In a press release that briefly leaked on a Canon CPN site, it was revealed that Canon will address a number of issues in the popular 7D. Having used the Canon 7D on all of the No Film School NAB videos, my biggest issue was the lack of manual audio controls. It's been a long time coming, but Canon will finally address this problem in a new firmware update. In addition to manual audio controls, a number of still photography features will be fixed.

Here is a little bit from that press release on the new audio controls:

MANUAL ADJUSTMENT FOR AUDIO RECORDING LEVELS

During EOS Movie shooting you will be able to manually adjust the audio recording levels to one of 64 levels, whilst the sound volume during playback can be set to one of 11 levels. During movie recording noise from the aperture is reduced and the camera also has an automatic wind cut filter.

This is the entire list of updated features:

Improved RAW Maximum burst - from 15 frames to 26 frames In-Camera RAW Conversion - RAW images can be edited in-camera and options can be changed before saving the finished file as a ready-to-print JPEG Image Rating Capabilities Auto ISO Maximum Setting - ISO 400-6400 Manual Adjustment for Audio Recording Levels JPEG Resizing Support for the GP-E2 GPS Unit Quick Control During Playback File Name Setting - First 3 or 4 characters in the file name can be adjusted, depending on the setting Time Zone Setting Faster Scrolling of Magnified Images

It's interesting that Canon is going back to support a camera that will likely be replaced sometime this year, but it's certainly possible they will hold off until 2013 to introduce a new 7D. It's clear that Canon does listen to its customers, as manual audio has been one of the major features that customers have been vocal about.

On a film production with dual-system sound, the only major upgrade for 7D owners is the ability to adjust file names in the camera. The first three or four characters can be adjusted depending on the user setting, and when three characters is selected, the fourth will be adjusted automatically for recording quality. This will make life easier on set and in post, and it will make the data wrangling process a bit more organized -- assuming, of course, that the Director of Photography and ACs set the file names correctly in-camera. There's no word yet on when this update might be released, but considering they had a press release completed, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that it won't be far off.

[via Canon Rumors]