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Archive 2013 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

Fred Miranda
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p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

DXOMark announced their benchmark results for the Canon EOS 70D and concluded that it's Canon's highest rated APS-C sensor to date.

Along with the modest 2MP resolution increase, there are incremental improvements in color depth, dynamic range and ISO performance when compared to the previous 18MP APS-C sensor. However, don't expect anything mind blowing...

Here is an excerpt:
"the scores for Color Depth, Dynamic Range and Low-Light ISO are all an improvement on earlier models but it’s an incremental increase on the EOS 60D. On the plus side, this sensor has the highest pixel density of any previous APS-C size sensor from the firm (which bodes well for fine detail rendering) while still offering the dual pixel construction with its unique AF capabilities required for video capture with the mirror locked up." - Read full test

Canon EOS 70D bundle rebate page at B&H

Canon EOS 70D Body $1199
B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama

Canon EOS 70D with 18-55mm IS STM $1349
B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama

Canon EOS 70D with 18-135mm IS STM $1549
B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama

Aug 31, 2013 at 12:50 PM

snapsy
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p.1 #2 · p.1 #2 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

70D Review

Summary: Traditional Canon low ISO DR performance. High ISO 18% SNR is close to the D7100 but trails the D7100 for High ISO shadow performance by about 2/3 stop.

Aug 28, 2013 at 02:53 PM

alundeb
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p.1 #3 · p.1 #3 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

Interesting, compared to the 60D: SNR is improved with about 1/3 stop at all ISO, and color sensitivity is improved with about 0.3 bits too. That is worth noting.

Aug 28, 2013 at 03:13 PM

skibum5
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p.1 #4 · p.1 #4 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

Well it is insanely far behind the D7100 for DR and this time (as expected at low ISO at least from my masked area measurement) not just at low ISO but at high ISO too. And the color sensitivity is miles behind too so they seem to be cheating the CFA filter again and Nikon seems to have been able to really purify it while still maintaining top SNR, hmm then again looking at the metamerism index it is only a couple points behind the D7100 for daylight and actually 1 point ahead for tungsten (and only one point behind the 7D for daylight and actually 4 points ahead for tungsten). It's odd that the color sensitivity score is so far behind considering that, since usually those two track hand in hand fairly well. The colors might actually be a nit more pure under artificial lighting for the 70D than from the D7100 even if the chroma SNR is noticeable worse.

Hopefully this isn't the new 180 process and if it is hopefully it was basically just a focus on PDAF and not DR. DR is Canon's troublesome spot.

OTOH it does seem to be 1/3 to even 2/3rds of a stop better for luminance SNR than the 7D (there graphs do kinda get bendy a bit so I'm sure they have at least +/-1/6th stop error at each data point) which is a decent SNR jump (people forget that there isn't room to improve a whole here they are already so good at luminance SNR) and at least they got it without losing any more color discrimination (it actually improved for artificial lighting), it is right at the very top of class for luminance SNR (and considerably better than the 5D2 per sensor area, so it should really, really whomp the 5D2 for reach limited shooting no matter what the lighting and ISO), although the chroma SNR seems to be about the same. And it does have slightly better high ISO DR than the 7D.

Half stop worse DR at ISO200 than the 7D is odd though.

Edited on Aug 29, 2013 at 01:59 AM · View previous versions

Aug 28, 2013 at 03:24 PM

snapsy
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p.1 #5 · p.1 #5 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

skibum5 wrote:
hmm then again looking at the metamerism index it is only a couple points behind the D7100 for daylight and actually 1 point ahead for tungsten (and only one point behind the 7D for daylight and actually 4 points ahead for tungsten). It's odd that the color sensitivity score is so far behind considering that, since usually those two track hand in hand fairly well. The colors might actually be a nit more pure under artificial lighting for the 70D than from the D7100 even if the chroma SNR is noticeable worse.

Based on what I've learned from theSuede, the metamerism is the color accuracy and/or lack of accuracy failures (metamerism), which is independent and not necessarily congruent with the per-channel color purity.

Aug 28, 2013 at 03:38 PM

kevindar
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p.1 #6 · p.1 #6 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

Lets hope this is not the new prototype sensor for the next 5 years.
Given that all canon talked about was the the new autofocus, and did not make any other claims about the camera, I do not find the findings surprising.

