chez wrote:
n0b0, how many hockey games have you shot in rinks that have bad lighting. Umm...let me guess. Would that be ZERO? Come back and give us advise when you have experience with what you are talking about.
Maybe you should try listening to your own advice. You're the one who suggested hockey in your answer to my question.
chez wrote:
Any high speed sport shot under lights. ( Hockey, football, basketball, baseball, volleyball...and on and on ) No one NEEDS 8 fps...but if you got it, why not use it. Tell me, when do you need 8 fps under bright sunny conditions.
Atsi, still no examples of a situation where you're gonna push that fps to the limit? Your previous examples were laughable. Who the hell shoot night scene and want to freeze the cars to see the license plate? Besides, what's freezing a car has anything to do with the burst speed? I can do that with a single shot.
BTW, you've never actually mentioned what FPS it dropped to.
I just got a 7D from a friend at Canon and it exhibits this same, strange, reduced frame rate phenomenon that the OP states and that others seem to be clueless about. When in M metering mode on the 7D, Manual Focus, any iso and set a shutter speed to 1/125 or faster, the camera fps goes from 8fps in "good" light to 4fps in poor light. The 40D does not do this; the 30D and 20D bodies also do not do this. Set a camera in full manual mode at 1/8000 , lens wide open with manual focus and hi-speed drive and it darn well better fire off at 8fps at ALL times.
The workaround, as has been stated earlier in this thread, is to press the AE-lock button so that the 7D maintains the 8fps burst. Of course, if you slow the shutter speed down too much then no you won't maintain 8fps as is the norm.
I shot some volleyball and football this evening and ran into the "8fps drop to 4ps" problem without changing anything but my position (bright corners to dark corners). My settings were: iso6400, 200mm@f2, 1/500 sec, high-speed shutter mode, AI-Servo AF. When the fps dropped, I thought I changed something...nope. I tried to get 8fps by going into manual focus mode....nope. The only thing that made the 7D bump back up to 8fps was a change of position to a lighter corner.
During a break in the action I got onto the web via my iPhone and did a search on the 7D and 8fps to find the AE-lock work around. It is a poor work around, but at least I can maintain 8fps bursts when I need to but this is a pain and an unforgivable 7D "feature".
Bmeister wrote:
I just got a 7D from a friend at Canon and it exhibits this same, strange, reduced frame rate phenomenon that the OP states and that others seem to be clueless about. When in M metering mode on the 7D, Manual Focus, any iso and set a shutter speed to 1/125 or faster, the camera fps goes from 8fps in "good" light to 4fps in poor light. The 40D does not do this; the 30D and 20D bodies also do not do this. Set a camera in full manual mode at 1/8000 , lens wide open with manual focus and hi-speed drive and it darn well better fire off at 8fps at ALL times.
The workaround, as has been stated earlier in this thread, is to press the AE-lock button so that the 7D maintains the 8fps burst. Of course, if you slow the shutter speed down too much then no you won't maintain 8fps as is the norm.
I shot some volleyball and football this evening and ran into the "8fps drop to 4ps" problem without changing anything but my position (bright corners to dark corners). My settings were: iso6400, 200mm@f2, 1/500 sec, high-speed shutter mode, AI-Servo AF. When the fps dropped, I thought I changed something...nope. I tried to get 8fps by going into manual focus mode....nope. The only thing that made the 7D bump back up to 8fps was a change of position to a lighter corner.
During a break in the action I got onto the web via my iPhone and did a search on the 7D and 8fps to find the AE-lock work around. It is a poor work around, but at least I can maintain 8fps bursts when I need to but this is a pain and an unforgivable 7D "feature"....Show more →
It is nice to hear from others finally who see the same thing as a problem. Please... everyone call your local Canon support or service center and complain so it gets fixed. It IS fixable easily with a firmware update.
I didn't see an answer to someone's question asking whether if in M mode the metering is switched from evaluative to spot, partial or centre weighted the fps is still low?
