Charlotte K. Lowrie - Canon EOS 70D Digital Field Guide

Canon EOS 70D Digital Field Guide

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Copyright 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Unless credited otherwise, all photographs Copyright Charlotte K. Lowrie.

Published simultaneously in Canada

ISBN: 978-1-118-16912-4

Manufactured in the United States of America

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Credits

Acquisitions Editor

Courtney Allen

Project Editor

Amanda Gambill

Technical Editor

George Maginnis

Senior Copy Editor

Kim Heusel

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About the Author

Charlotte K. Lowrie is a professional photographer and award-winning writer based in Seattle, Washington. She has more than 25 years of photography experience ranging from photojournalism and editorial photography to nature and food photography. Her images have appeared in national magazines and newspapers, and on a variety of websites, including MSN.com, www.takegreatpictures.com, and the Canon Digital Learning Center, http://learn.usa.canon.com/.

Charlotte divides her time among maintaining an active photography business, teaching photography, and writing books and articles. Charlotte is the author of 16 books including the best-selling Canon 5D Mark III Digital Field Guide. She is the coauthor of Exposure and Lighting for Digital Photographers Only. In addition, she teaches monthly online photography courses at www.betterphoto.com. Visit her website at http://wordsandphotos.org/.

This book is dedicated to my wonderful family, whose unfailing support means so much to me, and to God, my source of inspiration and insight.

Acknowledgments

I am most grateful to the top-notch team at Wiley Publishing for their excellent work on this book. Ive had the privilege of working with Courtney Allen for many years, and I was fortunate to work with her on this book as well. She is one of the best acquisitions editors in the industry and is great to work with. Amanda Gambill is a fine project editor, and she helped keep everything on track for the short deadlines throughout this project. Thanks also for the great technical editing by George Maginnis and the eagle-eyed copyediting from Kim Heusel. Without question, it takes a village, or at least a well-oiled team, to make a book.

Thanks, also, to my clients, who graciously allow me to use their images in my books.

Table of Contents

Introduction

Over the years, Ive written many books about Canon cameras, and every time I do, Im excited about the camera and the new features it offers photographers. This is very much the case with the Canon EOS 70D. On the surface, the 70D may not look like a huge upgrade to its predecessor, the EOS 60D, but looks are deceiving. The 70D holds the potential to revolutionize autofocus (AF) technology with Canons new Dual Pixel CMOS AF system. With this technology, approximately two-thirds of the image sensor surface is capable of providing autofocus not just the group of autofocus points clustered in the center of the viewfinder. Thus, in the Live View and Movie modes, where the new technology is used, you get quick, accurate focusing just about anywhere over two-thirds of the sensor area. That means that the smaller array of 19 AF points is no longer a restriction for still shooting provided that you use Live View mode. The new focus system is also fast and accurate.

Even when shooting still images using the viewfinder, the focus is improved over the 60D. The 70D inherits the high-performance autofocus system from the popular EOS 7D with a 19-point AF array (and again, the autofocus performance is excellent). The 70D also got a modest increase in resolution to 20.2 megapixels versus 18 megapixels in the 60D, and a big jump to 7 frames per second with continuous shooting (Large/JPEG quality). The fast DIGIC 5+ image processor delivers speedy camera performance with sterling image quality. If you are upgrading from the 60D, youll appreciate the improved noise performance, along with an increase in the ISO sensitivity range from 100 to 12800, and in the absolute lowest of light, you have the option of expanding the range up to 25600.