brainiac wrote:
all that money spent on the 35 f1.4 instead of the 35 f2 is liable to go to waste on the 7D since AF is seldom accurate enough, and manual focus with a well-calibrated S-type screen is the best way to guarantee that your razor thin d.o.f. occurs where you want it.
I hope this is wrong.
With my EF 50 f1.4, my 50D body is the first x0D I've owned where I have confidence in the AF @ f1.4, even with (at least some of) the off-center points. I hope that my pending 7D doesn't disappoint in this aspect.
Using the AF in this situation does mean that I keep a focus point planted on one of my subject's eyes, which can result in sub-optimal composition (something along the lines of which came up in another thread brainiac posted in), so I do appreciate the desirability of having a good MF-empowering screen. Even though I have the s-type screen for my 50D, though, I find the Canon EF 50's focus ring too hard to rely upon. Maybe someday I'll get into alt glass.
brainiac wrote:
The simple way to understand the matt screen/d.o.f. question is to remember that the matt screen is a textured surface which necessarily has peaks and troughs. By virtue of the fact that the peaks are nearer the lens and the troughs are futher away (on a tiny scale), matt screens artificially increase the perceived d.o.f. of the lens at any aperture. Remember that at the film plane d.o.f. is much smaller than it is on the far side of the lens, so that's why the amplitude of focus screen texture makes such a dramatic difference. The sensor itself doesn't have those peaks and troughs, so focus screens always seem to have a little more d.o.f. than the photo ends up with. But an S-type screen is significantly closer to the flatness of the sensor, so it makes it much easier to judge focus accurately at wide apertures when the d.o.f. at the film plane is significantly less than the amplitude of the peaks and troughs on the focus screen. It is impossible to judge accurate manual focus on the standard screens with very wide apertures, and so all that money spent on the 35 f1.4 instead of the 35 f2 is liable to go to waste on the 7D since AF is seldom accurate enough, and manual focus with a well-calibrated S-type screen is the best way to guarantee that your razor thin d.o.f. occurs where you want it....Show more →
paulfeng has kindly pointed out that I am talking a lot of crap here, and he may well be right. I simply don't know enough about the optics of focus screens to say whether surface texture amplitude is the actual mechanism by which d.o.f. increases in focus screens, so let's call what I wrote a gross oversimplification. Ultimately the point is that standard focus screens are brighter and show more d.o.f. than the picture will have. That's verifiable by observation of a quick test. It's also true that you see less d.o.f. in the vf when you use an S-type screen, and it's also much easier to place the razor thin d.o.f. of wide apertures at the desired distance accurately. So call the above a fancy parable with a real and practical message: it may well be very hard to manually focus wide aperture lenses on a 7D since it doesn't show a good approximation to the d.o.f. that the sensor will record.
For me the jury's still out on this, until I compare a 7D against an Eg-S screen. But from the reports so far, it looks like the 7D has a standard Canon screen, previous examples of which hide the true d.o.f. from the manual focusser.
brainiac wrote:
paulfeng has kindly pointed out that I am talking a lot of crap here, and he may well be right.
I will point out that in my PM to brainiac, I was much more diplomatic than some, uhm, hidden participants in this thread. That "crap" characterization was Richard's own English forthrightness, not the usual reserve that we Americans typically exhibit.
brainiac wrote:
paulfeng has kindly pointed out that I am talking a lot of crap here, and he may well be right. I simply don't know enough about the optics of focus screens to say whether surface texture amplitude is the actual mechanism by which d.o.f. increases in focus screens, so let's call what I wrote a gross oversimplification. Ultimately the point is that standard focus screens are brighter and show more d.o.f. than the picture will have. That's verifiable by observation of a quick test. It's also true that you see less d.o.f. in the vf when you use an S-type screen, and it's also much easier to place the razor thin d.o.f. of wide apertures at the desired distance accurately. So call the above a fancy parable with a real and practical message: it may well be very hard to manually focus wide aperture lenses on a 7D since it doesn't show a good approximation to the d.o.f. that the sensor will record.
For me the jury's still out on this, until I compare a 7D against an Eg-S screen. But from the reports so far, it looks like the 7D has a standard Canon screen, previous examples of which hide the true d.o.f. from the manual focusser....Show more →
There are some related thoughts on this topic in this dedicated thread on Live View focusing:
paulfeng wrote:
I will point out that in my PM to brainiac, I was much more diplomatic than some, uhm, hidden participants in this thread. That "crap" characterization was Richard's own English forthrightness, not the usual reserve that we Americans typically exhibit.
