Another dissapointing review of the 7D

[icassell]

Sigh .... just got this from Phase One

Ian-

We will not be upgrading version 4 any longer.
You will need to purchase the upgrade to version 5.
You can do so from our website (E Shop) for $99.00.
You may also choose to download Capture One 5 and run it in trial mode for 30 days to see if the fee is something you'd like to spend.

Kind Regards
Phase One Support

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[musicaleCA]

Ah, well still, I think that's a bit of an odd expectation; perhaps Garbz could chime in because he seems to know a heck of a lot more about electrical engineering than I do. My thinking would be that having that top display on all the time would require the camera to constantly access it's RAM that it uses to store all the data displayed there. If, by turning off that display, Canon's engineers can eke out a little more power from the battery by thus shutting off more of the camera's internals when you're not using it, kudos to them.

battletone is right. The LCD on the top uses next to no power. It's a very very simple low power device, just like the watches which run on a tiny battery for several years at a time. Also microcontrollers often enter a low power sleep mode without state changing any of their outputs, patiently waiting for an interrupt signal (like half pressing the shutter). In this low power mode all power hungry components are shut down, such as internal clocks, and unused ports. Modern microcontrollers in sleep mode draw such little power that the device's run time is based on the shelf life of the batteries.

In the case of the sleep mode in the camera, the usual approach is to only turn off the power hungry components, such as focus, meters, and the backlit LCDs. In the case of the Nikon, in sleep mode you can see all the settings of the camera on the top LCD, except for the aperture and shutter, since those will not be current because the light meter is turned off. I have no hard data on the battery life of sleep mode, but I did once take a picture and forget to turn off the camera, and after 2 weeks, one of the two batteries was about half drained (I don't know where it started but I guess you should get a months idle time out of a battery).

Thanks Garbz. I figured there had to be some sort of catch to it (the aperture and shutter not being displayed). Cool. I can see where Nikon users are coming from now...but still...half-depress the shutter...come'on guys, is that really so hard?

White balance pre-sets are useful for professional work where mixed lighting is encountered, or when one wants to shoot mixed tungsten + flash (wedding) or wants a specific white balance, like a Uni-White Balance...<so on ad nauseum>

Wow. I admitted that this was a lacking feature in my previous post, and yet you still went on a rant about it.

Sticky...no...check page three of the thread...Nikon has a 4-option setup...so no, you're not thinking of what the post was discussing.

Ah. That. In this case Tom is showing, once again, that he hasn't done nearly enough reading or used the 7D enough to provide such a review with accuracy. To perform the function he's talking about on page three of that thread, you simply press the star-shaped button the on back of the camera (unless you assigned it to something else, which you can do on the 7D rather easily). So, I guess I actually was thinking about what was being discussed, and you just decided to make up my mind for me.

There's a new type of photography called HDR, derived from the older exposure blending--which is why Nikon is going with bracketing that spans as many as NINE frames, and FIVE f/stops worth of difference.

WTF REALLY? I had NO idea? What's this HDR stuff?

I would prefer if you presumed that I had just a little bit more intelligence when it comes to photography. Actually, I'm sure a lot of people on this forum would appreciate it if you wrote to them as peers rather than your lessers by default.

For me, it's definitely a "meh" issue because I don't do a lot of HDR. If I want to, I'll do it by figuring out the dynamic range of the scene and shooting in one-stop increments in between. I can calculate that in my head, separate from the camera. (Though I'll admit, having PhotoBuddy makes the whole thing a lot easier. )

Flexible program shift is NOT exposure compensation. Confused much by the terminology? Flexible Program is "P" in Canon-speak.

Actually, no, I'm not confused by the terminology, and again I don't appreciate your condescending attitude:

Flexible program shift entered by the user goes BACK TO THE IDIOT mode after every shutter release--this is in direct contrast to Nikon, and was so odd I had to verify this myself. This negates the ability to use flexible program mode like a grown-up photographer!

Erm...no. If you're talking about exposure compensation, than no, no it doesn't. If you're talking about The ratio between f-stop and shutter-speed, that doesn't change either. This is in P mode that I'm referring to.

I'm right. Period. I have a 7D body right here to prove it. That little shift you make between shutter speed and f-stop doesn't change right after you release the shutter. As for that data getting dumped when the metering shuts off, which does happen (but this fact doesn't make the comments by Tom in that little article any less fallacious), well I ought to ask why the heck you're using P in the studio anyway for such long shoots? Switch to Av, Tv, or M, and be done with it. Or at least that's my thinking. Perhaps that's why I haven't seen this as a problem at all—I rarely, if ever, touch P.

Why is this important you ask? Recall the fellow poo-pooing that the 7D goes to SLEEP. Oh, yeah that guy was you!

