I'll buy a 7D, but I'm am baffled why Canon did not develop the 50D sensor with the new tech. I'm sure the results would have been even more impressive and generated an even more +ve response to the 7D.
willis wrote:
There are about 5 generations separating the D30 and 7D sensors, so hardly a fair comparison.
I suspect that it was a deliberately exaggerated comparision to make the point that technology is always improving, and that while at some unspecific point in the future we probably will butt up against the absolute physical limits of what a crop sensor can achieve, so far more pixels and better IQ/noise performance have gone hand in hand for the most part.
We shouldn't write this sensor off yet, in other words.
FWIW, I agree. Did anyone look at the Gizmodo page of examples I posted last night? They were very good at 3200 and 6400 ISO.
keithreeder wrote:
That smug, know-it-all, "too cool for school" superiority is wearing pretty thin, Canonical. The fact is is you know nothing more about the Real World performance of this camera than the folk who are enthusiastic about it: but unlike you, some of the folk who are enthusing have demonstrated many times that they know a thing or two about photography, rather than simply being some smartarse who likes to give the impression that he's too clever to be fooled by Canon marketeers...
I'm afraid that marketing plays a far more significant role in the development of these cameras than might otherwise be believed ... or that you WANT to believe.
I'm not suggesting that the real world performance of the new 7D is anything less than what you and others expect or have assumed. I am suggesting, though, that R&D, product development AND marketing pretty much work together at some point to develop a camera that people will purchase. If they don't, Canon doesn't make any money on it.
Do you think the term "Digic III" came from the engineers? Do you think that "Live View" and "Picture Styles" were the exclusive terrain of the product development department? It's often the marketing departments ... via focus groups and other methods of consumer feedback ... that make suggestions to product development about what might make the next generation of product viable.
I worked with many, many companies like Canon (including Apple, Alpine Car Audio, Mitsubishi and others) in an advertising and marketing advisory capacity and sat in on many meetings where product features were discussed and mulled over before any kind of final product was developed. More often than not, suggestions from marketing were incorporated into a final design. And for good reason: marketing is where the rubber meets the road. A product that doesn't meet the consumer's requirements (much less the photographer's requirements!) is a product doomed for either weak success or total failure.
The Fuji S3/S5 cameras are a good example. Fuji is apparently no longer in the DSLR business. Why? Because they focused on DR and let resolution slide backwards. The S5 Pro, as a good a camera as it is, remained a 6MP camera (interpolated to 12MP) with a very aggressive AA filter. The rest of the world, in the meantime, advanced to 10 and 12MP, which made both good technical sense and good marketing sense. Fuji left marketing out of their equation. The results speak for themselves.
I love everything I've read about this new cam, but the only reservation I have at this point is how diffraction limited this new sensor might be because of it's miniscule pixel size. I don't see this as any limitation whatsoever for sports and action, the arena for which the camera was built.
But for landscape photography, where DOF is so critical, it may be a limiting factor. Could there be something about the new sensor design that breaks the old diffraction rules? Hope so.
I don't know anything about how they were processed, Paolo - maybe they were jpegs out of the camera.
The fact remains that they looked great, and I for one don't have any problem at all with the idea that I might have to work on a 3200/6400 file a wee bit to get it right.
My point still stands though: we shouldn't make assumptions about the sensor, we'll know soon enough what it can and can't do, but the examples I've seen so far are very positive (even RG's, when compared to the 5D Mk II images from the same shoot).
I have the 40D and the 5D and neither the 50D or the 5D2 looked like a worth wile upgrade for what I need. No whining or I wish this and that or lets just see how good images are. I pre ordered mine local the day of the anouncement.
Its a new tool and I look forward to learning its strenghs and weakness. Im in Technologies business now and use to being on the cutting edge. Being on the cutting edge means there can be problems and nothing is perfect.
As far as prosumer IMO this is the best release to date (1.6 Crop Sensor) in my 4 years of shooting cannon equipment.
Cheers to those that have already bought in and hopefully a rewarding experiance with "Cutting Edge" technology.
I don't see how technology can ever change diffraction limits (assuming the sensor is sensitive to visible light wavelengths). In this respect a denser sensor is bound to suffer more but if you've coped with a crop sensor in the past you at least shouldn't lose anything, at least in terms of detail and sharpness.
canonical wrote:
when I hear things like "this is the last crop camera I'll ever need to buy" and someone expecting better low light performance than a 1 series, I think that Canon marketing has finally pulled found some ideal subjects.
