Canon 7D Ai Servo Extreme Test

I remember all the talks around the AF system of the Canon 1D Mark III when it came out a few years ago (yeah it’s been a while) and countless AF tests on the web with this fantastic camera.

Canon also regonized that the AF system had a few “issues” that would have been fixed via software or firmware updates.

Well, I didn’t have the bad luck of the AF system on my Canon 1D Mark III (blue dot) BUT had a few missed shots mainly because of user’s errors …
Before you jump on the ceiling and yell at me, just bare in mind that I was planning to walk around with the Canon 7D and the 16-35 f2.8 L II to do some street photography when this idea came across my mind.
It is not meant to be a “scientific” test .

Let’s not talk about the past but more from the present:

When the Canon 7D was announced, there has been, and there’s still is, a lot of talking about the new AF system.

Would it have the flaws of the 1D3 ? Did Canon try to kill the 1D3 system with this new one?

What ever reason is, here is some personal test that I just put my Canon 7D to:

Remember the excellent test from Rob shotting a sprinter running towards him at roughly 10 m/s (roughly 36 km/hour) ?

I did the “same” test but at 80 km/hour. That is more than double the speed of the original test.

No, this test is nothing scientific. No I don’t put in cause Rob’s test. This is purely personal interpretation of what I did and what happened.

So, what did I do ?

I was on the way to pick my car up when I had this idea to put the camera to the test.

Camera: Canon 7D

Lens: 16-35 f2.8 L II (yeah nothing really exotic compares to some 300 f2.8 L)

ISO : 3200 I wanted some speed and wanted to see how good the ISO was.

Shutter speed: 1/8000 s

Aperture: couldn’t go under f4

8 fps. Image set to JPEG.

So I simply put the central AF point on the right edge of the signage and fire away until the car passes the actual signage.

See for yourself.

Squeeze of 22 images, cropped around the AF area with ACR with no added ingredients (no extra sharpening, no colour correction …). Remember the car is running @ 80 km/hour and the road is bumpy.

PS: we went through a 100 km/hour section and I did the same test again … coming next

Click on the images for a bigger view