Sorry if this is posted already. I didnt see it.

Did Canon bribe dpreview.com this time ?

Link: http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos7d/

They don't exactly hate it, do they?

That's like half a year sooner than usual

It is one of the fastest reviews I have seen posted there. One nice thing in the review is the ACR 5.6 (beta) full sized samples in the performance section. The conversions can be downloaded and reviewed. They look very nice to me. Erased my doubts out the camera's performance. Hopefully we won't have to wait much longer for the actual release of ACR 5.6. Very high ratings on the conclusions page.

kewlcanon wrote:
Did Canon bribe dpreview.com this time ?

No ... but, now that Amazon owns them ...

A very positive review.

I have lately seen three different reviews/comparisons that make me scratch my head.

The-Digital-Picture.com

Roland Lim (link posted here at FM)

And now DPreview.

They all show image examples that suggest the 7D has significantly lower resolution than the 5DII. And the 100% crops look blurred.

I provide a sample from DPreview here (that also show some color moiré ), along with two of my own. My own have been converted in C1. In the text sample, I used the same sharpening as DPR (80/1.0), the postage stamp has more sharpening with a smaller radius. Is the different conversion / sharpening the only reason my 100% crops look sharp, or do I have a special copy?

I don't think you have a special copy ... I doubt if they exist. I was shooting comparison shots between my 5DII and 7D yesterday trying to get a better understanding of how they compare. You really need to have two test images right next to each other to understand what is going on. I would open a 7D image and think ... that is sharp. Then I would open the a 5DII image and go wow that 7D image is not so good. Some times the 5DII images were just so great. Don't form any conclusions from what I'm saying about the 5DII or 7D, I was comparing them using the Canon 10-22 and Canon 16-35 II. There were more factors at play than the camera bodies.

Am glad DPR agrees with my initial test of 24 frames in a RAW burst....

The smaller sensor tends to be less sharp because you have to magnify it more to reach the same image size as the bigger sensor.

Could it possibly be the lens? I'm using the EF-S 60 macro for my tests, and the 100% frops from that one shades my crops from the 10-22, that were also very good.

How about 7D vs 7D, does my text crop look sharper than DPR, or am I biased because I want my own camera to be perfect?

DPR conversions are with ACR - other converters can definitely get more and sharpness and detail without moiré out of resolution tests.

DPP renders very soft IMO, but I thought ACR had a better reputation for sharpness.

Anyway, resolution tests are as confusing as ever. I just converted some ISO100 RAW images from imaging-resource.com, with C1. Guess what, the 7D beats the 5DII by a clear margin and is at least on par with the 1DSIII in the fabric swatches. Seems to be a focus issue or something.

alundeb wrote:
Seems to be a focus issue or something.


Highly useful reading: http://www.slrgear.com/articles/focus/focus.htm

Kaa

The high ISO samples still look to be about 1+ stop behind what I'm getting with the 1D3, but for a 1.6x cropper it's more than acceptable, and better than any other camera in it's class (ie, D300s).

The "noise" is quite different from what I'm used to.

For example this was a 7D sample at only ISO3200, and the artifacting is pretty bad

http://a.img-dpreview.com/gallery/canoneos7d_samples/originals/img_9144_dpp.jpg

But it's no worse than the D300s, and all around the 7D is definitely a better camera than the D300s (much the same way the 1D4 is a better all around camera than the D3s).

musclepics wrote:
The high ISO samples still look to be about 1+ stop behind what I'm getting with the 1D3, but for a 1.6x cropper it's more than acceptable, and better than any other camera in it's class (ie, D300s).

The "noise" is quite different from what I'm used to.

For example this was a 7D sample at only ISO3200, and the artifacting is pretty bad

http://a.img-dpreview.com/gallery/canoneos7d_samples/originals/img_9144_dpp.jpg

But it's no worse than the D300s, and all around the 7D is definitely a better camera than the D300s (much the same way the 1D4 is a better all around camera than the D3s).

low iso is where my 7D worries lie:

Bobster2 wrote:
The smaller sensor tends to be less sharp because you have to magnify it more to reach the same image size as the bigger sensor.

Nah. It's not that.

Sensor size affects noise but not sharpness.

Take a look at these Imaging Resource tests, for example, between the 40D and the new G11.
Both have 10mp sensors but the 40D sensor has 9x larger area than the G11.
Sharpness is the same. The G11 is maybe even slightly sharper.

There's something about the 7D sensor.
Many reviewers are noticing the softness.

I think Roland Lim is correct when he says that the 7D is lacking micro-contrast.
The difference between the 7D and 5DII in his test is quite striking, btw.

As I said in other thread, I am surprised that it is not that much better (jpeg noise graphs look better for 50D up to ISO 1600) than 50D as far as noise level is concerned (at least according to their review).

Looks good... well I know the complainers will come in force as usual

keithreeder wrote:
They don't exactly hate it, do they?