Thinking about purchasing a 7D....but not sure...

Let me lay down the situation first and perhaps you guys can help me. I bought a Canon 40D last July and it has thus far performed wonderfully but...the other day I fell while hiking and the camera landed on the ground. My lens is perfectly fine, but the camera now turns off randomly....otherwise it's fine (I had a rubber cover for it which prevented visible damage.) Anyway, I sent it off to Canon to be fixed (hopefully) under warranty. Now, I have a very important photo excursion planned for northern Australia in August and it's important for me to have a fast camera capable of producing magazine quality photos. Do Canon's usually remain just as fast after being fixed? I am using a 100-400L lens....if I decide to purchase the 7D will it work with the 100-400L? I will be very close on cash levels if I buy the 7D and, if I can buy it, I will only barely be able to do so. Do you think it's worth buying the 7D given the circumstances? OR do you think I'm better off staying with my fixed 40D (assuming it still runs great)? Does the 10-megapixels really matter when it comes to selling photos? Thanks for bearing with all of my questions- Brandon

Brandon, you've got plenty of time to get the 40D back from Canon and decide if it is reliable enough to count on during your trip. Of course, a backup body is a great comfort if it is very important that you get shots on a trip.

I own both the 40D and the 7D, and I do prefer the 7D's configurability, frames per second, AF improvements, and extra pixels for cropping. That said, the 40D is still a good camera, and if it works for you, it works for you. It worked for me (and still does) but I was able to go for the 7D and did. If it's a stretch, that's different. Either works just fine with the 100-400.

I'd say give it a couple months, see how the 40D performs after the fix, and go from there. But if you get the 7D, give yourself some time to learn it before your trip.

Brandon, before you buy the 7D feed "7D focusing problems" into google and like myself you will find many people who cannot get a sharp image with al servo. Wish I hadn't bought mine but there are some people who have like it so it's pot luck whether you get a good one or not. At the moment I wish I had still got my 40D. Graham

What Graham said, I tried one out and sent it back yesterday. I was hitting flying Mallards with the center point in a good spot almost every time but when I looked at them on the computer 90% of them were soft, same result with my local Red-tailed Hawks. I tried all the different af point configurations and tried the supposed fixes, the "hard reset" and cleaning the contacts but to no avail. My guess is that this is going to be like what happened with the Mark III and eventually Canon will come out and say that certain serial numbers need to be recalled and fixed. Obviously many of the 7D's out there work very well as evidenced by the fine flight shots posted on this site by Ron Dudley, Ron Bielfeld and others. But when accomplished photographers like Graham and I can't get it to work and the amount of others struggling on other forums then there are definetly some lemons out there. If you do buy one, buy it from a store that will let you exchange it for another one for up to a month's period or so, so you can thoroughly test it. I bought mine online and sent it back for a refund because I really don't need a new body, I like my 1DMarkIII and I am curious to see how this all plays out.

I would guess your 40D will work fine after it's been repaired but as Brian said you have plenty of time to test it out. I would think the extra megapixels of the 7D would be most helpful in terms of selling images if you needed to crop the image much, for full frame images I don't think it will make much of a difference.

I suppose I should have mentioned--mine went back to Canon for autofocus problems. They fixed it and it has been fine since.

I was a little hesitant to post a comment about the 7D that I had since I thought the problem may have been user error to a point. I had the 7D for 10 days and sent it back for a refund. I couldn't get a clean focus no matter what I tried. I finally gave up when I took some comparable photos with a 4mpx 1D with stacked converters and they were cleaner and sharper than the 7D that I had.

I'm sure there are good 7D kits out there as evidenced by some of the excellent posts in the avian gallery. I just didn't get one, and didn't see the point of sending a new high level camera to Canon for repair. I was afraid that I'd never trust the camera again and I didn't want that to influence the way I was shooting.

I have a 7D, 1D MK4 and 40D. I would not hesitate to suggest a 7D. My wife and I just returned from a trip to Tanzania and found the 7D to be an excellent performer. The AF was super. IQ is excellent up to ISO 1600 and usable at ISO 3200. Yes, we use Noiseware Pro at the high ISOs. The prints produced are just outstanding. The 100-400 is a good lens for the 7D. Gail used this combo almost exclusively during the trip.

All that said, the AF system on the 7D is kind of complicated. You must learn how to set it for your usage. For Tanzania we mostly used center point with surrounding assist points. It the AF was missed it was obviously our fault.

To my mind the 7D is the best bargain in crop sensors on the market today.

Thanks guys....I rarely ever crop my images...so I guess my question about mega-pixels was more pertaining to whether or not a 10-MP camera will produce prints that magazines/publishers/editors buy? I have seen 20Ds & 30Ds in magazines so I'm assuming this is true...but just want to make sure.