cohenxa wrote:
And the 40D too! Don't get me wrong, I have some $ to spend (birthday, christmas and some Canon $ following a contest) and I always want to have a second boddy "just in case"...I can not afford the 5DII and do not want to go to 5D original (don't ask), I thought the 7D will be the perfect toy: good as 40D for landscape but better AF and weather sealing...If the files are poorer than 40D (or XSi), it doesn't worth it IMHO...I would like to hear a second tought on that since I do not know what to do with Darwin review......Show more →
I understand... Can't you try a 7D out at a store or rent one? Seems like the only "real" option to evaluate if it's IQ is good enough for you...
cohenxa wrote:
That is my reasoning...now I just need to be convinced as Darwin's review throw a BIG doubt as I do not know what did he do "wrong" to reach such a result?
I do remember that when I did upgrade from Rebel to 40D, I found my 40D file softer (at that time I was not using a tripod). I end up thinking that the larger sensor photosites are less sensible to micro vibration...Maybe the 18Mpix is more "vulnerable" in tiny vibration...In the 10Mpix sensor the details stay in the photosite whereas for the 18 due to the density it goes to another site and start to blur everything??...Show more →
Check out the main 7D thread sticky at the top of this forum. Much has been written about some of these caveats and things to become disciplined about with respect to the new 18mp crop sensor.
It's still very much a new camera, so the complete understanding of its capabilities is a work in progress.
I would still recommend the 5D2 over the 7D if landscape photography is your primary avocation. You'd have more lens choices available to you on the wide end of shooting, and the IQ and ability to make very large prints is probably slightly better with the 5D2.
But the 5D2 is also more expensive, and you could use the $1K left over to buy that 10-22mm EF-S mount lens with the 7D. It's a tough call, I'm sure.
I have shot 20,30,40,50D,5D and 5D2 extensivly with good L glass on all and the 5D and 5D2 have consistently blown away the crop cameras for landscape work, that does not mean you can't use a 7D for landscape. I believe the 7D is great for some things and not as good for others.
Ross
Reading a whole bunch of reviews can be great for narrowing down choices... But the best thing is to just get the camera in your hands and try it yourself and see if YOU are happy with the results.
If you have a camera store nearby take your 40D along and do test shots in the store and take them home and look at the differences for yourself. You may not have the best light/composition in a store but it sure beats going off someone elses opinion. Or even buy it and take it out on a shoot in the conditions you normally see and compare the results and return it if you aren't happy.
Personally I was excited for the 7D and I love the layout and and feel of it but I find the price tag hard to justify. So I will likely go with a 50D, but then again I'm upgrading from a 300D so anything is an upgrade.
What's sorely lacking here, as it is in most of these types of discussions, is perspective. We're basically talking about amateur equipment used to make small to medium sized prints, right? I hope so, because professionals who REALLY need to examine their work under microscopes for issues like diffraction etc, BECAUSE THEY MAKE VERY LARGE PRINTS, don't shoot with amateur cameras anyways, for the most part. In other words, at the print sizes typically produced by those who use this line of camera, splitting hairs over these technical irrelevancies (for most practical purposes) are nothing more than mental maturbation for the gearheads. I could show you a bunch of 16x20 landscape prints, some made with my XSi and others made with my 1Ds3 and you would have exact odds of 50/50 to tell me which camera took which. Now if you're regularly displaying gallery work at larger sizes then I hope you're not seriously considering the 7D, or any other amateur camera for that matter. Otherwise you should be very happy with it.
Are all the pictures made with the 1DsmkI, 1dmkII, 1dMKI, 50D, 40D, 30D, 20D, 10D, 450D, 400D, 350D, 300D and countless film cameras suddenly blurry and unusable? Sure one might have better servo focus, one shoot better at extremely high ISO, etc. But is that what this whole conversation is about?
When did FM get so caught up in this whole POTN "Haters vs Fans" of a freaking Canon camera body? I mean come on, can't we all just hate Nikon users? Isnt THAT enough?
Chris is right, if you arent making money with it, a decent piece of glass, a rebel XSi and you are set. I mean for god's sake, there is more to a picture than pixel sharpness or 4 extra cross type focal points.
Buy good glass, learn to see, take great pictures.
