This evening I attended a launch event for the new Canon 7D camera hosted by The Camera Store and Canon. The event was held at Webster Gallery. It was a great venue, great event, great people. Here’s what I learned from the event.
1 - Cameras are awesome
The new 7D is a fantastic Camera. If other technology evolved as fast as camera’s, we’d probably be in flying cars by now. A couple of my favorite features:
- Live-view with histogram: I live and die by the histogram. It would be nice to see one before I shoot the wrong exposure.
- +/- 3.0 EV Exposure compensation: I usually push my exposure beyond the +2.0 on my camera. This might be useful.
There are a lot more features that I probably wouldn't use right now.
2 - Photographers are awesome
There were presentations by a couple of guys who got to try out the camera for 2 weeks. It’s amazing how much there is to learn from other photographers. What’s even more amazing is how readily they share their knowledge.
The first, a landscape photographer, shared tips, tricks and a few breathtaking photos from his ‘field tests’ with the camera. The second, who puts himself in the photojournalist camp, had equally amazing photos – including a few that made the front page of the national news.
3 - Photographers are not artists
I like art, and I like art galleries. I don’t frequent them often as I usually get ‘the look’. The look I got when I walked into the Ferrari showroom in Toronto carrying my shopping from the flea market. The Canon event was a great opportunity to browse around a gallery without being qualified as a potential customer.
What I found interesting was there were no more than 5 other attendees who took more than a cursory glance at the work that surrounded them. The majority of attendees were more interested in the frames-per-second burst in a Canon 30D vs. the 40D or whether it was worth getting aperture for the Mac. It was like poets standing around in a library talking about which pen or word processor to use. Maybe photographers ARE artists, but we sure are a different kind of artist. Or maybe others had better intentions of buying this camera than I did.
