While I was away on my Fall Great Bear Rainforest trip Canon announced the Canon 90D, an updated cropped sensor to replace the Canon 80D, and some are saying that it is also a replacement for the Canon 7D Mark II, and it will be “THE” cropped sensor body.

When I got back from my trip, I got my 90D, and am looking forward to seeing whether it will be a capable compliment to my current camera bodies, the 1DX Mark II, and 5D Mark IV.

The Canon 90D is a 32.5 megapixel cropped sensor with a DIGIC 8 Image Processor.  My first thoughts are, for a cropped sensor, that is a heck of a lot of pixels.  Both the 80D and the 7D Mark II are 24 and 20 megapixels respectively, which to me is a much more reasonable range, especially for a cropped sensor body.  When I get a chance to start using the camera, I have a feeling that it will not be very good at high ISOs, or while hand-held at low shutter speeds.

As a wildlife photographer, the goal is to be able to get sharp shots, well really that’s probably the goal of any photographer.  As a wildlife photographed I am often in situations where I am hand-holding lenses, in low light, and with sometimes quite fast moving subjects.  That means ISO capabilities, and autofocus are really critical.
The 90D has 45 autofocus points through the viewfinder, which I think is somewhat low for a wildlife camera, but the benefit is that they are all cross-type AF points, which is a positive.  By comparison, this is the same number of points as the 80D, but improved because they are all cross type, and it is less than the 65 points that come with the 7D Mark II.

To handle the fast moving subjects, the 90D has 10 frames per second shooting through the viewfinder, which is more than the 7 that comes with the 80D and the same as the 7D Mark II.

For anyone that wants the ability to shoot both stills and video, the 90D has 4k capabilities.

After reading the specs, and getting my hands on one, I am not really that confident that I will like this camera any more than I liked the 7D Mark II (which I didn’t own for long before selling), and I still am not sure whether it will be a capable addition to my photography kit. I will be testing both the ISO performance and the autofocus capabilities of the camera over the next couple months and report back.  If you have questions, feel free to contact me [email protected].