3652 Days With The Canon 70D
Ten years later, I still think I got really lucky that the Canon 70D is the camera I chose back in the day. I wasn’t the tech guy I am now. The learning curve was astronomically high—shooting in Auto, let alone Manual, felt like learning a new language. If I didn’t have a camera that could at least focus properly on its own, I’m not sure I would’ve stuck with this as a career. And considering how much of my personality this is now—hobby, career, passion—it’s wild to think I might’ve ended up a completely different person.
I’m convinced nobody becomes a photographer or videographer on purpose. That’s my story, and it matches a lot of other people I know.
Why the 70D Mattered (Even If I Didn’t Know It at the Time)
I initially bought the 70D to take photos of me and my friends at strongman competitions and at CrossFit-style events. I tried my hand at YouTube videos pretty quickly, but it didn’t take long to realize I was, in fact, just very boring on camera. So I stuck mostly to photos back then.
Then something shifted at work. I ended up shooting the first set of videos for a card game called What Do You Meme? for the company through a collaboration with Distractify, where I was working at the time. I shot all of that with this camera.
I also captured stuff I didn’t realize would become great archival footage for anyone who followed strongman. I shot a clip of Evan Singleton at his first competition, North Carolina’s Strongest Man, which got him an invite to Giants Live. Now he’s a regular at World’s Strongest Man, the Arnold, and Giants Live events around the world. All of that was shot on the Canon 70D.
This particular body has seen serious use. It’s rough. But it’s still here.
The Lens That Did Most of the Heavy Lifting
For years, my go-to lens was the Canon EF-S 10–18mm. Funny enough, I just reviewed the Sigma 10–18mm for Fujifilm, which is a more modern take on that same idea. Back then, the 10–18 was my all-around lens for shooting indoors. I didn’t know what lighting was. I didn’t know what shutter speed was. I barely knew what I was doing.
Most of my actual education around frame rates, codecs, and color came later with the Fujifilm X-T3. But the 70D? That was the boot camp.
The 70D is a prosumer, crop-sensor DSLR. Crop vs full-frame wasn’t as big of a deal back then as it is now, with everyone freaking out over sensor sizes. It’s got a fully articulating “flippy” screen, which made it great for content creators even before that was a thing.
The big deal with this camera, though, is that it was the one Canon used to debut Dual Pixel Autofocus. That really kicked off the modern age of “good autofocus” in stills/video hybrids. Over 10 years later, it’s still really good.
If you’re doing talking-head videos at your desk, a 70D is still a very viable option. Yes, it only shoots 1080p. But most people don’t actually need more, and once you upload to YouTube, everything gets compressed and denoised anyway. The difference between 1080p and 4K is often smaller than you think on social platforms.
1080p in a 4K World: Still Worth It?
Out of curiosity, I upscaled some of this 1080p footage to 4K using Topaz Video AI, the same tool I use when clients send me low-res files to edit. In a split-screen test, the difference is… fine. Not night and day. Maybe a bit more detail in the background if you really look for it, but nothing that screams “you need 4K or you’re doomed.”
For photos, I could’ve easily shot with this camera for another two years before switching. Outside of heavy cropping, the image quality isn’t that different from a lot of newer bodies for social media use.
I recently moved up to New Jersey and linked up with a local creative group. I originally planned to make this video months ago, but between moving and getting settled, I just didn’t have the bandwidth. Now that I’m picking it back up, I realized I hadn’t used the camera in so long that it had reset to factory settings. I didn’t even shoot in RAW for the test photos—everything you’ll see from this session is JPEG.
And honestly? The JPEGs look pretty good. Keep in mind, the 70D’s JPEG engine is not amazing. If these still look decent, that says something.
Autofocus That Still Holds Its Own
Image quality for social is one thing, but the 70D’s real superpower is autofocus. Instagram and TikTok top out around 3 megapixels for full vertical images, so megapixel count isn’t the bottleneck. The autofocus on this thing is still really, really good.
This was the first camera with Dual Pixel AF, and it’s still better than some modern cameras. It’s only recently that Panasonic caught up to this level. Fujifilm has great AF for stills, but continuous video autofocus—especially for talking heads—is still, in my experience, a step behind what this old DSLR does. The X-H2S is an exception, but that’s a flagship.
We’re talking about a camera that’s roughly 12 years old, considerably cheaper than anything today, holding its own against current flagships for video autofocus. That’s nuts.
Auto ISO on the 70D is also better than most modern cameras—certainly better than Fujifilm’s, and honestly, in some situations, even better than what I see on the Canon R5 C. I’m not usually an Auto ISO guy, but driving in the car with constantly changing light, I decided to let it do its thing. I’m willing to bet it handled those shifts pretty well. I do have an ND filter on to keep my shutter near 180 degrees; I’d rather have smooth motion than slightly better exposure with choppy movement.
Glass Matters More Than the Body
To prove a point, I swapped lenses a few times during this test.