Huh? You're putting words in my mouth now, Derrel? That's low.

Try remote-mounting your 7D and set the shutter speed in Program mode to the highest shutter speed possible with a given lens, say 1/4000 at f/4 at ISO 1000 for a track meet. Then, remote mount the camera. Every time the 7D goes to sleep, YOUR input will be disregarded, and the camera will revert to its basic, dumb programming,which favors a modest relationship between speed and f/stop. It'll be sweet to download the Program shots the 7D elected to expose at its default of 1/500 second at f/11.

No, I think I'll try that with Tv instead. You're arguing about what is ultimately a design choice. Can you think of a reason, perhaps, why Canon would make the assumption that the photographers they're targeting wouldn't use P often, or at all, and instead wish to appeal to different consumers with P mode? Remember, both Canon and Nikon are in this for the money; they have to make sales, and the more the better.

Same exposure as f/4 at 1/4000 second--totally equivalent exposure values,right? "Meh," indeed.

Try to be less offensive in your posts. It's not productive and only cultivates animosity.

Does the 7D have four, user-configurable shooting banks, with ALL settings user-configurable, so the camera can be pre-adjusted for four widely disparate shooting conditions? Nikon uses that system. Minolta's 7D had a top-deck mounted 3-position shifter knob that controlled what Nikon would call Exposure Settings Banks. Great concept. Easy enough to execute.

No. It has three, not four. Ah well. Too bad; perhaps we should all accuse Canon of being idiots because they didn't include four of them. To be honest I haven't bothered figuring them out. I haven't had much use for them, as I generally just estimate my exposure on the way using M, Av, or Tv, and fine-tune on location.

Why should flash bracketing be done controlled by the camera? Uh, that idea came from Nikon when they invented off-camera, multiple speedlight photography with their CLS sytem. Nikon figures that controlling the flash should be done by the camera body,and not at the flash itself, since the flash might be mounted off-camera or on a light stand 13 feet in the air. Canon thinks flash bracketing adjustment ought to be on the flash, I guess.
After all, who would remote mount a flash and want to control the flash's exposure from the camera position? Meh...

Ignoring the last comment, which is certainly a misguided attempt to be inflammatory and more argumentative than is necessary, good point. In this case, I would suggest giving Canon some time. The 7D is their first venture into a CLS-like system; they're bound to miss a few things on the first attempt.

Seriously..the two camera companies have very,very different control methods. If you want to read the 2nd and third pages of the thread I referenced, the answers are in there. Check out the Program Shift feature on your 7D and get back to me if the behavior of my 5D and my 20D is different, if you would please.

Well now there's the most enlightened thing you've said in that whole post! They do have very different control schemes, and in that it's much like comparing apples-to-oranges and wanting your apples to be citrus in flavour, because they're both fruits and spherical. Nikon users can complain all they want about the insanity of the 7D's controls and how they're laid out, but if it works for the person behind the camera, then it works. They'll be taking the shot while the other is busy telling them how terrible a piece of equipment it is that their trying to take said shot with.

[MrLogic]

Interesting post on the Fred Miranda forums:

Thank you Cameron, for bringing up a good subject.

I've seen lots of 7D's producing pictures that would make very good A3 prints, but I've also seen quite a few that have "maze"-effects strong enough to kill pixel-level fine detail if the detail isn't high-contrast - these cameras need to be down-sampled quite a lot to give perfectly sharp results.

This might be the entire difference between "good" 7D's and "unbalanced" 7D's. How large you can print/view the resulting pictures. I'm entirely with the "crowd" that say that having so many afflicted cameras (in percent) as this seems to be is not "ok" from a major camera maker company. I've tested 13 cameras so far - and TWO has been "good", eight has been "nah...." and three have been "OMG! that's BAD!"...

System MTF, the SUM of all the parts of the system is what counts as you say - when you try to find your maximum reproduction size. And the "maze" effect lowers this (if the rest of your system is up to the task!) by a noticeable margin. That is not acceptable, if you buy an 18MP camera you want 18 usable MP, not MP's that you have to downsample. Having to downsample to get "pixel-perfect" results is kind of "ok" in a 150$ compact, but not a 2500$ flagship APS DSLR.

Regarding sharpness I would say that a good sample of the 7D with a good lens is capable of very good detail resolution. A 5D2 will give you more fine detail, as each individual pixel is less noisy, and the end result can take more sharpening and local contrast enhancements without breaking up - but for a crop-camera the results can be very good.

