dpreview has just published a review of the Canon EOS 550D / Rebel T2i . The review is very good and it seems that Canon really has produced a great entry level DSLR.
I personally do not recommend this camera for serious nature photographers, at least not as your main body. It would make a good backup body for an existing EOS 7D, though.
If you mostly shoot close-up, the 550D might be enough. For birds and other animals, the 7D is a much better choice due to it’s weather sealing, much faster frame rate and better AF system.
If you just start with nature photography and have a limited budget, the 550D may be a good option. When in doubt, it is better to spend more money on good lenses. For example, it is better for close-up photography to have a 550D and a high quality macro lens than a 7D and a mediocre lens.

Further information:
dpreview review of the Canon EOS 550D / Rebel T2i

Choosing a digital SRL camera for bird photography

Choosing a Canon DSLR for nature photography

A new article about choosing the right camera for bird photography is now available:
Choosing a digital SRL camera for bird photography
This replaces an older article published earlier on this page.
There are many choices today when it comes to choosing the right camera for photographing birds. If you are interested in bird photography but don’t know which camera to choose, read the article!

You may also like:
Choosing a lens for bird photography.

Famous North American nature photographer D. Robert Franz recently published several posts about the Canon EOS 7D on his blog.
The last blog post is about photographing birds in flight.
Robert confirms what many other photographers – including me – also experienced: The EOS 7D is a fantastic camera for photographing birds in flight.
I have many keepers with the EOS 7D together with my Canon EF 4/500L IS and EF 4/300L IS lenses.
Keep in mind that the AF of the EOS 7D is a complex tool. It has many different options and it will take some time to master. Once you know how to handle the camera, it is only your imagination, creativity and passion that will decide what pictures you take with the 7D. Have a look at Robert’s blog post and see his amazing flight shots to get some inspiration:
Canon 7D and Birds in Flight

I just came across a wonderful guide by Doug Brown on how to setup your EOS 7D with a special focus on photographing birds, especially birds in flight.

I think Doug has collected many great tips and a lot of information in this guide. I highly recommend reading this guide if you own a Canon EOS 7D and use it for bird photography (or any other photography).

Here is the link:
Setting Up Your New Canon 7D

Rob Galbraith has published an analysis of the autofocus performance of the Canon EOS 1D Mark IV.
The report is very detailed is should be of interest to anybody interested in getting Canon’s latest professional DSLR.

Hasselblad has announced the new medium format DSLR H4D-40. It contains a 33 x 44mm CCD sensor with 40 megapixels. The new camera contains the same AF system as found in the H4D-50 and H4D-60.
The new camera will be officially launched in 50 cities around the world starting on February 10 in 2010.

The new camera may be of interest for studio and landscape photographers who need such a large resolution and make extremely large high quality prints. For most other photographers, the high price alone may put the H4D-50 out of reach.

More information:
http://www.hasselbladusa.com/promotions/h4d-40.aspx

Last Friday, I bought a Canon EOS 7D DSLR. I always wanted a 2nd camera body as a backup and for cases
when two bodies might just be handy. My EOS 40D will now be my backup camera and the new EOS 7D my main camera.

I used the camera during the last weekend and tried it on birds and some macro shots.
Here I want to summarise some of my first impressions of the new camera.

General impressions:
First I was happy that the sensor of the new camera was clean. When I got my first EOS 10D many years ago, the sensor was so dirty that Canon exchanged the model and gave me a new one.
The EOS 7D feels very solid and professional. It is build very sturdy and feels very valuable when you hold it on your hands. The menu is very easy to navigate and most buttons are where they are on the 40D. The On/Off switch is now at the mode dial. This was confusing at first as I looked at the same location where the EOS 40D has it’s On/Off button but I didn’t find it there

Little Grebe, EOS 7D, EF 4/500L IS, 1.4x, Tripod, Wimberley Head 2

Batteries:
The EOS 7D uses the same battery type as the EOS 5D Mark II but unfortunately not the same as the 40D, so I had to buy new batteries as a backup for the EOS 7D. With 89 Euros for a Canon batteries, this was quite expensive.
The batteries last very long. I’ve shot more than 1.000 images (with temperatures below 0 degree Celcius) during the last two weekends and the 7D says that the battery is still half full.

File size of the EOS 7D:
The new files are about twice as big as the files in the EOS 40D which is no surprise as the EOS 7D has almost twice the resolution. With RAW files (and I only shoot in RAW), a CF card can fill quickly, especially if you set the EOS 7D to 8 frames per second and fire away. On a 8 GB CF card, you can save about 300 images when shooting RAW.

