Update: It’s con­firmed

Rumor has been going on for months, but new mate­ri­als have sur­faced and are too elab­o­rate to be fake. With some of my long time cry hope­fully to be answered, if all are accu­rate, this will be one of that turnover moment peo­ple are eagerly wait­ing for.

(Read my thoughts on the lack of break­throughs in the cam­era indus­try.)

What to expect from Canon EOS 7D:
(direct trans­la­tion from the posted descrip­tion in Chinese Mandarin)

• Approximately 18 Megapixel, APS-C CMOS Sensor (1.6x crop factor)
• Dual Digic 4 with 14-bit Image Processing
• Approximately 8fps (94 JPEG fine/15 RAW) burst buffer
• All-new eight-directional dou­ble cross cen­tral AF point, total 19 cross AF points
• ISO 100‑6400 (Extendable to ISO 12800)
• All-new 100% 1.0X mag­ni­fi­ca­tion Viewfinder with three-dimensional elec­tronic level dis­play (yes!!!)
• All-new iFCL intel­li­gent meter­ing sys­tem (cal­cu­lates high­light & color)
• 3.0″, 920K dots, 160 degrees of view­ing angle with anti-glare High Resolution LCD dis­play type II
• Full HD capa­bil­ity, exter­nal stereo mic input & HDMI output
• Live View with Face Priority AF
• New Video/Live View but­ton switch
• Aero Dynamic Body Design, metal char­ac­ter­is­tic shut­ter sound up to 150.000 cycle
• All-new 24mm built-in flash with EOS Intelligent Speedlite System (finally!!!!)
• Highlight Priority Mode
• Lens Vignette Control
• More Picture Style
• EOS Integrated Dust Reduction System

update:

It’s a deal-breaker for some (myself included) to put another cropped sen­sor in oth­er­wise an excel­lent machine; which would also sug­gest that the 7D will be just a pre­lude to more excit­ing cam­eras to come (5D Mark III? 3D?).

What will be the most sur­pris­ing upgrade is the 100%, 1.0x viewfinder, for years, Canon only intro­duced this impor­tant fea­ture to its 1-series cam­eras, and finally, what Nikon has put for years in most of their DSLR cam­era will finally emerge in Canon: Electronic viewfinder dis­play assist.

On the other hand, what Canon intro­duced in the 90s which has become a stan­dard fea­ture today, Image Stabilization, finally saw the light of another inno­va­tion from the big brother (Canon invented the Optical IS). Rumored as the Hybrid IS, it is sup­posed to tackle a dif­fer­ent kind of poten­tial image blur­ring, I have no tech­ni­cal details for now except to say as much.

Finally, what pho­tog­ra­phers has been cry­ing over the years, what Nikon has fought and won users, built-in wire­less flash trig­ger­ing sys­tem will finally be intro­duced in this sup­pos­edly new cam­era. Good bye ST-E2, Hello 7D!

Also expected is the new 100mm f/2.8L Macro with IS, I can­not guar­an­tee the accu­racy of this release, but let’s hope Canon did come to their senses and start pro­duc­ing real DSLR upgrades in the future.

We have no con­firmed release date or the price for this cam­era, let’s first see if the 7D is com­ing at all and find out what the fuss is all about.

Head over to CR for details & dis­cus­sion.

7D & 100 Macro Pictures via Canon Rumors