Zeiss has a good primer on "system MTF" at

http://www.zeiss.com/C12567A8003B8B6...urven_2_en.pdf

Page 22 starts to do some real testing with a 12MP FX camera vs a 24MP FX when both are tested with a 60F/2.8Macro F/22 (both systems are diffraction affected. Not LIMITED - affected!). The results are pretty clear, as they should be if you give it some actual thought.

Canon EOS 7D Master thread - FM Forums

[cfusionpm]

Actually, I'm sure a lot of people on this forum would appreciate it if you wrote to them as peers rather than your lessers by default.

^ Just thought I'd separate this out from the rest of the post in case others missed it.

[battletone]

I'd still like to hear what the purpose of P mode and setting the shutter speed is. Whats the difference between Shutter Priority?

[MrLogic]

A great Fake Chuck Westfall rant: "7D Reviews: **** are happen!"

http://tiny.cc/cNBYj

^ Pure comedy.

[Garbz]

I'd still like to hear what the purpose of P mode and setting the shutter speed is. Whats the difference between Shutter Priority?

P kind of weighs shutter against aperture. Once the shutter gets higher it stops down the lens assuming you want a bit more depth of field.

It is about the only function that goes completely unused on my camera, because it is quite simply complete crock! The day I give up control over either shutter, or aperture (composition), or both at once, is the day I may as well not have bought an SLR in the first place.

[inTempus]

It is about the only function that goes completely unused on my camera, because it is quite simply complete crock! The day I give up control over either shutter, or aperture (composition), or both at once, is the day I may as well not have bought an SLR in the first place.

+1

If I wanted a point and shoot, I would have bought one and saved myself about $13k.

[PhotoXopher]

I'd still like to hear what the purpose of P mode and setting the shutter speed is. Whats the difference between Shutter Priority?

P Mode/Programmed Auto
Maintains proper exposure regardless of what values change... in other words, if you adjust it the aperture and shutter speed adjust together.

Shutter Priority
Lets you choose the shutter speed while adjusting the aperture to the proper exposure.

Aperture Priority
Lets you choose the aperture while adjusting the shutter speed to proper exposure.

The difference here is 'proper exposure' vs 'creative exposure'. What the camera 'thinks' is the proper exposure might not be what you're after. Take the sunrise and sunset for example, I'd be willing to bet without exposure compensation that any of these modes will really dull a beautiful scene.

That said, you can still use modes like PSAM with exposure compensation and do essentially the same thing, saving time in the process.

Hmmm... Sorry, I guess this doesn't have anything to do with the 7D directly

[battletone]

P Mode/Programmed Auto
Maintains proper exposure regardless of what values change... in other words, if you adjust it the aperture and shutter speed adjust together.

Shutter Priority
Lets you choose the shutter speed while adjusting the aperture to the proper exposure.

The difference here is 'proper exposure' vs 'creative exposure'. What the camera 'thinks' is the proper exposure might not be what you're after.

But in both cases of setting the shutter the camera is auto selecting the aperture. The only thing different that I can tell from playing with this is that the camera in P won't let you go outside of what it deems to be a proper exposure?
That clears that up.

It is about the only function that goes completely unused on my camera, because it is quite simply complete crock! The day I give up control over either shutter, or aperture (composition), or both at once, is the day I may as well not have bought an SLR in the first place.

This might sound stupid, but until reading this thread didn't even realize I could change the shutter/aperture in P mode. I just looked at it as a Green Box mode without a flash and where I could select my ISO.

[Garbz]

Lets put it this way. If you're actually selecting a shutter speed, or an aperture value, then you shouldn't be in P mode to begin with.

It is an idiotbox mode.

[MrLogic]

A retort to the claims made by Wiggett:

Canon 7D worse than Canon Rebel XSI? | Pro Photo Home

[musicaleCA]

A retort to the claims made by Wiggett:

Canon 7D worse than Canon Rebel XSI? | Pro Photo Home

Wooo! Sanity!

[inTempus]

A retort to the claims made by Wiggett:

Canon 7D worse than Canon Rebel XSI? | Pro Photo Home

Wooo! Sanity!

I keep seeing vast improvements in RAW processing by Capture One Pro. $400... but man, not only does it seem to do a better job than ACR or Lightroom, it has tons more features than Lightroom.

As for the muddy or mushy images, the trees look equally bad in the review above. At least the 7D doesn't look worse in that review. But I would still expect the 7D to blow the doors off the Rebel given the price difference - much like the 5D excels at sharpness over the 7D.

The other images appear to give a slight advantage to the 7D, especially the shots of the white bag.

[icassell]

I have Capture One 4 and have been debating upgrading it to version 5 (upgrade cost of $99). I almost never use 4 in favor of ACR and wasn't going to bother but, with my 7D, now I'm considering it. I'll wait until the ACR upgrade for 7D comes out to see.