Do you read the threads or just take a default "I iz noing more dan U" tone at all times? My exact quote was that the 40D is considered to be as good as, or better than, the 1DII and IIn at ISO1600...not better AF, not better built...just less noise.
The 1D isn't a deity, the mark II is close to 6 years old now, and shockingly enough electronics technology has advanced enough in that time that the high ISO performance has been matched or (arguably) bettered by *SHOCK* a NON 1 SERIES! OMG!!!
brainiac wrote:
BTW, even Rob Galbraith, who is not an engineer or physicist, peddles the mass delusion back to the masses:
When are reviewers going to start behaving responsibly and admit that their armchair theories about noise are in direct contradiction of the facts about sensors from all manufacturers over the last decade. There are NO, and I mean NO examples of sensor quality decreasing alongside rising density. The 7D will smack a D30 at high iso despite having 6 times as many pixels. It's just a myth. There are now no gaps, and smaller pixels do not hurt high iso performance FOR ANY GIVEN SIZE OF SENSOR....Show more →
Absolutely. What people also need to understand is that Canon has improved the quantum efficiency of the phtodiode. This is a BIG deal.
No, it's a good honest to god optical VF, but there's a lcd screen overlayed on the glass focus screen that is used to display the grid lines, AF points and spot meter circle. Normally the grid lines would have to etched on the glass focus screen for example and you had to change the focus screen.
alundeb wrote:
The "Noise" you see at the lighthouse, is fog.
Exactly. All these shots come from well-known locations on Mount Desert Island, ME. The bridge, the Margaret Todd four-mast sailing ship out of Bar Harbor, etc. The Bass Harbor lighthouse is often shrouded in fog, Nature's own noise.
I'll be glad when the production body is available for wider review. I think that the Imaging Resource shots are still worth a lot of analysis. Canon has done some impressive semiconductor work on the 7D sensor...
hfillmore wrote:
But for landscape photography, where DOF is so critical, it may be a limiting factor. Could there be something about the new sensor design that breaks the old diffraction rules? Hope so.
Harvey
The good news for you, Harvey, is that for a given DOF, the diffraction is not dependent on the sensor size. It is just our habit of comparing Crop and FF cameras at the same aperture value that fools us.
In fact, the thing we can't do with crop sensors, is really shallow DOF.
freaklikeme wrote:
Impressively speced. I'll be particularly interested to hear how the metering system works out for the early adopters.
"Far more than a slight improvement from a previous model, the EOS 7D DSLR is a brand new product that stands on its own..." Does everyone else take that to mean the end of the xxD series?
I'm sure the xxD continues, because they will want to cover that price point.
A few years ago I think Canon was thinking about the recession and being conservative in spending. With the 7D they seem to have realized that they need to be aggressive. So more and new technologies at a good price.
The 7D picks up xxD owners who don't want to buy a $3000 camera that doesn't use their ef-s lenses. It also pushes people without ef-s that were "on the fence" about the 5DII. There a lot of interest in 5DII video. The7D keeps that going.
It's a compelling camera that addresses many of the reason to consider Nikon. It does an astounding 144 mps in a small package. That's remarkable.
Pixel Perfect wrote:
I'll buy a 7D, but I'm am baffled why Canon did not develop the 50D sensor with the new tech. I'm sure the results would have been even more impressive and generated an even more +ve response to the 7D.
Maybe 18MP was to keep in line with the anticipated 1D4 which may have 18MP (in 1.3 crop). It has been this way in the past:
20D/30D....1DII
40D....1D3
The early rumours had predicted a full frame 7D among other possibilities. I like the specs of 7D but refuse to drop $1699 on a pro spec crop body. Canon was foolish not to offer up 7D instead of 50D way back when. As you can see alot of coments concerning the new 7D at T.O.P.S. have most choosing Sony a850 24mp full frame with inbody image stabilization over another crop camera for just $300 more:
It is a compelling argument, crop D300s nikon, crop 7D canon or add a sony full frame for $200 to $300 more. I'll stick with my 5D. I like 12mp full frame files. No 7D for me.
