Motorsports - Camera Upgrade

Sam Edwards

Sam Edwards

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Currently using a Canon 500D with the 100-400 L Series lens, looking to upgrade my camera around Christmas time with a budget of £1000.

Is the 7D the best camera to upgrade to with regards to spec and price? I will be shooting Motorsport from Donington Park/Silverstone/Mallory Park (if the BSB go back there!) and will hopefully take a run out to Cadwell Park. I'm more of a one shot, rather than taking five or six shots of the same person on one corner, but having a fast AF is always handy!

Let me know your opinions :)
 
I'd test the 70d tbh, the 7D is long in the tooth and is about to be replaced in September if you listen to the rumours. I was bitterly disappointed with the 7D but I had numerous problems with both focus and noise, many people love it but in my experience with my copy it was terrible
 
7D will give you weather sealing and spot focus mode but you will have issues with noise and there seems to be a great variance between cameras. I have a 70D, AF is about 99% spot on, there's only a couple of occasions where the camera has fluffed (the rest of the time it's just me!). As your budget is £1000 I would recommend the 70D, the 7D MKII is going to be the one to get for this type of work but it'll be double your budget.

ISO 1250, no NR

Silverstone Classic 2014 by Bryan Janes, on Flickr
 
Make sure you try out whatever you get before you hand over your money. I had a 7D and absolutely hated it, just so inconsistant. Sold it and bought a 1D MKiii for £600 and am so much happier.
 
Thanks for the replies!

Having read into the 70D, I'm liking the sound of it, it seems to read up really well. Its also well within budget, so i'll still have money left for high speed memory cards/batteries etc. My 500D serves me pretty well, I just need a quicker AF, more MP, and the added bonus of more FPS if I need it.

Is there anywhere that you can hire cameras to try out? I would imagine that it's quite expensive to do that?
 
£50 a day from Fixation, it's not worth it really as it'll take some time to learn how to get the best out of it... I went from a 550D to a 70D and it was a worthwhile upgrade so I'm sure you'll get on fine.
 
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Janesy B said:
£50 a day from Fixation, it's not worth it really as it'll take some time to learn how to get the best out of it... I went from a 550D to a 70D and it was a worthwhile upgrade so I'm sure you'll get on fine.
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Would you say it there was a particularly noticeable difference in your photo results?
 
It terms of static shots, pretty much zero difference in terms of image quality as I already had good lenses however when light drops off in the evening, going from getting unmanageable noise at ISO 400 to having well controlled noise at 1600-2000 makes a huge difference. In terms of action/panning shots, that's where the main difference is, AF performance is night and day so you have a much higher keeper rate and you're more likely to get 'the shot' rather than waiting for the camera to clear it's buffer. I shoot mainly JPEG for on track stuff and you can have up to 40 shots in a single burst before you exhaust the buffer. It's also much nicer to use, and because of the top LCD you can keep the screen folded in and save battery. I can get about 2000 shots out of a single charge if I keep the screen flipped shut (I don't do chimping). Having a dedicated AF button, jog wheel and dedicated button for switching AF modes/points is very handy too.
 
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Sam Edwards said:
I'm more of a one shot, rather than taking five or six shots of the same person on one corner

Let me know your opinions :)
Click to expand...

Why do you want to replace your camera? Are you missing shots? Or are your shots soft?, perhaps it's the camera setting you using?

A new camera won't improve your shots if you're using the wrong settings or expecting fantastic shots when the light conditions are grey and overcast.

To be honest, if you're not part of the spray and pray brigade (it's actually funny at airshows watching them shoot the planes down) your current camera should get you decent results. I friend has a 450D and a sigma 80-400mm lens and takes fantastic images when conditions are in his favour. Your 100-400mm a much better lens.

Personally I would always upgrade the lens before upgrading the camera body.

But if you are adamant that you need to upgrade the body, the 70D would be the body of choice over the 7D.
 
you need to look carefully at what a body can give you, for me physical controls, feel, viewfinder stuff, performance really do help
 
You should be able to get a used 1D Mk3 for less than your budget.

Easily the best way to go!
 
I would recommend the 7D over the 70D any day and you can pick up a new, albeit grey import for £600, or £799 for UK model. It is a steal at £600.
 
Ditto the above "I would recommend the 7D over the 70D any day".
I recently Traded a 60D for a 7D, also previously had a 40D, the reason for going the 7D route over full frame was the additional reach due to the crop factor, the weather sealing but mostly the frame rate and feel in the hand, the 60D just felt too small and I dont have massive hands.
The other thing is the 7D is a steal at the moment, mine is mint and virtually unused, very low shutter count with all leads, manuals and box (mostly not used) for £425.
The image quality and performance so far has exceeded what I was hoping for and has help me produce some great photographs I am very happy with.
Just my opinion but hope it may help you decide.
Good luck choosing.
 
what about the 5D mark ii? does anyone have any experience using this shooting motorsports?
 
thanks for that. I've seen quite a few 7Ds around the £500 - £600 mark, so I think that's what i'll go for :)
 
and so yesterday i became the proud owner of a 7D! :)

just need a little bit of advice about memory cards, the one i was using in my 500D was a Sandisk Extreme 8GB 20MB/s, anyone recommend a memory card for the 7D?

i was looking at the Sandisk 32GB 160MB/s, but i'm not quite sure if i need the 160MB/s? I must admit, i thought my old memory card was alot faster than 20, or at least it seemed it!
 
I use Kingston Ultimate 266x 16Gb cards in mine, never had a problem :)
 
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