Sorry - should have made it clearer that paul was exceedingly polite. It was I who called my waffle a load of 'crap' ;-)
Fred Tedsen wrote:
Is banding going to be a problem with the 7D or not? I am not technically savvy enough to understand what the real-world implications of these discussion are:
I have kept an eye on those conversations, but not in fine detail. The upshot I am getting is:
1) It is possible that some 7Ds are worse than others, so the worst example seen on the web is likely not typical.
2) The issue appears to be not at high ISO, but at low ISO, when pushing the shadows & underexposed portions HARD (harder than situations that we've seen banding in some 5DII images, I think).
So, personally I will look for it early in my 7D when it comes, but I'm not overly worried about it.
Tom_W wrote:
I ordered yesterday also, but as of this evening, still no notice.
Still no shipping information this morning so I checked with J&R - they had 62 internet orders and 56 bodies. They're still processing, and it all depends on where I sit in the queue.
I said "they're really flying off the shelves!". The customer service rep said "they're not even getting to the shelves - we're shipping them out as fast as they come in." He said that they have another 200 or so coming in over the next day or two.
Canon's got to be working overtime spitting these 7D's out.
Tom_W wrote:
Canon's got to be working overtime spitting these 7D's out.
I think this is a good move by Canon...make sure all orders are filled and shipped in a timely fashion when the product is hot and no discounts need to be used.
Yakim Peled wrote:
Can you please elaborate?
Happy shooting,
Yakim.
I just hold the plate up to the new camera and start removing / reducing / elongating metal until the bracket fits and will not rub on the camera. This L plate (for the 20d) took 15 minutes as I was leaving on a vacation...I still need to smooth it out and add some paint.
Well the grid not working on my 7D was user error but the quiet shutter mode I am not sure about.
Great camera though with many options that are a pleasure to use and frankly, easy to get to once you have done it a time or two. There were many sensible changes and options added to this camera. I would have loved some on my 5D II but at least we are seeing these and it looks like Canon is listening after all. :^)
jamato8 wrote:
Well the grid not working on my 7D was user error but the quiet shutter mode I am not sure about.
Great camera though with many options that are a pleasure to use and frankly, easy to get to once you have done it a time or two. There were many sensible changes and options added to this camera. I would have loved some on my 5D II but at least we are seeing these and it looks like Canon is listening after all. :^)
are you in silent mode 1 or 2? silent mode 2 will not work with continues shooting, silent mode one will always work.
I can't seem to change the mode so to be honest, even though it shows mode 1 or 2 or disable when I go in and change it, the sound doesn't change so I don't know what mode I am in except that I am not in mode 2 even when mode 2 is shown to be on because it will not single shoot as is described in the manual.
Just checked mine and I have the same problem. All of the silents sound the same and continues shooting in all modes. I thought the silent was a bunch of b.s. because it didn't work well but I guess it doesn't work at all.
The quiet mode only works in live mode. I just called Canon.
So, user error, or misunderstanding but it seemed like the quiet mode was for regular shooting but if you look closely in the manual the information is under the "live mode" section.
Well it is still quieter than either my 5D or 5D II.
what is the point of it working only in live mode? wouldn't you want it more?
Canon canada said they have no bulletines on it or anything and that would explain why.
FWIW, my impression is that the camera is already very quiet even without "quiet mode". This is very nice for some of what I shoot (corporate meetings and conferences).
Regarding the silent mode, I think it does refer to live view shooting, though I can't tell much difference in the sound in the various modes. The loudest noise you hear taking a picture is the mirror, so in live view you've already eliminated the loudest sound to begin with. Seems like a curious "feature", but maybe I'm not doing it right. Not something I see myself using much.
It is MUCH quieter in live view mode than not, but this is my first experience with live view.
Reminds me for some reason of a totally off topic discussion I had with a DWC at a wrestling event. Had his brand new Rebel and was saying how happy he was with it but wanted to know how to turn off the clicking sound when you take a picture. Maybe he wanted to use the barking sound available with my Mom's P&S.
Fred Tedsen wrote:
Is banding going to be a problem with the 7D or not? I am not technically savvy enough to understand what the real-world implications of these discussion are:
That's interesting. I have tried three cameras at different shops and they all demonstrated this issue to some degree. Can you upload the ISO 100 RAW to rapidshare and post the link?
Thanks
thw2 wrote:
Just tested my copy using Rawnalyze. No low ISO banding issues.
paulfeng wrote:
I have kept an eye on those conversations, but not in fine detail. The upshot I am getting is:
1) It is possible that some 7Ds are worse than others, so the worst example seen on the web is likely not typical.
2) The issue appears to be not at high ISO, but at low ISO, when pushing the shadows & underexposed portions HARD (harder than situations that we've seen banding in some 5DII images, I think).
So, personally I will look for it early in my 7D when it comes, but I'm not overly worried about it.
The banding pattern is consistent between shots from the same camera, it goes away by black frame subtraction, so it is fixable.
