When I was at grad school at the U of W I stayed in town over Christmas. Must have been '97 or '98. It snowed about 8 inches. People were abondoning their cars in the streets! . Amazing I'll never forget it.
I like them both. In a good light, the 7D's extra 'reach' means that you get to crop more or have more megapixels on the target, but once the light levels start going down, the better AF and pixel quality at higher ISOs of the 1D4 make it the better body.
The only thing I have to add is that sometimes the 7D decides to have shadow pattern noise show up even at ISO 100, but that is rare. The 1D4 is a better body, but I think the 7D is ridiculous bang for the buck.
galenapass wrote:
When I was at grad school at the U of W I stayed in town over Christmas. Must have been '97 or '98. It snowed about 8 inches. People were abondoning their cars in the streets! . Amazing I'll never forget it.
I had a friend in high school who moved here from Wisconsin. He was warned about driving on the hills in our weird snow/slush/ice, but laughed and said he'd learned to drive in far worse back home.
His car ended up crashed at the bottom of Yesler and 2nd. (Ironically, Yesler was formerly known as Skid Road.) It turns out that in his home town the maximum change in elevation from one end of town to the other was about ten feet. Here we can go from sea level to 520 feet in ten blocks.
(As an aside, Skid Road was the source of the terms "skid row" and "on the skids," meaning homeless/destitute. A dubious distinction for Seattle, to be sure.)
That reminds me of how some of the transplants from up north brag about how they can drive in snowy conditions until they experience one of our ice days and the streets become ice rinks.
DmitriM wrote:
7D blows 40D in image quality. You had a broken camera.
Additionally, to get "quality" your camera have to focus on a subject first. 40D and any XXD models had a real trouble with that.
I never said the 40D has better IQ than the 7D. This is what I said,
jcolwell wrote:
There's nothing particularly wrong with the 7D. It's just that the 1DIII and 1DIV are better...
and,
jcolwell wrote:
My 40D provided image quality commensurate with my expectations. My 7D did not...
My expectations were higher for the 7D than for the 40D. Just because the 7D performance meets your expectations, doesn't mean it does for everybody.
P.S. I never had any "real trouble" getting accurate focus on rugby, soccer and ice hockey players with 30D and 40D cameras. If your comment about this is based on personal experience, then maybe you had a broken camera.
For those of you who think a cropped sensor gives you more "reach", I suggest you read this article in full. This is the best explanation I have found on the Internet that explains that you are NOT getting more "reach" with a cropped sensor:
Here's a comparison of images from the 5DM2 (no cropped sensor), the 1D Mark IV (1.3x) sensor and the 7D (1.6x). In this test, a pheasant feather was photographed from 40' using the Canon 600mm f/4 lens. As in the real world of bird/wildlife photography, you cannot move closer to the subject and must shoot from a set distance. (All three images were taken at ISO800. Results were the same at other ISO settings.)
In my work flow, after I photograph a bird, I use Photoshop to reduce the noise, crop the image and then apply a bit of sharpening. I took all three images and ran them through my normal workflow, just as if these images were an actual bird. Each image was cropped identically at 300 ppi. The 5DM2 image required the most cropping, while the Mark IV required moderate cropping and finally the 7D's image required very little cropping since its image is "precropped" the most because of the 1.6x sensor.
As I stated in my earlier post, all three images are virtually identical. The 1.3x and 1.6x sensors are precropping the image, not giving you greater reach.
BrianO wrote:
If a full-frame camera with a given lens can fill the frame with a subject at 100 feet, a 1.6-crop camera with the same lens can fill the frame with the same subject at 160 feet. If that's not more reach, I don't know what is.
True, if one has enough pixel density one can crop the image taken with a full-frame camera at 160 feet to equal the crop-camera's image; but at the time of capture the crop-camera has more reach with a given lens.
These assumptions on APS-C having greater reach seem to never go away.
Your chart is fundamentally wrong - that is unless the bird is actually further away from APS-C camera. All this chart tells me is that the owner of the FF is a better bird stalker.
The only "reach" is a sensor's pixel size and density that limits what the sensor can record. Its smaller size is forcing the picture being taken to be cropped. So many photographers are fooled by what their eyes see in thinking that the APS-C gives a telephoto advantage. It doesn't.
If the APS-C camera was a 20D and the FF was a 1Ds Mk3 then they would have identical "reach". Crop the 1DsMk3 picture of the same bird at the same distance so that both birds are of identical size and you have the same picture with the same pixel density. That is because both sensors have identical pixel size of 6.4 µm and pixel density of 2.4MP/cm2. However, the 1DsMk2 has more sensor size giving it more area to capture in more of the same picture. Why so many people think the smaller sensor is superior in a telephoto sense is nonsense. The APS-C is capturing less - not more than the FF.
The 1DMk4 and the 40D also have a level playing field of pixel size (5.7 µm) and density of 3.1 MP/cm².
The 7D has extra small pixels (4.3 µm) resulting in very dense 5.4MP/cm2 sensor.
The other thing to keep in mind is diffraction limits. The 7D is at f/6.6. The 1DMk4 is at f/9, 1DMk3 at f/11 and 1DMk2 at f/13. If you are always shooting wide open telephotos then who cares - but if you want shots stopped down to f/16 you will wonder why you can never obtain that really crisp picture that you see others take with cameras like the 5D.
