I have finally finished my user review of the 7D. It has taken much longer than I originally anticipated due to various factors. Those who have had my previous reviews on the 40D and 50D will know my style of review. I hope it will help those still on the fence.

You can read the full review here:-
http://rolandlim.wordpress.com/2009/11/06/canon-eos-7d-review/

Nice review, your comparison to the 5D MII was very interesting. I actually did a similar test last night with some portraits and saw the same exact thing. I basically focused on the eye and zoomed in 100% and compared. The 5D MII at 100% looked way sharper then the 7D, but when zoomed out it was barely noticeable. Its always fun to pixel peep, and I find it amusing when people freak out doing that. I have no issues at all with my 7D and plan to use it for most of my wildlife photography...however I am going to stick with the 5D MII for portrait work...then again most of that is because I love the look of FF sensor.

Wow - that must have been a lot of work? Thanks for taking the time to do that - well written.

I wonder if perhaps the 5D2 samples in the review look noticeably sharper because it's been sized down to 7D resolution?

Well that's the fair way to compare

n0b0 wrote:
I wonder if perhaps the 5D2 samples in the review look noticeably sharper because it's been sized down to 7D resolution?

nice review! now I know whice camera to buy next.

Cool review. That was a heck of a lot of work!

What I found surprising were the 50D vs 7D comparisons (the 5DII results are expected). That 50D did amazingly well and, to my eyes, were ever so slightly better in your comparisons at all but the 2 highest ISO samples. However, your sample lighting is very forgiving and has few deep shadows or low mids. A typical night scene of mainly lower mids and deep shadows would not have fared so well for the 50D. I think the 50D is less tolerant of underexposure than most EOS.

Nice review and comparisons. It was also interesting to see someone apply real-world PP to the 7D images to see how close they can get them to resemble 5D II images.

Gochugogi wrote:
That 50D did amazingly well

I must admit, I thought the same thing. The boards seem to be flooded with people complaining of the 50D's high ISO noise and praising the 7D's high ISO noise. Even with uprezing the 50D images (which would magnify the noise), it certainly seems like much of the criticism of the 50D is rather unwarranted. Which, to me, seems like excuse enough to pick one up when my Rebel goes.

That being said, as far as the 5D2 vs. 7D, I believe the 7D is starting to get limited by lens resolution. Most certainly, the diffraction at F/8 is affecting the sharpness of detail, compared to the 5D2. This was one of the main reasons why I switched to a full frame camera

A very extensive review, Roland, thanks for posting!

I have a couple of questions, hope you have time to answer

What NR and sharpening settings did you use in the RAW conversion?

In the comparison vs 5DII, ISO 100, how would you explain that the white on red details in the background of the crops look sharper for the 7D than the 5DII? Or maybe I'm wrong. The details in the red in the background, lower left, looks at least as detailed for the 7D, but more sharpened for the 5DII.

Thanks in advance.

Makes me want to buy a 5D II

alundeb wrote:In the comparison vs 5DII, ISO 100, how would you explain that the white on red details in the background of the crops look sharper for the 7D than the 5DII? Or maybe I'm wrong. The details in the red in the background, lower left, looks at least as detailed for the 7D, but more sharpened for the 5DII

Interesting observation. I'm wondering if it's a DoF issue or maybe a front focus issue.

J Andersen wrote:
Makes me want to buy a 5D II
+1

Very good review. I'm enlightened. Thanks for the hard work.

kewlcanon wrote:
n0b0 wrote:
I wonder if perhaps the 5D2 samples in the review look noticeably sharper because it's been sized down to 7D resolution?

Well that's the fair way to compare

I'm not questioning the fairness. I was just wondering because I looked at the 7D and the 5D2 in Imaging Resources and the difference is not as obvious as in this review.

I see what you're talking about per my recollection up until ISO 1600 they're pretty close so might be something wrong with this latest review ?.

n0b0 wrote:
kewlcanon wrote:
n0b0 wrote:
I wonder if perhaps the 5D2 samples in the review look noticeably sharper because it's been sized down to 7D resolution?

Well that's the fair way to compare

I'm not questioning the fairness. I was just wondering because I looked at the 7D and the 5D2 in Imaging Resources and the difference is not as obvious as in this review.

I don't mean to put down this review, but here are IR test crops of 5DII, 7D and 1DsIII at ISO 100 processed in CaptureOne (The jpeg engine struggles with saturated reds).

There is probably a focus issue with the 5DII test at IR, but as you can see, there is no reason to fear that the 7D can't resolve:

5DII
7D
1DsIII

Imaging Resource comparisons are useless imo since it's all noise reduced to hell

I do not know why the 5D Mark II images look sharper, but if I were to guess, I think maybe the 5D Mark II has a significantly weaker anti-aliasing filter than the 7D and that could be the reason why the 5D Mark II images looked sharper

Possibly - but could it simply be because the higher pixel density is outresolving the lenses?

Very good and interesting review. Thank you very much.

Nice job on that review! I would be curious to see the 7d shots with contrast adjusted to match the 5d2, I wonder if it would make them appear sharper.

Nice review. I'm quite happy with my 5D II, but if I wanted a sports/wildlife body, the 7D looks like a nice camera. I am hooked on full frame since I mainly shoot portraits, but maybe some of these new features will make it to the next 5D III or 3D or whatever it is called next.

wow

just know you are from china ?

pity still can not open the link you show above...

agree with the possible pixel density reason, we need a efs 30mm that is 1.6x sharper than 50 f1.4 on 7d to do the comparison with 5dII?.

Dawei Ye wrote:
I do not know why the 5D Mark II images look sharper, but if I were to guess, I think maybe the 5D Mark II has a significantly weaker anti-aliasing filter than the 7D and that could be the reason why the 5D Mark II images looked sharper

Possibly - but could it simply be because the higher pixel density is outresolving the lenses?

agree with the pixel density reason, we need a efs 30mm that is 1.6x sharper than 50 f1.4 on 7d to do the comparison with 5dII?.

And the EF 50 1.4 USM isn't exactly a killer performer, so the designers won't have to injure themselves trying. Of course, the 15MP 50D files were uprezzed to 18MP and they looked slightly better than the 7D from ISO 100-800. Maybe a little softer lens should be used for the 50D--just to make things fair and even.

Nice review Roland. I noted this:

The 5D Mark II images looked significantly sharper with better local contrast at all ISO. In theory, there should not be a great difference in perceived resolution between the 18MP sensor of the 7D and 21.1 MP sensor of the 5D Mark II. I do not know why the 5D Mark II images look sharper, but if I were to guess, I think maybe the 5D Mark II has a significantly weaker anti-aliasing filter than the 7D and that could be the reason why the 5D Mark II images looked sharper.

There are a couple of things I've observed in my own testing: If using DPP, at the default settings some NR is applied to 7D files even at ISO 100. This is not the case for 5D2 files. However, I think this only accounts for part of the difference.

The other factor seems to be RAW conversion algorithms. For some reaosn, Capture One Pro 5 seems to produce significantly sharper output from the 7D, with better micro-contrast, at low ISO than DPP with all NR disabled. See alundeb's comment above; there is also some discussion of this on this thread: http://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/829160/0?keyword=capture,one#7700355

Based on this I'd certainly recommend that all 7D owners at least take a look at the the Capture One 5 trial.