New Camera Body - Canon 70D

I bought my Canon T2i in March 2012. It is still rock solid and I enjoy it but I felt it was time to upgrade for a few reasons. One of the reasons was the autofocus. I was looking at cameras in my range, I was contemplating the 7D because it's reasonably priced when purchased refurbished. A few reasons pointed me to the 70D. The sensor is newer so it'll generally be a better low light performer. The frame rate was close enough. The video on the 70D is amazing. Also, the 7D uses compact flash cards and although considered better than SD, it would add to the investment. More on that later..

Autofocus is much better with 19 points, all being cross-type. My T2i only had 9 points with the center point being the only cross-type. After using the new system a bit, the 9 didn't seem so bad but it's nice to have the higher accuracy cross-types all over the sensor instead of just the middle.

Controls are better laid out to change settings quickly. There is a learning curve but I don't think it'll take too long.

Another reason for upgrading was the frames per second. I don't typically spray and pray but it's nice to have 7 frames per second as opposed to less than 4. The shutter also has a silent mode which isn't really silent but it moves the mirror and shutter differently so it appears to be quieter.

I like shooting low light situations and my T2i works well with good glass but it's not great. At 1600 ISO, it's almost unusable. I chose the 70D over the 7D because of the newer sensor and the higher ISO range. I did a few test shots but just to test it out. They all suck. I did take the following one and was decent enough to share.

This is a photo of my dad taken at 12,800 ISO. It was nearly completely dark. There is a lot of noise and color is not all there but it's 12,800 ISO! No, it's not a D4s, or even some of the Nikon DX's that seem to perform better at higher ISO but it's a major improvement over the T2i.

Getting more paid photo jobs, I also felt the need to have a backup body in case something happens. You never know if the camera body will fail and if it did, I'd be out of luck and probably not get paid or not get future jobs for not delivering.

On the downside, I had to upgrade my Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to version 5.3. While a worthy upgrade, it was an unexpected expense. The process was a headache. My payment wouldn't process so I had to call them. It was a pain.

All in all, I'm happy with the purchase. It was a lot of money but I see it two ways. I've made some photography money in the past year so if I use that, it was significantly lower. The cost after my photo income was about what I spend on myself for my birthday every year or two so it's not bad.

Many more photos and videos to come from the 70D, hopefully. Speaking of videos, now that I have a good auto focus camera, I will be finishing the Mizuno Wave Inspire 10 review. I plan A Run in The Park sequel of sorts. Stay tuned.