14 DAY TRIAL // When a flagship smartphone or tablet gets released into the wild, the curious folks of iFixit quickly perform a teardown of the device and offer us a complete view of its insides.
Well, the same treatment can be applied to cameras. For example, Lensrentals had Canon’s new flagship DSLR, the 7D Mark II, dissected and posted the results online for everybody to see.
Canon 7D Mark II gets torn apart
The process was applied to the camera due to curiosity, for the most part. Canon claimed the 7D II was four times better weather-sealed than the original 7D, so the Lensrentals was interested in finding out what the deal was, since these claims are usually bogus or a marketing scheme.
The folks performing the teardown also compared the original 7D with the newer 7D II and you can see the results in the gallery.
They also drew some interesting conclusions. For starters, the back of the cameras look almost identical, well almost.
The first difference that pops up is the flexible rubber gaskets that are in charge of sealing the back of the 7D II, which are nowhere to be found on the 7D.
Canon also utilizes a thick gasket around the viewfinder which doubles protection against the threat of water.
But once you remove the shielding from the back, it becomes pretty clear that the chip setups are completely different.
Going back to weather sealing, which is why this camera was torn apart in the first place, the bottom plate of the camera has a different gasket around the ages.
Furthermore, an internal one is placed around the tripod mount, which once again wasn’t present in the original 7D.
On the outside of the camera body plates, under the grips, the joints are safely secured against the menace of water. Something out of the ordinary is the presence of a gasket around the diopter adjusting knob.
So there you have it, it appears that Canon has significantly upgraded the number of gaskets used to safe guard the camera from the forces of nature. Lensrentals actually calls the 7D Mark II the most “thoroughly weather sealed camera they ever run across.”
To weather seal or not to weather seal?
But, and it’s a big but, we can’t help remembering a story we brought to you a while back having a Fuji X20 camera at its center.
Albeit not being a weather-sealed device, one of these cameras that got lost in a forest populated by bears managed to survive on its own for three months being subjected to rain, dust and wild life attacks. But the mind-blowing part is that after being recovered and recharged by the owner, the camera still worked.
Was the Fuji X20 just a lucky little camera?
