Canon 7D review - Gulp

The biggest problem with the 7D is that it will make an average or poor lens look average or poor. I think most of the limitations 7D owners reach will be imposed by glass quality and not shortfalls of the body itself.
 
Orville said:
The biggest problem with the 7D is that it will make an average or poor lens look average or poor. I think most of the limitations 7D owners reach will be imposed by glass quality and not shortfalls of the body itself.
Click to expand...

Average or poor lenses look average or poor on any camera. They will not look any different on a 7D.

Rather more accurately, a 7D will allow a really good lens to show its potential sharpness.
 
HoppyUK said:
Average or poor lenses look average or poor on any camera. They will not look any different on a 7D.

Rather more accurately, a 7D will allow a really good lens to show its potential sharpness.
Click to expand...

That's pretty much spot on....things don't get any worse than they really are, they simply don't get better when they should be doing.

Bob
 
Canon Bob said:
That's pretty much spot on....things don't get any worse than they really are, they simply don't get better when they should be doing.

Bob
Click to expand...

Cheers Bob. The reason I mention it is that I have read from time to time that cameras like the 7D and the 50D somehow actually make regular lenses look worse than they do on lower res cameras. Not true.

In fact, the reverse is technically true. Even the humble kit lens is capable of maxxing out the 7D's sensor when you hit the sweet spot, in the centre of the frame at optimum aperture. So in that respect, even ordinary lenses will appear fractionally sharper now and then on a 7D (just).
 
My 50mm F/1.8 seemed quite good on a 40D, but when used on the 7D I really could not notice any detail gains from those extra 8MP until it was stopped down to around F/4. The 17-55, 70-200 & EF-S 60mm all showed noticeable gains in resolution. My 17-85mm proided some gains in centre sharpness, but borders appeared exactly the same. To me, the 7D requires better glass than my 40D did to extract the most detail.
 
Have we just reached a point now where any DSLR canon produces gets slated?

The 40D was slated, yet people are now saying (wrongly in my opinion) that it's better than the 50D. The 50D again has been slated in early reviews and now it's the 7D's turn.
 
To me a camera is a tool nothing else it needs to do a job the 7d is doing that job and every one i sell my work to are happy the work is reproduced to A2 & A1. If the camera was crap it would go i would'nt play about with it because of loss of earnings that said it is used with canon l spec glass to get the best from the camera
Regards
Lost
 
If the 7D has a very srong AA filter then it's going to look soft without proper processing. Canon put out a technical paper when the 1Dslll was launched suggesting a much stronger sharpening will be needed on the image than with previous models. I suspect the same is also true of the 7D.
 
Chappers said:
If the 7D has a very srong AA filter then it's going to look soft without proper processing. Canon put out a technical paper when the 1Dslll was launched suggesting a much stronger sharpening will be needed on the image than with previous models. I suspect the same is also true of the 7D.
Click to expand...

In their 7D test DPReview refers to the impact of the AA filter but I can't find out much about it, ie where its cuts in, soft or hard cut, and exactly what effect it has. Leica also make a point about the very weak AA filter in the M9, claiming benefits, but again no hard information. Does anyone publish this data?

But the sensor can only record what the lens delivers so the whole melting pot of variables is pretty much impossible to predict. But at the end of the day, what you see is what you get. There's no arguing with that and in my own tests the extra sharpness of the 7D against my 40D was significant, but not massive. Not what you might expect from an 80% increase in pixels.

Then again, I did the same identical shots with a 5DII (same lens/ISO) and the modest 15% increase in pixels yielded a very noticeable jump in sharpness and quality. Of course, the 5DII's pixels are twice the size and that obviously makes the difference.

This is exactly what I see when I look at the resolution chart images on DPReview. The difference between the 7D and 12mp Nikon D300 is there, but it's not much. Then when you look at identical shots from the 5DII the difference is really quite marked.

7D and rival comparisons here http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos7d/page28.asp

5DII and other FF cameras here http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/canoneos5dmarkii/page39.asp

When it comes to ultimate image quality, there is still no substitute for size but you have to look very close indeed to see it. Looking at 10x15in prints from the 7D, 40D and 5DII it is extremely difficult to tell them apart. Noise is the biggest giveaway TBH, but you have to look close in my ISO800 tests and I thought the 7D was very impressive on that score. You have to start cropping quite hard to see where the 7D's extra sharpness is lurking.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top