My 7D thoughts ..............

swag72

swag72

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Sara
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I have to say, I am personally dissapointed with this camera, it is definately not the one for me. (This is not a review, just a rant of how I feel at the moment)

I have done some processing tonight of some pics from the 7D in Spain a couple of weeks ago. I have been amazed at the overall noise I am seeing in the pictures. Certainly more than I ever saw in my 50D.

I have not been impressed with the close up shots I have got with it, either with my 100mm macro or the 100-400. With the 50D I could produce some tack sharp shots, this is frankly crap. Soft as hell. I wasn't expecting this with the all new focussing system.

I am sure that it is all in my technique and that I just need to learn to get the best out of it. I am sure that it will come if I perseverve - Personally at the moment, not feeling inclined to and just wish I still had my 50D.

I just had to get this off my chest, I am really feeling despondant right now. This is by no means a review of the camera, just how I feel at the moment.

Hope I get good feelings soon.

Have you ever had a camera that you just really couldn't get on with? Maybe this is mine :shrug:
 
thats a shame sara as i have heard great things about this camera maybe you just need more time to suss it out
 
I had a few probs with my 100-400 lens had to do a macro focus adjustment. You might need to do this with your len(s). Not seen any noise issues, if anything I am impressed at the little amount of noise I am getting. Have notice that lightroom 2.5 can not handle the files that well from the 7D, waiting for v3.
 
I use CS3 and have done the same processing that I ever did with my 50D pics. Can not understand the difference. I know it must be me, but don't know why.
 
I know lightroom 2.5 was a basic raw read update. But when I load a pic that has a lot of blue sky in it of one level after light room has loaded the full raw the base level goes darker.
 
swag72 said:
I am sure that it is all in my technique and that I just need to learn to get the best out of it. I am sure that it will come if I perseverve - Personally at the moment, not feeling inclined to and just wish I still had my 50D.

Have you ever had a camera that you just really couldn't get on with? Maybe this is mine :shrug:
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I'm sure you could find someone to swap their 50D for your 7D ;) sorry to hear that you're not getting one well with your camera. I do know what you mean, I really struggled with the mkII when I had one and ended up selling it and going back to a 40D. I would recommend that you keep on with it and see if you can make it work for you, I know I gave up on the mkII far to quickly and should have kept at it... I might even buy another one!
 
Sara, any chance of posting a shot with the noise, and if you want you could send a raw to me and I'll take a look for you, I must say from my point of view not had any real noise issues, have been impressed thus far.
 
Sorry to hear that Sara, happened to me once and it really is very disheartening.

Must be an answer though unless there really is something wrong (the camera, not you)

How about just try a few shots with it reset to the factory default and see what happens, something like a non-macro shot with the 100mm

Don't give up yet, when it happened to me I felt quite miserable for a few days and then decided to set about the problem

My story didn't have a happy ending though, just got so peed off taking test shots and messing about that i sold the camera in question and started again.
 
I'm not good at things that don't seem to produce results that I think it should
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Know that feeling well, can drive oneself mad at times. Find myself looking back with rose tinted glasses though and kidding myself a bit about how good the previous camera/lens was
Couldn't have been that great otherwise I would still have it.

Hope the fun comes back soon
 
Sorry thats how you feel at the moment Sara but hopefully it wont last long.
 
I'm sorry that you are not getting on to well with your 7D, I would try resetting to the default setting and keep trying.
 
It's always bad when you spend money on an upgrade with high expectations which aren't met. Definately seems to be mixed results from the 7D posted in various forums, but a lot of people are getting excellent results.
 
I felt the same when I first used my Sigma 150-500, now I wouldn't part with it for the world, well perhaps a 600mm if offered a straight swap :lol: It took me a while to get used to it, so I would persevere, there have been some good shots with 7D's.
 
Try DPP, I see major difference between LR & that, colour badly messed up in lr, wb way off etc
 
Comparing the 7D with my old 40D, the 7D handles higher ISO's better. You can see noise from ISO-800 but it does not become distracting for me until I shoot above ISO-3200. I would say the 7D is around a full stop better than the 40D, which arguably has equal or better noise control than the 50D. I am happy to use ISO-3200 on the 7D whereas the 40D's limit was 1600 (after processing).

I can only assume that most 3rd party processing software is not quite ready for the 7D RAW's at the moment. Hopefully improved 7D RAW plugins will resolve the issues for you in the near future. Perhaps try a few shots using JPEG-High and see if you have the same noise issues (I know JPEG's will apply some noise filtering but it should give you an indication of high-ISO handling).

DPP works fine for me so I am not sure why you see these problems.

edit: Here is a good comparisson of 50D vs 7D noise. You can clearly see that the 50D has much worse stripe/pattern noise at higher ISO's.
 
Just what I was going to suggest.

Stick it on the highest quality JPEG and forget all this RAW stuff.

That way you can spend time taking photos instead of processing them!
 
Mikesphotaes said:
Just what I was going to suggest.

Stick it on the highest quality JPEG and forget all this RAW stuff.

That way you can spend time taking photos instead of processing them!
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That's not what I want to do though. I used my 50D on Raw very happily, never caused me a bother and enjoyed the processing side. With the 7D I don't see why I should need to change the way I process shots, I would expect to be able to process in the same way as before.

I know that putting a 7D infront of my eye is not going to instantly make me take better pics, but all I am saying is that compared to my 50D I am very disapointed.
 
