New Camera?

[Mike Farley]

No, not really. Earlier this year, Canon released a major firmware upgrade for the 7D which ws an unusual move for the company. If I am honest, the changes either make improvements or introduce new functions which will have little bearing on the way I use the camera, but it does no harm to have the latest version as there are also a number of bug fixes. For me, the most important thing is that applying the firmware did not brick the camera!

From a brief test, the camera operates in the same manner as previously and none of my custom settings were altered. The burst mode appears to give me six more shots than previously before slowing, but that is a rarely used feature where the previous limit was not an issue. The abilty to produce JPEG files from Raw on the fly might prove useful at some point, but it is not something for which I have hankered. After the update wa applied, I had to go through the process of setting date and time again, as well as specifying the time zone and that was about it.