CANON R7 CAMERA

Premium performance at a reasonable price

- PETER RYAN

For me, one of the highlights of the Covid era was switching to a mirrorless camera system. Sony users have appreciated the benefits of mirrorless focusing for some time, but it took a while for Canon and Nikon to catch up. Canon’s initial R-series offerings lacked animal-eye focus and were a bit slow for top-end bird photography, but that changed with the release of the R5 and R6 bodies (see African Birdlife 9(3): 56‒60).

Then came Canon’s R3, its first probody format mirrorless camera that featured even faster and more flexible focusing options (African Birdlife 10(6): 60‒63). But all this innovation came at a price – literally. At R100 000, the R3 costs the same as Canon’s top professional SLR body and even the R6 at R50 000 is out of the price range of most birders.

In addition, for the many birders who loved their Canon 7D SLR for the extra reach they got from the crop sensor, the move to mirrorless required them to finally switch to a full-frame sensor. This meant either getting used to smaller birds in the image or buying a longer lens. Canon helped by offering its budget RF 600mm and 800mm f11 lenses (African Birdlife 9(3): 61), but the fixed aperture is challenging to use in low-light conditions.

Fortunately, Canon had a plan. It released the R7, which features most of the advanced focus features of the R3 with a higher resolution 1.6x crop sensor for little more than half the price of the R6. Canon has even included a converter worth more than R2000 that allows you to use EF lenses on the mirrorless R- series bodies. Sounds too good to be true? I couldn’t wait to find out.