Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsPerfect for my needs. Loving it!
Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2018
I'm not a fan of buying something because it is new. I am a fan of buying things that solve problems. The problem I'm having is that I'm getting older and my heavy DSLR and long Canon "L" lenses were getting too heavy to cart around all day. So I made a list of Must have and Nice to have items.
Must have: small, lightweight, interchangeable lenses (and a variety to choose from), fully articulated LCD, near zero shutter lag, raw processing, 8 shot buffer minimum, high ISO, viewfinder (with visible histogram), hot shoe.
Nice to have: wireless remote, iOS app, GPS.
This camera has all the items on both lists. (The GPS requires connection to a phone, and that drains the battery on both, so I probably won't use it much)
Then there are some unexpected bonuses. One is that Canon introduced a new raw format called CR3. It is highly compressed and lossless, so it will save considerable disk space. This is getting important with >20Mpixels on modern sensors (24 here, IIRC). The camera came out March 26. Adobe updated its software April 3 to handle it.
You'll get a lot of opinion on what make a camera a professional's camera. Non-photographers judge by bulk, and that's just stereotype. To me, a professional camera has better weather sealing, multiple memory cards and a large buffer (transfers image to the card). It would also have a bigger offset between the tripod screw and the battery cover. (So the battery could be changed easily without removing the tripod or plate.
As for full frame, it doesn't matter. Imagine an 8x12 picture, perhaps from a magazine. Then put a mat on it where the sides are 1 inch thick. The part of the picture you see now is 6x10. That's what a 1.6 crop sensor does (in round numbers). The part of the image you see is completely unchanged. If the lens manufacturers just changed the numbers on the lens itself, no one would ever know. A lens marked 10mm becomes 16mm, but all else is the same. If you like the fisheye look, then you have to go full frame, but for pretty much anything else it doesn't matter.
As for video, that's a matter of the buffer. Shooting at 30 frames a second means filling the buffer fast (just hold the shutter button down on the camera you have now and see how fast it fills). To make continuous images for video, any camera has to crop the image before even sending it to the buffer and then the card. So video means a tighter crop. Again, a pro might want a more video capable camera .
The only glitch I ran into was with a third party lens from Tokina. The new software in the camera didn't talk to the software in the lens, and so it generated an error message about the connectors not being clean. After returning the first lens and getting a second with the same problem I called Tokina and they told me about the mismatch. They said that they're working on a firmware ujpgrade that will require me sending in the lens, but they had no due date on the fix. (I sent it back). If you're considering a lens from them or any 3rd party, I suggest giving them a call first. When they fix it I'll buy the lens again and update this review.
EDITED TO ADD:
1. Thing I miss the most: Port for wired remote shutter release. Yes, the smartphone app does the job but it burns the battery. Also, no way to take time lapse, which uses an intervalometer (and that feature isn't in the app, even if battery wasn't a problem)
2. This Arca-Swiss compatible plate fits the camera and still leaves room to access the battery compartment. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XK2790Y/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