ChrisDM wrote:
What's sorely lacking here, as it is in most of these types of discussions, is perspective. We're basically talking about amateur equipment used to make small to medium sized prints, right? I hope so, because professionals who REALLY need to examine their work under microscopes for issues like diffraction etc, BECAUSE THEY MAKE VERY LARGE PRINTS, don't shoot with amateur cameras anyways, for the most part. In other words, at the print sizes typically produced by those who use this line of camera, splitting hairs over these technical irrelevancies (for most practical purposes) are nothing more than mental maturbation for the gearheads. I could show you a bunch of 16x20 landscape prints, some made with my XSi and others made with my 1Ds3 and you would have exact odds of 50/50 to tell me which camera took which. Now if you're regularly displaying gallery work at larger sizes then I hope you're not seriously considering the 7D, or any other amateur camera for that matter. Otherwise you should be very happy with it.
It's not all just about full-framed print sizes, as the OP implicitly posits when he says that he is also interested in wildlife photography (the distance of subject matter which might not fill the frame, depending on his available lenses). The 7D presumably provides a LOT of reach advantage over his 40D, due to the ability to crop from a much larger sensor (sans artifacting). That's a very practical use of the new body for the OP's purposes, including cropping in landscape photography as well.
By most accounts, there is no comparison between the 40D and the 7D when it comes to shooting action, both in terms of AF acquisition, and sustained frame througput. So, if wildlife photography is indeed one of the OPs criteria, the 7D wins easily in that practical shooting realm. His "keeper rate" would be substantially higher with the 7D. Professional or not, that is important to most of us.
I might add that there are many amateur photographers who, with good lenses, can and do at or near professional-level quality work with prosumer camera bodies, but they simply don't make their living doing so. And the choice of their camera bodies usually falls within their discretionary funds budget.
cohenxa wrote:
I am puzzled after reading Darwin Wiggett post on the 7D...I was ready to purchase it based on other reviews. My main purpose is landsacpe then wildlife...it seems that the 7D is wildlife then "maybe" landscape.
Any others people experiencing the same thing? if not please post some pics.
Xavier
there is some possibility that you might not to soften images a bit at ISO100 if you want them to be as artifact free as with say a 50D due to seemingly exceedingly many, at the least, copies having something weird about the G1 and G2 channel balance whether exactly what he is on to is sensible or not
neither DPP nor ACR 5.5 let you get the same reach as a 50D while maintaing 50D noise levels and smoothness, maybe future versions of software will, at least not with many copies of the 7D out there
his results seem a little dramatic i need to look over them more before commenting
ChrisDM wrote:
What's sorely lacking here, as it is in most of these types of discussions, is perspective. We're basically talking about amateur equipment used to make small to medium sized prints, right? I hope so, because professionals who REALLY need to examine their work under microscopes for issues like diffraction etc, BECAUSE THEY MAKE VERY LARGE PRINTS, don't shoot with amateur cameras anyways, for the most part. In other words, at the print sizes typically produced by those who use this line of camera, splitting hairs over these technical irrelevancies (for most practical purposes) are nothing more than mental maturbation for the gearheads. I could show you a bunch of 16x20 landscape prints, some made with my XSi and others made with my 1Ds3 and you would have exact odds of 50/50 to tell me which camera took which. Now if you're regularly displaying gallery work at larger sizes then I hope you're not seriously considering the 7D, or any other amateur camera for that matter. Otherwise you should be very happy with it.
well for wildlife you basically are making giant prints or looking at things under a magnifying glass since so often you can't get close enough and have to do a substantial crop
The 7D is a great camera,
ideal for birding with its high density sensor and nice AF tracking
using a prime lens, 400 or 500 etc.
But its 46MP FF equivalent sensor just has more resolution
than wide lenses like the 16-35 or 24-105 can deliver.
Thats the softness being seen, not the camera its the lens.
Its like watching SD on a HDTV set, it can look soft at 100% pixel level
but put a 400 prime on the 7D and the detail is amazing.
or resize down and things will balance out.
cohenxa wrote:
And the 40D too! Don't get me wrong, I have some $ to spend (birthday, christmas and some Canon $ following a contest) and I always want to have a second boddy "just in case"...I can not afford the 5DII and do not want to go to 5D original (don't ask), I thought the 7D will be the perfect toy: good as 40D for landscape but better AF and weather sealing...If the files are poorer than 40D (or XSi), it doesn't worth it IMHO...I would like to hear a second tought on that since I do not know what to do with Darwin review......Show more →
it SHOULD be much better in both cases
however the G1/G2 issue seems to making it more like barely worse to somewhat better (at least with the current versions of DPP and ACR and many 7D copies, there are claims that maybe 10% copies seem to do very well even with current RAW software).
interesting to see how ACR 5.6 does in December or what Canon has to say in response (tentatively acr 5.6 looks like it should render them universally better than a 40D can do, hopefully it can be as smooth while getting as much detail as a 50D can but it remains to be seen)
rossmurphy wrote:
Darwin Wiggett, is a excellent landscape photographer, extensivly published in many magazines, before you dis him at least look at his work, Canadian Rockies by Darwin are probably the best done. What I think he is saying here is a FF camera is better for landscape and I agree totaly with him on that, that doesn't mean the 7D is bad.
