I’ve had my Canon R7 mirrorless camera for 18 months and I’ve run up against three (perhaps four) design issues that I’m concerned about. Before getting into specifics let me say that I have taken many excellent bird photographs with my R7. Once I set it up to take advantage of the advanced capabilities of this mirrorless camera it has responded well in most situations and I obtain better shots than I did with my old Canon D7 Mark IV. However I recently have become aware of the following design issues:
Design Issue #1 – Some Button Symbols have Rubbed Off. After using my old Canon D7 Mark IV four-and-a-half years the symbols printed on all of the buttons were still visible. After 18 months of using the Canon R7 the symbols printed on two of the buttons have already worn off. Here is a picture of what the two buttons placed above each other on the right side (star and crosshatch) should look like:
After 18 months of use here is what they look like on my R7 camera now:
As you can see, the symbols have completely worn off. I’ve memorized what they are, but still, shouldn’t they last longer? It’s not a major issue, but does it point to other build problems in the future? It’s a relatively inexpensive camera compared to others with the same features, so hopefully the cost-cutting doesn’t affect the durability of the R7 camera.
Design Issue #2 – Rubberized Hand-Grip Is No Longer Tucked Into the Body. Here’s a picture of the problem on my Canon R7:
As you can see, there is a gap between the rubberized grip and the body beneath the shutter button; I could easily stick a chopstick down there. I don’t think I can tuck it back in and I’m not wild about using tape to close it; and I do want to close it to prevent moisture from seeping into the interior of the body. This could become a definite problem if it continues to come off of the body.
Design Issue #3 – Autofocus Issues. From time-to-time I’ll get a good focus on a bird and shoot multiple images, only to find that some of the images are out of focus. It doesn’t happen all the time but often enough to vex me so I dug into the issue online. I didn’t have to dig deep – I found a video by Duade Paton that not only confirmed that my experiences were not unique, but he shared Canon’s response why this was happening. In a nutshell, Canon said that because of the slower autofocus speed of the R7 (compared to the R3, R5 and R6) it will not continually attain good focus in certain situations such as low-light and low contrast shots. If you would like to see his excellent YouTube video about this issue and his field tests of a possible solution CLICK HERE.
Possible Design Issue #4 – Buffering/Loading SIM Card. On a recent 10-day birding trip to Costa Rica I was taking pics like mad. By the middle of the second day I noticed I had almost filled up my first SIM card – and I only had three cards left to last eight more days! So I started to delete bad shots from the first SIM card, freeing up enough space for another day. I then deleted more images so I was able to use the same SIM card on day four. That afternoon I had a great look at a Keel-billed Toucan and held down the shutter button to get multiple shots of the bird as it went in and out of its nest – and the camera choked! It just stopped taking pics. I didn’t know what to do so I turned off the camera for a few seconds and then turned it back on and it seemed to be working fine. Until I held down the shutter button to take multiple shots and it choked again. This time I took a look at what was going on and I saw that the buffer had filled up, but was very, very slowly moving the images to the SIM card. The camera seemed like it didn’t know where to put the images. To be honest I don’t know if this is a Canon and/or SIM card Design Issue. My hypothesis is that by constantly deleting images from the SIM card over several days, the card did have “slots” available for more images but large numbers of those slots were not together, so the camera had to search the card for places to put them. For the rest of the trip I didn’t delete as many images from the remaining SIM cards and I didn’t have the issue reoccur. If you have any insight about this issue please let me know.
In conclusion I am very happy with my Canon R7, but I’m concerned that it may not be as durable as other cameras. Let me know your experiences with the Canon R7, too.
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