Pixel Perfect wrote:
I didn't see an answer to someone's question asking whether if in M mode the metering is switched from evaluative to spot, partial or centre weighted the fps is still low?
it doesn't make any difference when metering modes are switched.
stanj wrote:
M is not a metering mode but an exposure mode. Metering modes are Spot, Partial, Average, Evaluative.
I know...I had typed "Matrix" as a habit from my old Nikon days and never finished changing it to Evaluative. That happens when tired and shooting for someone else on a deadline. , I still habitually say "Matrix" when talking about Evaluative.
I think you're thinking of decimals and you're adding up eighths of a second. (0.125 second = 1/8 second.)
0.125 sec, 0.250 sec, 0.375 sec,.... 0.875, 1.000 sec.
So if you wanted to add up the times, you'd get (0.008 second = 1/125 second):
0.008 sec, 0.016 sec, 0.024 sec...
Try one second divided by one hundred. That is 1/100 second. How many 1/100 second are in one second?
This should be fixed in a firmware update I guess.
I understand canons design decision to cut framerates at the expense of better meetering (even though I've seen some dodgy burst meetering on the 7D so far) but this makes no sense whatsoever when the meetering isnt affectng the exposure, as in full manual mode.
Excellent "figuring out" in this thread ... and while it would be pretty easy to test my 7D by simply shooting in a pitch black room, I had to do something more complicated! ;-)
Read the whole setup and see resulting images here, but in a nutshell, I had a tripod mounted 7D taking burst frames of a digital stopwatch displaying hundredths of second - see image below. And yes, you could simply look at the subsec times in the EXIF ... but like I said, I went complicated! ;-)
The results were exactly what others have said - frames/second dropped from eight to four in very low light conditions, even with manual exposure and manual focus. The 50D shooting under the same conditions did not show any drop in performance. So yea, the 7D is trying to do something "smart" even in full manual, and this gets tripped up under very low light conditions.
BTW, it still seemed to shoot the same 4fps in that pitch black room, so my guess is whatever it is (metering?), it's just "giving up/timing out" after a certain amount of time and return control back to the camera.
This pretty much explains why, other than not having to change anything and thus save product development money, Canon didn't add the 'great' new 7D metering system to the 1DIV. On a pro camera such a frame rate reduction would be intolerable.
In a way it also smacks of typical Canon tactics to slightly cripple a lower tier product. Though Canon would phrase it as addressing a specific market segment. The 7D gives you almost what the 1D series does, but with a few gotchas that on paper appear minor, but in practice can be significant. The fps reduction and skimpy buffer, for example. Chances are for any major sporting events, there will be enough light and the fps won't drop. But because the metering works with reflective light readings, if a given team wears very dark jerseys... you never know.
rscheffler wrote:
This pretty much explains why, other than not having to change anything and thus save product development money, Canon didn't add the 'great' new 7D metering system to the 1DIV. On a pro camera such a frame rate reduction would be intolerable.
In a way it also smacks of typical Canon tactics to slightly cripple a lower tier product. Though Canon would phrase it as addressing a specific market segment. The 7D gives you almost what the 1D series does, but with a few gotchas that on paper appear minor, but in practice can be significant. The fps reduction and skimpy buffer, for example. Chances are for any major sporting events, there will be enough light and the fps won't drop. But because the metering works with reflective light readings, if a given team wears very dark jerseys... you never know....Show more →
I think it is a bit premature to describe this as Canon intentionally crippling the 7D. I bet this issue is addressed in firmware within a month or two as it is likely just a software bug.
Alek Komarnits wrote:
The results were exactly what others have said - frames/second dropped from eight to four in very low light conditions, even with manual exposure and manual focus. The 50D shooting under the same conditions did not show any drop in performance. So yea, the 7D is trying to do something "smart" even in full manual, and this gets tripped up under very low light conditions.
BTW, it still seemed to shoot the same 4fps in that pitch black room, so my guess is whatever it is (metering?), it's just "giving up/timing out" after a certain amount of time and return control back to the camera.
