Not considering anything else, is the focussing capability of the 7D close to, or better or worse, than that of the 5D mark III?

I shoot sports and lots of BIF (birds in flight) and thinking of upgrading to the 5D III just for its reputed focussing.
My 5D II is OK for still subjects, but it would be sold with the 7D to finance the 5D III.

Would I gain MUCH in focussing speed and accuracy with the mark III?

thank you.

I own 7D, 5D III and 1D IV. 5D III is best of all three then 1D IV then 7D. 7D can do very well, but IMO, it is not as stable in a long burst ie will lose focus for no reason and then reacquire it and takes longer to acquire focus. I've only taken about 1000 shots on my 5D III, but so far it's been brilliant and I do a lot of bif shots. The 5D III builds on 7D's extensive AF options and the 61 pt give a lot of flexibility and the outer points are also really good.

For birding however, the 7D makes a lot of sense if you do not have any glass longer than 400mm. The 7D has effectively 1.45x the reach of the 5D III when FL limited and that's a huge advantage. It's why I didn't sell my 7D.

You can't really go wrong with 5D III and IQ is excellent especially noticeable at higher ISO's, not that 7D is too bad itself.

One test that I've done to verify that 5D3 has better AF than 7D is when I used 70-300L with Kenko 1.4x. AF works on both bodies. However, for 7D, the AF is unreliable and hunts most of the item, while the AF works really well on 5D3.

Still, I agree with Pixel Perfect that I'd still use 7D for focal length limit situations like BIF.

And +1 on the reason why I didn't sell my 7D as well.

Running a focus test at f8 out of spec on both bodies isnt a great test is it?

IMO the 5d3 has much better focus than a 7d but you loose a lot of reach.

If your reach limited and even crop then no matter how good the 5d3 is you will end up with much smaller images. If not its going to be better.

I have both the 7D and the 5D Mk III. I totally agree with what others have said.

I mostly shoot sports of all sorts. The autofocus on the 5D Mk III is superior to the 7D, but when I am in "reach limited" situations I will use the 7D and get better images out of it. I am loving the Mk III and not selling the 7D.

Having owned and used both I think the 5D III is clearly superior.

5D III is more reliable
-- not as easily fooled to grab background
-- more focusing options for tuning focus to the exact type of action you are shooting
-- much more reliable focus with TeleConverters - especially non-reporting lens/TC combinations at F8
-- better in lower light

7D is not bad for focus - just not what the 5D III is

Worse, does not (in most ways) match the AF of the 5D MkIII. It doesn't mean the 7D is bad, but few cameras can compete with the 5D MkIII/1Dx AF system once you've used it for awhile.

abqnmusa wrote:
Having owned and used both I think the 5D III is clearly superior.

5D III is more reliable
-- not as easily fooled to grab background
-- more focusing options for tuning focus to the exact type of action you are shooting
-- much more reliable focus with TeleConverters - especially non-reporting lens/TC combinations at F8
-- better in lower light

7D is not bad for focus - just not what the 5D III is

+1

I have both. The 5DIII is in a different league in terms of focus speed and accuracy.

There was also detailed technical comparison done on these camera's AF system, which matches my own empircal experiences:
http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/08/autofocus-reality-part-3b-canon-cameras

I agree with the statements that the 5d3 is better than the 7d.

I do not agree about the 1div and 5d3 comparisons.

Fan boys on the run....")

Wahoowa wrote:
.............................. However, for 7D, the AF is unreliable and hunts most of the item, while the AF works really well on 5D3.

....................................snip.

Putting the 7D on zone AF, helps.

I shot football this evening with both the 7D and 5D3. I used the 7D the first half with a 70-200IS II and the 5D3 with the same lens and a 1.4xIII added for the second half. I switched because I was missing focus on some shots with the 7D. Moving to the 5D3 combo made all the difference. I can't explain why the 7D miss those shots but it was the first time I'd used it for night football. Since I'm using flash with both the frame rate wasn't an issue. For night football the 5D3 was great. The 7D was ok. I suppose user error isn't out of the question but the 5D3 just seemed to work better in this application.

NCAndy wrote:
I shot football this evening with both the 7D and 5D3. I used the 7D the first half with a 70-200IS II and the 5D3 with the same lens and a 1.4xIII added for the second half. I switched because I was missing focus on some shots with the 7D. Moving to the 5D3 combo made all the difference. I can't explain why the 7D miss those shots but it was the first time I'd used it for night football. Since I'm using flash with both the frame rate wasn't an issue. For night football the 5D3 was great. The 7D was ok. I suppose user error isn't out of the question but the 5D3 just seemed to work better in this application.

I may suck at using the 7D, but sometimes I cannot for the life of me work out how it misses some shots. Even more bizarre is how you can say take a burst of shots and you get say 3-4 perfectly focused, then 2-3 oof, then another 3-4 in focus, whereas I know with my 1 series and now 5D III these longer bursts are far more stable. With the 7D I find you have to pump the AF and stick to shorter bursts.

How do you guys miss focus on the 7D at all

Zone AF with AI Servo on moving objects has never failed me.

vsg28 wrote:
How do you guys miss focus on the 7D at all

Zone AF with AI Servo on moving objects has never failed me.

I use zone when subject is against plain backgrounds but not when their busy.

The responses here make it that much clearer that if a 7D mark II is released that is essentially a 5D mark III with and APS-C sensor I won't be able to say no. I'm really enjoying shooting a 5D3 but would like cropped version for reach.

I've also shot football (NFL) with a 5D3. It's not that great of a sports body but the focus system works so much better than my 1D2N. Add the increased frame rate due to ISO performance and the 5D3 is totally usable for football.

JDSA wrote:
The responses here make it that much clearer that if a 7D mark II is released that is essentially a 5D mark III with and APS-C sensor I won't be able to say no. I'm really enjoying shooting a 5D3 but would like cropped version for reach.

Oh please let it happen Canon. A high performance crop camera is now needed more than ever since the 1D IV has been killed off. The new AF is clearly a big step up in performance. I actually believe Canon will not miss such an opportunity, but the 61 pt AF might not fit and may need some trimming. Just my speculation.

I am ok with <30 points, or even the current 19 but some assist points would be nice.

vsg28 wrote:
How do you guys miss focus on the 7D at all

Zone AF with AI Servo on moving objects has never failed me.

Would you use zone AF when trying to get the ball carrier in focus in a crowd of players? I doubt that would work as the camera would focus on the closest player not always the one with the ball. I used centerpoint AF, sometimes with a few surrounding points enabled in AI Servo. Giving the camera more choice doesn't work for me shooting football.