quality, as we have clearly demonstrated with the EOS 50D and the EOS 5D Mark II. Going forward, we expect noise to continue to play an important role in digital photography here at Canon with future advancements in sensor development, which will allow for even larger resolutions on smaller sensors while bending, and indeed completely trashing,  the laws of physics and causing a rip in the space-time continuum.
Other industry leaders have also recognized the importance of noise in images. For example, Adobe has demonstrated to share a similar view by including filters in Photoshop that add noise to images. As a result, images made with older cameras that offered noise-free images can now be improved by adding noise to them. I expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future.

Unfortunately the Japanese, while they do appear to be listening a little more to us now, are not willing to give up the megapixel race just yet. At this point I’m just hoping, praying to God even, that the noise problem will not ruin the 7D for us like it did with the 50D and to some extent also the 5D Mark II. I’m also hoping that the new AF system actually works. If the Japanese fuck this one up again, all hope will be lost. According to recently acquired intelligence, Nikon is also planning something big. Something really big.

Nikon Headquarters

We’ve got some exciting new stuff coming very soon as well. This time even I don’t have all the details as Japan has gotten more and more secretive about future plans. But what I’m certain about is that you’re going to see a very fierce battle unfold in the next few months. We are at war, make no mistake about it.

Finally, I want to mention that I’m celebrating my first birthday this Sunday, September 13th. On that day it will be exactly a year ago when I first started this blog. Amazing how time flies. I hope you’ll all be here with me to celebrate.

Gotta run now, lots of work waiting for me.