I’ve been thinking about the possibility of trading my DSLR set up (Canon 70D + lenses and Aquatech housing + ports) for a mirrorless set-up, since buying the Sony a6000 I’m really happy with the obvious advantages but there are definitely a few drawbacks.
Traditionally auto focus performance, weather sealing and lens choices were some of the bigger reasons to stick with a DSLR, and it looks like the new Canon 7D Mark II has any mirrorless option beat in all three areas.
The auto focus in mirrorless cameras is catching up, the a6000 for example performs really well, and the EVF, whilst not as good as the optical viewfinder on the 70D, is pretty good too in my limited experience.
Lens choice is still a long way off the Canon or Nikon system, adapters are available (as soon as I get mine I’ll put up a review on it) but they don’t match the performance of a native lens, but there are good options for the most common surf photography lenses already.
Weather sealing though is another thing, and the Lensrentals blog has just published a detailed comparison of the weather sealing on the 7D and 7D Mark II, and it looks like the 7D Mark II could almost be used without a water housing at all.
With gaskets and seals at every possible entry point there’s not much chance of water getting in, and although I wouldn’t recommend testing this theory out in the surf, it would be pretty interesting to see how much abuse it can take and still work fine, if you watch Digital Rev’s video showing the testing/destruction of the original 7D and imagine what effect the extra features to make it more durable will have you could start to think it would be able to withstand some light use in the surf without a housing… of course you’d need a matching weather sealed lens… and you wouldn’t want to take it too far underwater I expect…
Please don’t try this with your new camera though, I don’t want to be responsible for a dead camera when it goes wrong, and salt water is much more of a destructive force than fresh water too.
Seriously though, this is going to be a huge bonus when shooting surf from the land, and obviously in the worst case scenario of a flooded housing, allowing you to continue shooting even in pouring rain or when the waves are covering you in spray, plus you get the amazing burst rate and autofocus that you bought it for anyway.
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