4061169793_dd8d386838_o.jpg


Sara, it's difficult to advise on this without some more information....

Is it a crop, and if so how big?

We really need to see the original image.

The noise in this image looks very sharp and pronounced, even for a very large crop, and has the sort of appearance I'd expect tp see if the image had had a LOT of sharpening after reduction in size, which will accentuate any noise present.

The file you've shown is only 97.4 kb which wont be helping.
 
Yes, I do understand your predicament.

I was just wondering whether the noise is down to your camera or your processing software with regard to 7D files.

I was also trying to stifle a rant at all the folk that think RAW is the dog's danglys LOL !
 
Perhaps try a few shots in RAW+JPEG mode to compare whether your processed RAWs look better than the JPEG's. If the JPEG's look better then either the processing software or methods used are out.
 
Sara here's the turbine shot you sent me....

4064164438_0df8dda153_o.jpg



It's not sharp at 1:1 as you know, but I'm not seeing an unusual noise in the image.This is actually quite a dfficult subject to focus on with no detail in the blue sky for the AF system to lock on, and precious little in the turbine itself.

The other thing is that I see you used spot AF which in this case would have just reduced your chances of keying on an area with some contrast by reducing the size of the AF rectangle in use.

Really this was a case for either manual focus, or using the hyperfocal distance rather than AF.

So - just a soft image is all that's really wrong with this shot, so don't go binning your 7D just yet. It's quite a complicated camera, and you do need a bit of time to get your head around all the options open to you. :)
 
Thanks for looking at that Cedric - Really appreciate it.

A question then about the focussing, not necessarily for this shot, but just in general. I have been using the same spot focus in all my shots as I have used in this. I think that's the focus with the smaller square inside the larger square. Would I be better changing this to another focus option in general?
 
The spot AF (The small square inside the larger square) is really for pin pointing AF on a tiny area of a dfficult image. It can help a lot with focusing on a very tiny area but at the expense of AF speed. For normal static subjects I'd say pick the next option along, which is just the larger square without the smaller one inside it, and select the actual AF point manually - just the same as you would have done with your 50D in other words.

The other thing you might want to try is to change your picture settings from Neutral to Standard which applies a very low level of sharpening in the DPP RAW file. That's what I do, and I find it cuts down on the bg noise without visibly affecting image detail, and also reduces the amount of sharpening you need to do later after resizing etc.
 
swag72 said:
I use CS3 and have done the same processing that I ever did with my 50D pics. Can not understand the difference. I know it must be me, but don't know why.
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How do you use CS3 for 7D shots when it's not supported?
 
Hi Sara, I think your shot is nice. At first glance, I thought the stipling on the leg was intentional, not noise.
I too must admit am finding it difficult to get to grips with the 7d, but when it does nail a shot, they look so much better than I could have gotten before.
Looking through your other thread, someone mentioned you were on f/22?
Another person on this forum, seemed to think that anything above f/5 would cause diffraction effects in images. I do not believe that it is going to be as bad as that, but it might be worthwhile knocking back to f/16, f/8 if you can. Obviously with Macro it is a tad more of an issue (as DOF is a function of distance).
I found, with two of my lenses (the only two I bothered to look at), that I dialed in +5 in the micro-adjustment. I initially started off using spot, as that is what I used on my previous Canon, but now have it set to spot and extra points
 
Orville said:
Comparing the 7D with my old 40D, the 7D handles higher ISO's better. You can see noise from ISO-800 but it does not become distracting for me until I shoot above ISO-3200. I would say the 7D is around a full stop better than the 40D, which arguably has equal or better noise control than the 50D. I am happy to use ISO-3200 on the 7D whereas the 40D's limit was 1600 (after processing).

I can only assume that most 3rd party processing software is not quite ready for the 7D RAW's at the moment. Hopefully improved 7D RAW plugins will resolve the issues for you in the near future. Perhaps try a few shots using JPEG-High and see if you have the same noise issues (I know JPEG's will apply some noise filtering but it should give you an indication of high-ISO handling).

DPP works fine for me so I am not sure why you see these problems.

edit: Here is a good comparisson of 50D vs 7D noise. You can clearly see that the 50D has much worse stripe/pattern noise at higher ISO's.
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That's a really good link Orville, thanks :thumbs:

I'm beginning to think that the 7D is less of a big push forward in any single aspect, and more of an incremental improvement in lots of different areas.

Looking at those very good comparisons on Orville's link, there are improvements in both resolution and noise, but it's very slight on both counts. If fails my own basic test of if you have to look for it, it's not worth getting too excited. I have only done a very quick comparison with the 7D and my 40D, and there was certainly a noticeable difference there well worth having. But I can understand why 50D owners are disappointed if they have swapped just for the IQ improvements.

But when you couple the IQ benefits to the slight improvements in lots of other areas - better AF, faster frame rate, bigger viewfinder, sharper LCD and weather sealing etc, the whole package is still strong.
 
swag72 said:
thanks for your help Cedric and Stu, I hope you've identified a problematic menu. All changed now, fingers crossed!
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Sara, the camera ia a bird tog's dream - don't do anything rash. ;)
 
Sara,
Also, you do tend to get more noise the hotter the camera is. Do you have any pics from the UK that are as bad?
 
swag72 said:
thanks for your help Cedric and Stu, I hope you've identified a problematic menu. All changed now, fingers crossed!
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You are welcome Sara, just hope I was of some help.
 
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