In this video, host SPEAKER A and photographer Angie Birmingham evaluate whether the Canon EOS R7 paired with the RF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens constitutes an affordable, high‑performance wildlife photography kit under $2,500. They outline the total cost (camera $1,499, lens $500, $8 lens hood) and describe the testing workflow: shooting a variety of wildlife (birds, deer, turkeys) and domestic animals (cows, horses) while examining key technical aspects such as rolling‑shutter artifacts in electronic shutter mode, mechanical shutter performance, eye‑detect autofocus, subject tracking, and in‑body/lens image stabilization (IBIS). Angie shares sample RAW images via a download link, highlights the camera’s 32.5 MP APS‑C sensor, Dual Pixel CMOS AF, 30 fps electronic shutter (15 fps mechanical), and discusses the lightweight nature of the setup. A brief comparison to Sony alternatives is mentioned, noting the price advantage of the Canon combo. The video concludes that the R7 + 100‑400mm lens delivers sharp, well‑tracked wildlife images with manageable rolling‑shutter issues when using mechanical shutter, making it a compelling budget option.
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Hello and welcome back to another episode of WTF Stop and Jeff and Angie Photography. Today I am going to go over a camera that is a wildlife perfect setup, or is it? For under $2,500. Okay, so today we are here talking about the Canon R7 and the 100-400 lens. The camera runs $1,499 and the lens runs right at $500 and the lens hood, because it comes separate, is $8 on Amazon. But I like it. It's pretty cool. It's a little rubber one. But anyhow, so today we are going to take this little setup out. We're gonna go photograph some birds, some deer, maybe some turkeys, and who knows what else, as long as they all cooperate. And if they don't cooperate, we will photograph cows. Yes, that's right, cows and horses, and maybe even the Bailey dog if the wildlife doesn't cooperate, because you never know with wildlife. They have a mind of their own. All right, so stay tuned. I'll share some images with you, and then I'll also give you a link where you can go and download the images yourself and play with them and pixel peep and see if you like the camera or not. Another thing I'm going to try to get it to do is the rolling shutter in electronic shutter. I'm going to try to get it to Give you a couple examples of that as well. And then I'm also going to shoot it in mechanical. So I can tell you right now, it's a nice light little setup. Very light. So, and I'm not 100% sure Sony would even offer anything that would come close to this price-wise, but I'll do a little research and I'll share that with you at the end of the video. But this is a review from a Sony shooter on a Canon camera. Stay tuned.
All right, so here is the setup I used. The Canon R7 and the Canon RF 100-400. I had a Sony Tough card in there, 64GB, and a ProGrade 128GB. And I also had, which is not in this picture, The lens hood that I bought off of Amazon for $8, the little rubber piece. So keep in mind, I only used this R7 for 24 hours, and my goal was just to capture a bunch of images to share with you to try to see how I can get the camera to react and if I can get sharp images. So let's go over a couple images. All right, so these first 2 images here are what I believe is the rolling shutter. That's where you have a fast-moving subject, and because the camera records from top to bottom, the fast-moving subject sometimes gets elongated. But you can avoid that by just switching over to mechanical mode, and you can alleviate that problem altogether. But you cannot shoot in silent mode in mechanical mode. Here's a couple images where the eye autofocus did a really good job of picking the little bird out of the trees, and also the turkey out of the clutter amongst all the trees, and same with the buck. I was quite surprised at how good the autofocus was on this camera. It was able to pick up just about anything immediately. Alright, so here are a few other images that I want to share with you. And also keep in mind that there is a link below that has all of the raw images in it if you're interested in grabbing the raw images and taking a look at them for yourself. Enjoy the pictures. This image here, I was just playing to see how close I could get to my subject, and I was able to get pretty darn close. And then as far as tracking a fast-moving subject running at you, this camera did an excellent job. Well, here are your cows and your horses as promised, and And the very last image I took at a very low shutter speed so I could see how well the in-body IBIS and lens IBIS worked. So I think it worked out pretty good. Alright, here's a few specs on the R7. The ones that really intrigued me was that it was a 32.5 crop sensor camera. And it also has the Dual Pixel CMOS. If you have the Canon software, you could play with that. And it also is 30 frames per second in electronic shutter, and mechanical is 15. It's got a good viewfinder.
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touchscreen on the back, and it does have dual memory card slots, which is really nice. And the camera weighs in at only 1.3 pounds with the recording media and battery. Alright, so here's the specs on the 100-400. It is an f/5.6 to f/8. Which makes it super light, weighing in at 1.4 pounds. So this total kit together is just under 3 pounds at 2.7. It is very lightweight. I was a little lost, I tell you, with the zoom lens because it's backwards from Sony. So when, when you're twisting it in and out, I was a little lost. But But another thing to keep in mind is that it is not weather sealed or dust sealed. So you need to keep that in mind if you decide to purchase it. Alright, so this lens came in under what I estimated. Well, I'm sorry, lens and body comes in at less than what I estimated it at. With your SD cards and the little lens hood that you have to buy separate, you're looking at $2,250 plus tax. You could get the Canon lens hood. I believe I saw that it was $87 on their website, which was— seemed kind of high to me, but it was out of stock. So I'm gonna take this camera out and I'm gonna go take a couple shots with the 100-500 lens and just see what kind of quality I can get with that versus the quality of this 100-400. So stay tuned. So as I promised, I went out and tried to find me a Sony camera that could compete with the R7 price-wise and spec-wise, and there was nothing other than a Sony rumor of an A6900 that could possibly be coming out in 2023. We don't know much about it. Everybody's speculating 30-megapixel sensor, 20 to 30 frames per second. Of course, animal eye tracking, 4K video, 4-axis screen maybe. And nobody knows if it'll have 1 or 2 slots or what kind of card it'll take. And it could very well be nicknamed the baby A1 if it comes out with these specs. But in my opinion, it needs to be in a bigger body because the crop sensor bodies that they have now are really too small. All right, so here are those images of the R7 with the 100-500 lens as I promised.
