Thanks David for your additions. To be honest: I did notice the lack of dynamic range on higher ISO’s lately, because I shoot in low light a lot (bad weather is common here) with high ISO and in very contrasty situations. On top of that lots of birds have both very dark and white patches which makes exposure difficult enough as it is.

The thing that surprised me was the stunning IQ people showed me of their D7100s. Really amazing stuff. But I am sure to give the 7D Mark II a try when I get the chance.

Hi, Mike Koopmans. I hope you and Artie don’t mind my adding something here. First, I’m really sorry to hear you’ve lost your job; I know how tough that can be. I wish you good luck. Now a few things about cameras. First, just look at the 7D2 images Artie’s been posting. If they don’t satisfy you in any way, and you know of another affordable camera that would, you should get that camera. Second, the knock on Canon in the internet forums hasn’t been its poor high-ISO performance compared to Nikon, because at high ISOs recent Canon cameras are as good as or better than Nikons; it’s been the lack of dynamic range at low ISOs. That is rarely if ever a problem for bird photographers, except maybe photographing black and white birds in bright sunlight. And that’s a challenge for any camera and photographer. As far as I’m concerned, it’s not a problem at all; I’ve never felt any lack of dynamic range with my Canon 6D, which produces lovely images of landscapes, flowers, and other things. However, it is, as you say, just not a great action camera. Finally, even if I did have to trade of performance (AF speed and accuracy, shutter speed, frame rate, and so on) against dynamic range–and I don’t think I do–then for birding I’d go with performance any day of the week. I promise you that the Nikon D7100 can’t touch the 7D2’s performance. Maybe there’ll be a new Nikon D300 replacement some day, but there just isn’t any crop camera out there now that comes close to the 7D2.