Tina,
My buddy purchased the 7D as well. He also had issues with "tack sharp". He lives in NJ near one of the Canon repair centers. He had the Canon tech reps look at the camera and lens combination that he uses. A 70-200 F2.... and a prime 400mm F 4.... I think. In any case Canon found that the sensor was not placed in the exact location it should be when the camera was made. I would find out the nearest location of a service center and bring or ship the camera to them. Call first so you get a authorization number and explain why you are returning the camera. By the way it took 3 trys for Canon to get it right.

In response, First of all I am not a hater as you so wrongly label, how can you say such a thing, shame on you. You say that you know there type, what nonsense. I am not looking to debate, I am looking to cut through all the nonsense and silly techniques that "experts" are talking about. I never insist that my "methods" are the only "methods" that is just total nonsense. What I do believe is that people should learn as much as they can and be the best photographer and artist that they can be. I see so many silly techniques on this site and all the people that post them insist that there way is the best and only way. I shoot full frame and I am a professional photographer and I have been for 35 years. I have a strong film background including 4x5 view cameras. I also teach photography. I have never told my students that my way is the only way as you do, I tell my students to try all different techniques and find out for themselves what works best. I am happy that you stick to your own methods, you evidentially have found what works for you and thats great. Your mistake is assuming that everybody should do things your way, you evidentially cant learn any more. You dont know me at all and you can "type " me, what a useless comment. There may be some useful information in your book and I think thats great but as you said, not me "they can stick to there own methods and I will not lose any sleep over it". Maybe you are the one who cant learn because you have all the answers, nobody can teach you anything. I learn every day and I love to learn and I will never stop learning.One last thing, I was responding to the subject of handholding. This issue has a lot of admirers and if they like there results fine. My experience is that handholding is by far not a great thing. Images are so so sharp at best and by your admission shoot a lot and choose the best. Burst mode in your words.

A few of the sample pages posted by James Brandon have piqued my interest; I'll likely purchase his ebook. After all, if one can spend literally hundreds (or thou$and$) of dollars on equipment, surely even one or two new ideas to try out would be worthy of a $10 investment. I think his website is splendid also. (One minor nitpick: the 5DMark2 actually does have a few "entry level consumer" preset options (via "CA" ['Creative Auto'] on the mode dial: "P" ('Smooth skin tones' on the menu), "L" ('Vivid blues and greens'), etc. Not exactly entry-level-friendly! LOL) At any rate, thank you, dabram, for sharing James' link! :)

And now here's my two cents for Tina. Hope it helps...

Waterfowl and birds can be tricky. And getting sharp images is multi-facetted. You can do everything right in camera but if you have poor form when holding the camera you could still get soft or blurry images. So here's some tips that I think will help...

1) When hand holding with any lens (but especially a telephoto) study the way that military or law enforcement personel hold their rifles. This has been a huge help for me. Are your elbows flared out when you hold your camera? Try squeezing them in to where they are pointed at the ground. This is how they train people to hold rifles to make them steady so naturally it will work with cameras as well

2) After tucking in your elbows, rest your left elbow up against your stomach as an anchor point.

3) With a telephoto lens like the 70-200 the lens should rest in the palm of your left hand. Your left hand should support 99% percent of the weight of the camera. If you're holding the camera with your right hand that is likely the problem. The right hand should only be used to squeeze the trigger...ahem...shutter.

4) Roll your finger over the shutter. A lot of people stab at the shutter which induces camera shake. It doesn't take a lot of pressure to push the shutter in, so just ry rolling your finger over it with just enough pressure to take a picture.

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Camera settings:

You're on track with the shutter speed stuff. But if you're trying to freeze a bird in action you need FAST shutter speeds. The one below was shot at 1/1250th at f/2.8 with the same lens as you mentioned. ISO was at only 100. I could have gotten faster by increasing the ISO but those settings froze the bird in place and STILL added a nice soft blur to the water behind it.

AF Point: This is where my ebook really gets into depth on this topic. For the shot below I used a single auto focus point and then used back button focus to track the bird in flight with the camera in AI-Servo mode.

Single AF helped because I could choose what to focus on instead of letting the camera guess at it. It would have likely failed several times by focusing on the water instead

Servo: This of course allowed me to track the movement of the bird and keep it in focus as long as my single AF point was over the bird.

Burst Mode: This is just to ensure the best chance of capturing just the right moment. Rather than taking one shot at a time, you increase your odds by shooting at your cameras maximum FPS rate. In my case, I was using a Canon 1Ds Mark III which shoots fairly slow at 5 fps. But I still managed to get plenty of good shots and picked the one with the best wing placement to edit.

Hope this helps :-)

Silver you crack me up, really :-). Your biggest blunder in that last rambling was that I assume I have all the answers and that I have stopped learning. Where did you get this information? From the fact that I said you weren't worth my time? Where did I even hint that I have stopped learning or that my way is the only way? This entire conversation was happy and uplifting until you and wedding guy came in and started saying how my way was wrong :-).

Allow me to post a quote from one of my earlier posts that you obviously didn't catch ;-). "Warning to younger photographers: Experience doesn't make you talented, not even 30 years of it. Passion and a willingness to learn make you talented. The moment you start to think you're 'experienced' or 'seasoned' or better than everyone else is the moment you become unteachable. It's the moment your work starts to decline and the moment that everyone else's around you starts getting better. As for me, I'll always strive to have the attitude of an amateur. Even when I've been shooting for 30 years like our friend wedding guy ."

Take a moment to get caught up on the conversation before you go into 1000+ words worth of assumptions.

You can reply with more nonsense if you'd like but I won't read it and I won't respond to it. The rest of my posts here will be geared towards helping other photographers and getting help from them. Not wasting my time with people who are grumpy and angry at the world.