First, the Canon EF-S 10–24mm: cheap, inexpensive, easy to find used on Marketplace for around $100–$125, especially with the hood. It’s a fine wide-angle, but then I switched to the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4 Mark II.
With the 35mm f/1.4, you immediately see better image quality, more separation, nicer background roll-off. That lens alone sells the point: if you’re doing long talking-head videos—30 minutes at a time, which is around the 70D’s recording limit thanks to that old EU tax-related cutoff—you can get a very pleasing image with the right glass.
The 35mm f/1.4 Mark II is still a lens I use on the R5 C for interviews and documentaries. It’s EF mount, no image stabilization, but on a 1.6x crop body like the 70D, it behaves like roughly a 55mm. Great for controlled talking-head work.
Yes, the wind is brutal in some of these handheld tests, and the audio will need cleanup, but the image with that premium glass on this old sensor still looks solid. And you can find that lens used for around $800–$1,000, which is a lot more attainable than building an equivalent modern kit.
One of the big criticisms of the 70D back in the day was that the way the Dual Pixel AF pixels were arranged made the image “soft.” I never really noticed that problem until years later. And for video, a slightly softer image is often preferable anyway. I still shoot most of my personal talking heads with a 1/8 Pro Mist filter on, because I like the look. Too many light sources in commercial work can get messy, but that’s a whole other conversation.
Testing the AF With a “Big Chungus” Lens
Then I did something a little more fun: I brought out one of my all-time favorite lenses, the Sigma 120–300mm f/2.8. This was the most expensive purchase I made while still in the Canon ecosystem before moving to Fujifilm. It’s a beast—easily five or six pounds, with not-great weight distribution. But for sports, it’s phenomenal.
On its own, this lens used to be around $10,000. I got it on sale for about $8,000 back then. Now you can sometimes find it used for around $2,500, which is insane for what you get. It’s still a hell of a lot more affordable than something like the Canon RF 100–300mm f/2.8.
I mounted this on the 70D and took it for a walk to test what kind of stills and video it could produce on this old sensor. Rolling shutter on the 70D is not great, which is fine for photos but very noticeable for video. Even with the lens’s IS on and the camera on a tripod (not a video head, but still), any fast movement turns into jelly. But for static shots and slow pans, the images are solid.
Obviously, you’re stuck at 1080p, 8-bit, with whatever color profile you choose in-camera. There’s no real Log, just a flat profile that falls apart if you push it too hard. Highlights and shadows don’t have a ton of latitude. And there’s no EVF, which makes fighting the sun to expose properly a bit of a workout.
But again: we’re talking about a camera you can find nowadays for around $150. Maybe I should just shut up and appreciate what this thing still does.
Is the 70D Still Recommendable in 2026?
So, 10 years later: would I recommend the Canon 70D?
For photos: absolutely. It’s still a great stills camera.
For social video or personal video like this: very usable.
For podcasts or long-form recording: not ideal. The 30-minute recording limit is a hard stop, and there’s no clean HDMI out. You’ll get all the camera stats overlaid on your external recorder, which is a dealbreaker if you need that.
But for most people—especially those who still use cameras like the T6i and similar—this is a pretty good option. Compared to its closest modern equivalent, the Canon R50, I’d still recommend the 70D. Why? Because the EF/EF-S lens ecosystem is mature, affordable, and full of high-quality glass. The RF system, until very recently, didn’t even have third-party lenses, and even now, those are mostly limited to RF-S crop options.
You can find a 70D in really good condition on Marketplace, Craigslist, or eBay for under $200. They hold up. And you’ve got a much better shot at finding cheap, high-end glass like the 35mm f/1.4 Mark II to pair with it.
To put together a package like this on a modern system—body, fast prime, zoom, NDs, etc.—you’re easily looking at $2,500–$3,000. This entire setup? Probably $800–$900 if you hunt around.
The Fun Factor (And Why It Still Matters)
I feel genuinely nostalgic shooting on this thing. I didn’t have this skill set back then, and now that I do, I’ve started appreciating older bodies more. Yes, your average phone is shooting higher resolution images. Yes, there are great lens attachments for phones. And yes, your phone is the camera that’s always with you.
But you’re not going to get this look out of an iPhone. The depth, the background separation, the way the 35mm f/1.4 renders a scene—phones can’t touch that. And you get a fully articulating screen, which most phones still don’t offer in any meaningful way.
And I know it’s frowned upon to say this nowadays, but: shooting on this thing is fun. Shooting on any real camera is fun. It’s a lot more fun than using a phone, no matter how convenient the phone is.
I’d love to drop affiliate links for this in the description, but you’re not going to find the 70D new on Amazon anymore. The 80D is essentially the same camera, with the added benefit of 1080p60. The 90D is basically the M50 in a DSLR body: better 1080p AF, but horrible 4K that doesn’t even use Dual Pixel AF—just contrast-based hunting. Don’t do it. Trust me.
Final Thoughts
This was a fun, nostalgic video for me. The 70D played a huge role in getting me into this world, and it’s still capable enough that I don’t feel embarrassed using it alongside modern gear.
