DIY Canon EOS R7 battery grip
DIY Canon EOS R7 battery grip

DIY Canon EOS R7 battery grip

The EOS R7 has one very big flaw.
Unlike almost all other Canon cameras in that price range, there is and will be no official grip from Canon.
The R7 is not tiny, but on the standard grip, there is no room for my pinky.

So I thought, well, I have to build one on my own.
I bought an old grip for the 50D (ad), which almost fits. (25$)
I removed all the electronics from it, because that won’t work, and removed the connector, which would normally fit into the battery compartment of the camera. I covered that with some kind of rubber.
To use the shutter and focus button from the grip, I soldered a 2.5mm Jack to the button, which is underneath the shutter button of the grip, and connected that via the external shutter port of the R7. So if I press the button it shortens ground and left and if I press a little bit more, it connects ground and right.
It’s like an external shutter, but internally.

The storage place of the grip can hold two LP-E6 (Ad – the ones I use) batteries, which are not connected to power at this stage of the build.
I screwed a grip pad on top of the grip, so that the R7 won’t move.

And that’s it. It works and it costs almost nothing.

24 Comments

      1. Baz

        Thanks Noel,
        Find the way for the sutter but for the back button don’t find a solution . You think it’s possible to add it from the back button to the jack?
        If I’m right the shutter is connect on the 2 last rings of the jack. For the focus don’t know? If you’ve an idea.

  1. Danny

    Hi, I just bought a R7 and now also an additional BG-E2 (I’ll leave the old one on my 50D), love the shutter button idea, thank you for the hint.

    Did you progress with the battery connection? You wrote that you store your LP-E6 in the BG-E2, did you modify the housing for that – it barely fits and I’m afraid I won’t be able to get them out again.

    1. admin

      Hi Danny
      Yes, I have finished the Project. I bought a cage for li-io batteries and connected two in serial to an adapter cable, which goes into a dummy battery. I can charge the grip via dummy battery in the normal canon LP-E6 charger.

      If you want to use the LP-E6 batteries directly, you have remove some material from the grip.
      On Aliexpress there are some LP-E6 plates, which you can place into the grip.

      If you will do it my way, you can use some small 18650 and have some additional with you, if you need more battery.

      Hope that will help you
      -Noel

      1. Danny

        Hi Noel,
        The BG-E2 has arrived, I’ve opened it to take the extending parts off, which worked fine.
        I have the battery cable still available, as I will link that to the dummy LP-E6 battery that goes into the R7.

        * Now I wanted to further open the BG-E2 house, but somehow could not get the front and rear part from each other after removing all visible and reachable screws. What is the trick for that, do you recall? I would need this in order to connect the shutter button as you did.

        * BTW, I’m 3D designing a cover plate for the part that was removed, in a way that it will hold the R7 in the battery-lid so that it will not rotate underneath the R7, and have a tiny border on the outside of the R7-grip. Once this is done, I can provide you one if you wish (but let me try to finish this first :-).

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