Ross
well he shouldve went out in the woods and took real pictures then,he could use fantastic glass as the 10-22mm,16-35,24F1.4L I bet then these would tell a better story...tired of the 100 percent crops of buildings
abqnmusa wrote:
That review is so poorly done I would not pay any attention to it.
examples,
he shoots a 300mm lens at 1/60 for sharpness testing
he uses a beta RAW converter (ACR v5.5)
he uses live view for focusing
etc, etc
I would have to work hard to produce such poor 7D shots.
But he used the same lenses and processes on all the cameras he tested with and obtained the same results.
I believe what we are seeing here is not necessary a restriction on the 7D ability to produce nice sharp images...but on the Canon lenses ability to resolve the detail required for sharp images on such a high dense sensor as the 7D.
digitalbug30d wrote:
well Ive seen some sharp pics in the "Nature forum"here that pretty much tell a different story..so its funny that hobbiests here can get better results than these test show...Just put 7d in search in the Nature forum and you will see for yourself...
Images look great on their own until you have something to compare them against. Also, telephoto lenses have much better resolving power than wide angle lenses. Maybe this is why "nature" photos look better than landscape photos shot with the 7D.
chez wrote:
I believe what we are seeing here is not necessary a restriction on the 7D ability to produce nice sharp images...but on the Canon lenses ability to resolve the detail required for sharp images on such a high dense sensor as the 7D.
If that is true .. then it's Canon's fault for releasing such a model. No matter how much theory is thrown at us non-believers (I'm evaluating a 7D now), they could've made things much simpler with maybe 12 MP and with all the features the 7D has, for maybe $200 less than what they're selling for now. It takes my old iMac a long time (relative to my 30D photos) to process the big RAW files from the 7D. I don' think this camera is meant for amateurs like me .. that might be it .. it's a pro-level camera priced well, for those pros who have great technique and the best lenses. It is speedy, hefty and all that .. but I hope the detail in images is spectacular to justify all the extra overhead of bigger memory cards and longer wait times processing images.
I tested the 16-35 on the 5D classic and 7D
at the pixel level the 5D shots look better
but use a 400 5.6 prime and compare and the 7D
is far far ahead.
With the 7d your getting about all the resolution you can from a lens.
If the lens can not deliver then you see pixel level softness
just downsize and it cleans up.
99% of users should go with a 5D classic or 5D II
as it just offers better IQ over a variety of common uses.
The 7D is best for specific cases like
birding with a 400 or 500 prime lens
if cropping for detail is desired.
The 1D IV white paper touches on this issue
and they have tried to address in processing
and it only has 10MP over 1.6x crop area
compared to 18 on the 7D.
saaketham wrote:
If that is true .. then it's Canon's fault for releasing such a model....
Oh God...here we go. It's been proven sensors like the 7D, 1DsIII and the 5DII will demand more out of a lens than bodies with lower MP counts. This doesn't mean you cant use lenses that cant out resolve an 18mp APS-C sensor or that the results of such combination will be unusable. It just means you may see a difference in resolution when pixel peeping at 100-200% on your computer monitor. Print the images and you're not likely to see much of a difference if at all. In regard to Darwin's thoughts, perhaps he shouldn't be shooting at 1/60 with a 300mm lens with an 18mp APS-C sensor at the receiving end. I don't care how stable your tripod is it wont make up for movement in the scene, which will be exaggerated by the high pixel density. Sensors like the 7D are going to demand the best glass and good technique to get the best results. I wont even comment on processing RAW's using a beta converter. As for your processing issues, have you thought about sRAW? You know you don't need to shoot at 18mp...right?
??
I don' think this camera is meant for amateurs like me .. that might be it .. it's a pro-level camera priced well, for those pros who have great technique and the best lenses. It is speedy, hefty and all that .. but I hope the detail in images is spectacular to justify all the extra overhead of bigger memory cards and longer wait times processing images.