I agree with the larger sensor as long as the fps and autofocus are up to the challenge. The 1DX will be Canon's first full-frame sensor with these qualities although you will lose the ability to autofocus @f/8 with TCs.
dbehrens wrote:
...The only "reach" is a sensor's pixel size and density that limits what the sensor can record. Its smaller size is forcing the picture being taken to be cropped. So many photographers are fooled by what their eyes see in thinking that the APS-C gives a telephoto advantage. It doesn't.
Agreed.
Pixels per duck is a good measure, but ppd is only truly useful when the "per-pixel" IQ on the higher density sensor is more-or-less equal to the per-pixel IQ of the lower density sensor. It's always a trade-off. Simply comparing quantity doesn't tell you much about quality.
Pixels per duck is a good measure, but ppd is only truly useful when the "per-pixel" IQ on the higher density sensor is more-or-less equal to the per-pixel IQ of the lower density sensor. It's always a trade-off. Simply comparing quantity doesn't tell you much about quality.
Exactly! My 5dmkII offers extremely good IQ after heavy cropping, my 1DmkIV - not so good, and the 7D crops I've seen - certainly not so. A pixel is not a pixel. Size matters!
Exactly! My 5dmkII offers extremely good IQ after heavy cropping, my 1DmkIV - not so good, and the 7D crops I've seen - certainly not so. A pixel is not a pixel. Size matters!
Yes, but in a focal-length-limited scenario, you will more heavily crop an image from the 5DM2 vs. the Mark IV vs. the 7D to achieve the same field of view in your finished product.
In a focal-length-limited scenario in which you cannot move closer to your subject, all three cameras produce almost identical image quality once the images are cropped to the same field-of-view.
If I can move closer to the subject, the 5DM2 wins hands-down.
Ajay, although I like your comparison, take a look here
Now this is comparing the 1d3 vs 7d http://iwishicouldfly.com/iwishicouldfly/journal/pdfs/Canon%207D%20vs%201D%20Mark%20III.pdf
to say pixel density certainly makes no difference, just makes no sense to me. lets stay within one format. so there is no added detail advantage going from a 1d to 1dII, 1dIII and 1d IV? they all have the same sensor size. No difference going from 40D to 7D? no reach Advantage (pixel per duck)? Yes, lens resolving power, diffraction, shutter speed, accuracy of focusing all these things come in to equation, and much more so the higher the pixel density gets. but 7d and cropped 5dII image providing the same amount of detail? really?
I did not state that it does not matter. Yes, of course it does. My point has to do with the quality of the final image you produce. In my three-way comparison on page 2 of this thread. The 7D w/o any noise reduction produced the highest resolution of all three cameras, but had the highest noise level. As I stated in my comparison, I applied appropriate noise reduction to all three images, then cropped them identically.
My point here is that after cropping and processing an image taken from a set distance, all three of these cameras are so close image quality wise that they are difficult to tell apart.
With regards to my comparison between the 7D and the Mark III (That was my study as well.), The Mark III is only a 10MP camera with a 1.3x crop. It has really low noise levels but the resolution is lower as well. Eventually you will get to a point with low pixel density sensors that the resolution is just not enough when attempting to do any serious cropping of an image.
Going back to the purpose of this original thread, the quality of the image between the Mark IV and 7D (In at focal-length-limited scenario) is so close after applying appropriate noise reduction and cropping that quality should not be the deciding factor when choosing one of these two cameras if and only if you are using the cameras in a focal-length-limited scenario.
AJay wrote:
Yes, but in a focal-length-limited scenario, you will more heavily crop an image from the 5DM2 vs. the Mark IV vs. the 7D to achieve the same field of view in your finished product.
In a focal-length-limited scenario in which you cannot move closer to your subject, all three cameras produce almost identical image quality once the images are cropped to the same field-of-view.
If I can move closer to the subject, the 5DM2 wins hands-down.
Alan
www.iwishicouldfly.com
Of course, and I agree completely with you. You also demonstrated how the so-called reach advantage of the crop cameras, 1DmkIV and 7D, are essentially nil. I certainly won't challenge that finding! :-)
AJay wrote:
With regards to my comparison between the 7D and the Mark III (That was my study as well.), The Mark III is only a 10MP camera with a 1.3x crop. It has really low noise levels but the resolution is lower as well. Eventually you will get to a point with low pixel density sensors that the resolution is just not enough when attempting to do any serious cropping of an image.
Alan
www.iwishicouldfly.com
I did not realize I am quoting you to yourself. I should do the test for myself. I did it indoors with dollar bill at iso 200, with my 100-400, and there was a very clear advantage to the 7D. However, at iso 800, it may be much closer, after noise reduction. thanks for your insight. and the pixel density between 1d4 and 7D are close enough that indeed it may not make a difference.
Something in favour of the 7D AF system over the 1D4 is that the AF sensors are all cross-type (standard precision) even at f/5.6 whereas the 1D4 will be all linear type at f/5.6. This can be significant if you put a TC on an f/4 lens but the shape of the subject matters too. For many people with large aperture lenses it's of no benefit at all.
Another advantage of the 7D is the far more ergonomic implementation of spot mode AF.
. Amazing I'll never forget it.
