Going Back to a DSLR for Sports Photography for a Day

In 2019, I wrote about how I would never quit full-frame DSLRs. Back then, I complained about mirrorless cameras for wonky bodies and mediocre autofocus. Today, I’m eating crow.

It creeped up on me through a few flirtations with mirrorless cameras from Olympus, Panasonic, and Fuji. Then Canon’s M system got good, and then finally the R system came into its own with the release of the R5 and R6, two cameras that melded the functionality of Canon’s DSLR controls and menus with the added usability of mirrorless autofocus, which has come a long way in the last five years. I switched to those cameras in 2022, and I haven’t looked back, especially when it comes to my sports photography.

But the other day, I found myself shooting back-to-back lacrosse games with my students, and one of them needed a camera. I loaned them my mirrorless camera and pulled my old 7D off the shelf and popped in an LP-E6N battery in, so I had something to shoot with. It has been a couple of years for me and DSLRs in any sort of serious shooting situation. So, how did the OG 7D do 15 years after it was released? Can a DSLR still be useful for sports photography in 2024, or has mirrorless technology passed it by?

The Differences and Similarities

To anyone fairly new to photography, cameras have always been able to nail focus on an eyeball and track it through a frame. There have always been several hundred autofocus points scattered across the frame, and you can touch the screen at any time to pick one. And there has always been a way to simulate your exposure in the viewfinder, which the optical viewfinders of a DSLR could never do since the view is directly through the lens.

While DSLRs are missing out on these features, the body design remains mostly the same, with big wheels all over the back and front to adjust settings and familiar-looking menus (albeit without a touchscreen on the 7D).

The 7D had 19 autofocus points spread across a large, centralized swath of the frame. It was a system befitting a flagship APS-C camera at the time. Of course, that doesn’t hold a candle to the R6’s 1,053 autofocus areas and almost 100% coverage across the frame, with eye- and face-tracking autofocus.

So I’ve been pretty spoiled lately. With the solid Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM Lens and the R6, my hit rate has been damn near 100% in most field sports in even semi-decent light. If I missed a shot, it was likely due to pilot error. Focusing on a mirrorless camera is entirely off the sensor, so if it looks like it’s in focus in the viewfinder, it will actually be in focus.

Going back to the 7D was a throwback. The phase detection focus, separate from the imaging sensor, often registered something in focus in the viewfinder with its focus tracking, but things were more often than not just a hair off. In some ways, it wasn’t enough that I would have raised a fuss in 2009, but in 2024, cameras have just gotten so good that the expectations are higher. Here is one that I’d say would just be “OK” by modern standards.

Not something that I’d worry about on the web or social media but enough that it would give me pause to use in a large printed format.

That said, it could hit very sharp focus too, occasionally:

This brought back nightmares of having to microadjust lenses on DSLRs to compensate for front or back focus that body and lens combinations could develop. As a shelf piece for a couple of years and no service probably for some time before that (I bought it used a couple of years ago), it probably badly needed some tweaking in this area. Something I don’t want to do ever again, and so I didn’t.

Were There Any Other Differences?

Using a DSLR again felt surprisingly good. There’s a heft and substantial feeling to the camera body, even in something along the lower end like the 7D. While I have no desire to lug a 1D X into the field ever again, there’s something about that through-the-lens view and the reassuring slap of the mirror as the camera takes pictures.

In some ways, mirrorless cameras are akin to what Apple has often done, in that features are introduced that you didn’t even think you’d need. Back in 2009, I didn’t think I’d ever need more than the 19 points of autofocus the 7D had, let alone face- or eye-tracking. Exposure simulation was completely unnecessary, I thought, as I yelled at the kids to get off my lawn.

But time marches on, and as much fun as going back to the 7D was, the results speak for themselves. We had it good, back then, but now we have it better. Way better.