mikeengles wrote:
My complaint is that the IQ of the 7D at ISOs 640 and above in essence makes the 18mp camera, into a 9mp camera. It is a form of misselling.
Sounds to me like you simply over-crop everything. I have taken thousands of shots with the 7D at ISO 1600 and it gives me beautiful results. I have no problem printing these at 16x20 and noise is a non-issue.
Would you mind terribly working with a couple of us to see if we can provide suggestions on how to take higher ISO shots with your 7D? Could you take a couple of ISO 1600 shots of birds that is typical of what and how you shoot, then share the raw? You certainly could have a bad 7D, that is definitely a possibility, but there are several of us that shoot with the 7D (and 1D4 and 5D/5D2), that might be able to help perhaps before you have to go through another headache with Canon returns.
You can use wetransfer.com as a free medium for sharing the CR2 if you are up for this.
mikeengles wrote:
I am old fashioned and expect that when I print I have enough pixels at least for 150dpi, preferably 200, ideally 300, which is really not possible with the 7D at high ISO when images need cropping, as NR just reduces the overall resolution quite drastically.
Not to be argumentative, but I have 24x36" prints hanging in galleries made with the 7D at ISO 800 and above. I work them with a combination of LR and Photoshop and find that noise is very manageable up to ISO 1600. After that, it starts getting challenging.
mikeengles wrote:
Canon need to come up with a 7D with IQ of a 5D2.
Those are two very different animals... both excellent in their own right. If you can make an image with the 5D2, it will ALWAYS have better IQ than the same identical image made with the 7D. Its when you need the reach that the 7d shines. If you crop a 5D2 image down to 40% of its original size to match the 7D's FOV, you will ALWAYS end up with less pixels and worse IQ than with a 7D. This is true even with a $7,000 1DX. You need about 45mp in a FF sensor to be able to pull off that crop without losing any IQ.
Each camera has its niche..... The 7D is for reach limited situations and action, the 5D/2/3 is for everything else.... with the 5D3 being a match in the action realm.
I recommend you take TeamSpeed up on his offer... I suspect there's more to this than a crappy camera....
Thanks for the offer to process a RAW image for me. I did send Tony a cropped tiff, that was within the limit of my ISP. Perhaps the image was not very useful in the first place, perhaps he was too polite to say so, but the websized result seemed similar to what I get myself. I use ACR6.7 and CS5, with Neatimage 7 for NR, that is I think what Tony uses.
I have decided to sell/return the camera and wait for something better. In the meantime I will continue to use the 5D2 as it seems that I get on much better with it.
Sounds to me like you simply over-crop everything. I have taken thousands of shots with the 7D at ISO 1600 and it gives me beautiful results. I have no problem printing these at 16x20 and noise is a non-issue.