Aug 28, 2013 at 03:41 PM

Jeff Nolten
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p.1 #7 · p.1 #7 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

According to the DxO charts, the 7D has a tad bit better DR below ISO 800 than either the 70D or any of the other 18 MP Canon sensors. This seems a bit odd to me. The noise charts look awash to me. So the new sensor isn't going to give me any better stills. It will probably only be really useful in the LCD-AF based cameras like the M or the G1X.

Aug 28, 2013 at 04:02 PM

kevindar
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p.1 #8 · p.1 #8 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

Jeff, if you have a 7d, and dont care about video focusing, there is no reason to buy the 70D.

Aug 28, 2013 at 05:08 PM

johnctharp
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p.1 #9 · p.1 #9 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

I think that the best takeaway is that Canon split the pixels in half for PDAF (or DPAF), and image quality didn't suffer at all. That's a big thing, really, even though they're still missing out on DR (which I agree that they need to fix ASAP).

The positives here are that the 7D II, if it uses this exact sensor, will be at least as good as the 7D with respect to dynamic range and high ISO performance- while putting out noticeably (if only) better resolution from high-end glass, and that future PDAF-based sensors for the Rebels, the M's, and the P&S's will be much more usable in Live-view mode- a real big difference for the M's and P&S's that will bear out quickly in AF comparisons, even if literally everyone else has better DR.

Now, if you apply these results to FF sensors, you have a real reason to be excited. Provided Canon is willing to put in the elbow grease to improve their processors and firmware, there's a real possibility of a DPAF implementation providing far increased resolution while making single-shot LV shooting completely viable in many situations, including fast action and birding. Super high-resolution PDAF (at least 85% coverage?) and intelligent subject tracking would mean that you could have the camera follow-focus on a player on a field or a bird in flight by designating it and then keeping the player or bird within that 85% area- I'd be willing to bet that it could keep track even if you lose the subject and then quickly reattain it, as long as the subject's lighting and contrast hasn't changed considerably.

Aug 28, 2013 at 08:30 PM

skibum5
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p.1 #10 · p.1 #10 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

snapsy wrote:
Based on what I've learned from theSuede, the metamerism is the color accuracy and/or lack of accuracy failures (metamerism), which is independent and not necessarily congruent with the per-channel color purity.

Yeah, usually they end up tracking to some decent extent though. This time they seemed to have found some special cuts to the filters to keep them somewhat color blind for each of the three channels and yet still able to distinguish many of the import shades when combined.

Aug 28, 2013 at 09:41 PM

skibum5
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p.1 #11 · p.1 #11 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

Aug 28, 2013 at 09:43 PM

snapsy
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p.1 #12 · p.1 #12 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

skibum5 wrote:
Yeah, usually they end up tracking to some decent extent though. This time they seemed to have found some special cuts to the filters to keep them somewhat color blind for each of the three channels and yet still able to distinguish many of the import shades when combined.

From what I recall theSuede saying they can actually track in opposite directions. See his excellent post here.

Aug 29, 2013 at 12:15 AM

alundeb
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p.1 #13 · p.1 #13 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

Jeff Nolten wrote:
According to the DxO charts, the 7D has a tad bit better DR below ISO 800 than either the 70D or any of the other 18 MP Canon sensors. This seems a bit odd to me. The noise charts look awash to me. So the new sensor isn't going to give me any better stills. It will probably only be really useful in the LCD-AF based cameras like the M or the G1X.

I don't understand how you can say that the noise charts are awash and at the same time point out that the 7D has a tad better DR below ISO 800.

At ISO 200, the 70D is more than 2 dB below the 7D for noise. That is 2/3 stops, technically a big improvement, and visible in stills. It will also improve the subjective DR at low ISO, because moderate shadows will generally be cleaner. That's what we saw in the first samples from DPreview of pushed shadows, the ones that Pixel Perfect posted. At higher ISO the gap is smaller, but still of higher importance than a 0.3 Ev difference in engineering DR.

The seemingly DR advantage of the 7D may be reversed if the 70D has much less banding than the 7D down in the blacks.