Of course it also takes longer to copy the files with a card reader on my PC and importing them into Lightroom. With a modern computer (and I have a pretty new and powerful one) this is no problem, though. Opening and editing the files in Lightroom is fast.

Autofocus:
So far I didn’t photograph any birds in flight due to bad weather. The sky was grey all day and the low light wouldn’t have allowed shutter speeds of 1/1.500 or shorter to get really sharp images.
So I could only try the One-Shot AF on static subjects and the Al-Servo on swimming Mallards and Tufted Ducks. The 7D had no problems, but of course we expect a good AF system to track swimming ducks. Initial focus acquisition was very fast and accurate.
The EOS 7D AF system is far more sophisticated as the one in the EOS 40. The new zone system, 19 AF sensors and more configuration capabilities will require the photographer to spend some time learning, testing and understanding the system to get the best results.
Unfortunately, Canon has decided, as with all non EOS 1D cameras, that AF will only work up to f5.6. This is annoying when you own a lens like a 4/500 or 4/600 and what to use AF with an 2x extender.

Image Quality:
The resolution of the EOS 7D is stunning and allows a lot of cropping. This is especially important for nature photographers who cannot always get as close to animals as they want to. Even if you take a 33% crop, you will still have a 6 MP images which still allows pretty large prints.
The image quality at high ISO is pretty good and better than I expected it to be with a 18 MP sensor in 1.6 crop format.
Of course it does not reach the image quality of a Nikon D3s but that camera has “only” 12 MP and all on a full frame sensor. ISO 12.800 is available on a EOS 7D but in my opinion absolutely unusable – at least for nature photographers. If you are a paparazzi and can get an embarrassing shot of some celebrity, it might be enough in 12.800 but if you want to have a high quality print or even an image on the web, the 12.800 ISO setting is useless with the EOS 7D. Maybe It was added for marketing reasons.
The 18 MP on a small 1.6 crop sensor demand very good lenses. I shot most of the images during the last weekend with my Canon EF 4/500L IS which is one of Canon’s best lenses. The results were very good. Other lenses I tried where the EF 4/17-40L, EF 3.5/180L and EF 4/300L IS and all delivered great results with the EOS 7D. Note that all of those lenses are L quality lenses.

Other comments:
I was happy to see that the EOS 7D works with the same cable release as the 40D.
The 8 frames per second are great for action photography. With 18 MP and 8 frames per second, your CF cards will fill very quickly, though.
I am happy that the EOS 7D uses CF cards and not the tiny SD cards now used in some cheaper cameras. So I can use the same cards I’ve used with the EOS 40D. I always format the CF cards before using them again. This is always a good idea and even more important when using two different cameras.
The EOS 7D has a 100% viewfinder which is much better than the those of other DSLR models below the EOS 7 which only have a viewfinder that covers about 95% (or less) of the actual image.

First conclusion:
After two days playing with the EOS 7D I will still have a lot to learn to get the most out of the camera. The first impressions are very good and I already love the camera and do not regret a single of the 1.399 Euros I spent on the camera.
At this point, I would immediately recommend the camera to anyone who wants a powerful and high quality camera at a reasonable price. I think for 1.399 Euros, the camera offers a lot.

Get an Canon EOS 7D from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk or amazon.de:

Canon has published several video tutorials for the Canon EOS 7D.
The 16 videos cover many topics like the various AF settings, movie mode, using flash and more. If you own a Canon EOS 7D or plan to get one, I highly recommend watching those videos.
You can watch them online, on your IPod or IPhone and even on the LCD of your EOS 7D.

Find the videos here:
EOS 7D: On-Camera Tutorial Videos

Art Morrisis one of the best bird and nature photographers of our time. In a recent blog post about the AF of the EOS 7D and EOS 1D Mark IV he writes:
My initial impression is that the Mark IV is surely the best ever Canon body when it comes to tracking incoming subjects that are rocketing towards you.
He also considers the AF performance of the EOS 7D to be excellent. It seems that Canon really got it right with both cameras.
I will soon publish my own opinion of the EOS 7D as a camera for nature photographers as I just bought mine a few hours ago.

Update:
Art Morris has just published another posting about the AF of the EOS 7D:
7D Image Quality & AI Servo AF Pattern Comment (for birds in flight).

Recently, Leica has announced the prices for the new S-System. The S-System is a new camera system from Leica with a new sensor which is bigger than current full frame sensors in cameras like the Nikon D3x or Canon EOS 5D Mark II. The sensor has a size of 30×45 mm and 37.5 megapixels. The new camera, called S2, will have Autofocus – something Leica never introduced into it’s legendary R-System.
The new System will require completely new lenses as the lenses for the R system won’t fit on the bigger lens mount of the S2.
For the start of the systen, the following four lenses will be available from Leica (more lenses will probably follow soon):

2.5/70
3.5/180
2.5/120
2.5/35

Now the new S-System will be available soon. The question is: Will this be a success? Leica had it’s problems in recent years, probably because they misjudged the almost complete takeover of digital photography.

