musclepics wrote:
From those samples, the 7D looks to be about 1 stop nosier than what I get from my 1D MkIII at higher ISOs. In fact the ISO800 sample pic looks like what I get at ISO3200 from the 1D MkIII, so about 2 stops behind there (yes even when resized to the same resolution).
From which samples, RG's? I don't think Rob's RAW workflow is tuned to minimize noise, as I get better results with my 5D2s. A better comparison may be the Imaging-Resource samples. While it's hard to judge definitively from in-camera JPEGs, it seems that the 7D is an improvement over the 50D. When you factor in the high resolution vs. cameras like the 1D3, noise control seems surprisingly good.
I don't think anyone should expect this camera to be a noise king in absolute terms, but within the range of APS-C cameras, it looks promising. If these samples hold up, good real-world performance up to ISO 1600 looks quite possible, with 3200 doable in a pinch, which is astonishing for an 18Mp APS-C sensor.