The 7D also has low per pixel actuance, and requires relatively much sharpeing. It remains to be seen if the 70D is better in that respect, but all in all I see a potenitially remarkable improvement in stills image quality.

Aug 29, 2013 at 01:23 AM

Pixel Perfect
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p.1 #14 · p.1 #14 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

alundeb wrote:
I don't understand how you can say that the noise charts are awash and at the same time point out that the 7D has a tad better DR below ISO 800.

At ISO 200, the 70D is more than 2 dB below the 7D for noise. That is 2/3 stops, technically a big improvement, and visible in stills. It will also improve the subjective DR at low ISO, because moderate shadows will generally be cleaner. That's what we saw in the first samples from DPreview of pushed shadows, the ones that Pixel Perfect posted. At higher ISO the gap is smaller,...Show more →

This pleasing if this is the case, otherwise I don't what I was looking at at dpreview. The shadows stood up to pushing much better than the 650D from their results. Let's wait for RAW images to compare for definitive assessment.

Aug 29, 2013 at 01:43 AM

skibum5
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p.1 #15 · p.1 #15 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

snapsy wrote:
From what I recall theSuede saying they can actually track in opposite directions. See his excellent post here.

Doesn't he just say "it depends" there.

In the past it seemed that, for the most, when two cameras had similar luminance SNR but different color sensitivity, the ones with higher color sensitivity seemed to just about always also have higher scores on the metamerism test from what I recall.

It's a very tricky complex business though. So many various trade-offs and ways to be both better and worse at the same time (what if you really care about certain parts of the spectrum, maybe one camera pulls those off well and yet overall it has a lower score, etc.).

Aug 29, 2013 at 01:57 AM

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p.1 #16 · p.1 #16 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

skibum5 wrote:
Hopefully this isn't the new 180 process ...

By the look of things, the 70D sensor is still made on the old 500nm process.
I'd be very surprised if Chipworks shows otherwise when they do their analysis.

Aug 29, 2013 at 02:25 AM

lsquare
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p.1 #17 · p.1 #17 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

I think I'm still going to get the 70D because the Dual Pixel AF will really benefit me for my shooting purposes.

Having said that, I'm really disappointed in Canon. We're already approaching late 2013 and it seems that the gap between Canon's sensors and its competitors are growing. How is it possible that a company as big as Canon is unable to narrow the gap? Considering the 70D won't be replaced until late 2015 or 2016, this is just really disappointing news. It's just unacceptable. I was expecting the results to be closer, but it doesn't seem like there is a whole lot of improvements from the 60D except for the slight increase in megapixels.

Aug 29, 2013 at 02:47 AM

mttran
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p.1 #18 · p.1 #18 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

Sticking with my 7yrs old cam, nothing new in canon land for my type of shooting anyway. Thanks canon you save me big buck

Aug 29, 2013 at 02:52 AM

MintMar
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p.1 #19 · p.1 #19 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

johnctharp wrote:
I think that the best takeaway is that Canon split the pixels in half for PDAF (or DPAF), and image quality didn't suffer at all. That's a big thing, really, even though they're still missing out on DR (which I agree that they need to fix ASAP).

The positives here are that the 7D II, if it uses this exact sensor, will be at least as good as the 7D with respect to dynamic range and high ISO performance- while putting out noticeably (if only) better resolution from high-end glass, and that future PDAF-based sensors for the Rebels, the M's, and...Show more →

Yes, true, but you would not get it while looking into the viewfinder. So you either get an interesting AF option while having the electronic "viewfinder" with all the downsides, or OVF great for the fast moving action without this new AF option...

Aug 29, 2013 at 03:20 AM

lsquare
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p.1 #20 · p.1 #20 · Canon EOS 70D DXOMark results

kevindar wrote:
Lets hope this is not the new prototype sensor for the next 5 years.
Given that all canon talked about was the the new autofocus, and did not make any other claims about the camera, I do not find the findings surprising.

It's pretty disappointing news and unfortunately I do expect Canon to use this sensor in its other cameras like the successor to the EOS M. I doubt we'll see a new APS-C sensor from Canon until 2015/2016.

I also doubt the new 7D MK II will perform any better.

Aug 29, 2013 at 03:33 AM

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