The move to a larger sensor and a completely new system has surprised many but is also considered the right direction for professional photography by many photographers.
There is no doubt that the new lenses will be extremely good and will deliver outstanding sharpness. I am sure at least some photographers have already ordered the system and can’t wait to take the first pictures with the S2 and a new Leica lens.

But to be a success, Leica must sell more cameras and lenses than just a few. The development of the whole system took quite some time and therefore, was probably pretty expensive.

I really hope that Leica will be successful with the new system. I won’t get one for myself, but I have always liked Leica products – I own a great pair of Leica binoculars.

But there are several reasons, why this might not be successful. Please keep in mind that this is must my personal opinion. Let’s look at the different reasons:

Price:
Probably the biggest obstacle for most photographers. At a price of more than 20.000 US dollars for the camera body alone, only professionals and maybe some amateurs who always wanted to have a Leica will think about getting this one. If you get all the four new lenses, you will have to pay more than 40.000 dollars!!!
In the current economic situation, most professional photographers will think at least twice before spending that much amount of money on a new camera system. For a lot less money, you can get a complete full frame camera system from Nikon or Canon which produces amazing quality. Even some medium format cameras are cheaper than the new Leica S-System.

Competition with the current full frame cameras from Nikon and Canon
For about 1/3 of the price you can get a Nikon D3X which already delivers 24.6 MP and Nikon has recently produced some awesome lenses full frame cameras. The difference between the 24.6 MP of the D3X and the 37.5 of the S2 is not as big as it might look it is.

Lenses:
Nobody doubts that the new Leica lenses will be outstanding. Leica has always produced excellent lenses which where often the best on the market.
At the moment, only 4 lenses will be offered. More will follow, probably soon. But right now, 4 lenses is not much. With the current lenses, the S-System is mostly suitable for studio photography and landscape work which are probably the primary targets for the S-System. There are no really long telephoto lenses or macro lenses yet. And today, people want zoom lenses. Hopefully Leica will soon offer more lenses, otherwise the whole system will not be very interesting for most photographers.

The sensor:
It will be interesting to see how the sensor in the S2 performs. The current sensors in high resolution full frame cameras like the Nikon D3X or the Canon EOS 5D Mark II are of very high quality.
The sensor in the S2 must match the quality of sensors in those cameras and not just at ISO 100 but also at higher ISO values. The D3X and EOS 5D Mark II are good at high ISO settings like ISO 800 or even above. If the S2 sensor is significantly worse than the Nikon or Canon cameras, many photographers will probably prefer a Nikon or Canon camera.

Future models by Canon or Nikon
Canon and Nikon make the most money with entry-level and mid range cameras like the Nikon D90 or D300(s).
But for the professional market, they may decide to develop new cameras with larger sensors as big as the sensor in the S2 or even bigger. In a few years, a 45 MP sensor twice the size than the current sensor in a D3X may be available for only a few thousand dollars and even amateur photographers might think about getting such a camera. The reason why we have not yet seen such cameras from Nikon or Canon is the fact, that the current lenses won’t fit on such a camera. Nikon and Canon would need to build a whole new line-up of lenses for the new cameras. And this would mean a significant investment many photographers won’t be willing to make.
But I am sure Canon and Nikon are at least thinking about such a move. And they have the knowledge and probably the financial resources to do it. And then they may be much faster than Leica building such a system. Canon and Nikon probably could build a complete lens line-up much faster than Leica. And they could reuse much of current camera technology. It shouldn’t be to difficult to take the body of a Nikon D3 or a Canon EOS 1D Mark III and put a larger sensor in it. And stuff like flashes probably could be used with the current cameras and the one with the larger sensor as well.
Just imagine Nikon would offer a similar camera like the S2 but with all the power of the D3(X), including the great AF system and all the other great features. They could probably make it available a lot cheaper than Leica.
And Nikon and Canon are also capable of building high quality lenses. I think that if Canon or Nikon (or both) decide to build a system similar to the S-System from Leica and if they aggressively advertise for it, Leica won’t have much chance against them.

As I already wrote, this is just my personal opinion. I recently had the chance to hold a prototype S2 in my hand. I feels great and I really wanted to take it, together with the new lenses, and try it out for a few days but that was, of course, not possibly.

I wish Leica good luck with the new system but only time will tell if it will be successful or not.