Canon 7D owners..

*rolls eyes and quietly goes off to take some pictures with his 7D's...OMG THE HORROR, THE NOISE!!! AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!* >.>

AverageJoe: Pass the bottle please. :lmao:
 
There are quite a few good, somewhat older comparisons between the Canon 5D and the Nikon D3 and D700 in term sof per-pixel resolution, acutance, and noise. Garbz's conttntions about noise are very full of mathematicall blowhard numbers and incorrect assumptions, like his disagreement that noise is noise. The actual facts will tell you that there is chroma noise and luminance noise, and one looks like crap, and the other looks like film grain. Garbz seems to have the mind of a college student who studies physics, but lacks eyes and actual experience in photography to trust his own senses; noise "measurements" are very subjective,and quite often cameras with lower mathematical noise measurements look WORSE than cameras that turn in higher noise numbers on test charts. That is why noise "numbers" are not the same as actual images in terms of judging noise in terms of how the images actually "look".

Shocking as it might be, the Nikon D3 camera out in 2007, with the D700 following not too many months behind, at seven months after. The EOS 5D has a 12.8 megapixel sensor, the D3 and D700 have slightly smaller sensors with 12.1 or so effective megapixels. Anybody who wishes can do a Google search on noise comparisons between EOS 5D and Nikon D3 and D700,and will eventually find some real-world comparisons. Some of them were done on dPreview by a couple of well-known commercial studio photographers who were interested in the best FF d-slr performance. I downloaded the sample images back in 2007 and early 2008,and my own EYES showed me that the "old" Canon 5D delivered a slightly higher-resolution, higher-acutance picture than either the Nikon D3 or the D700. Very simple really--I looked at actual images, not noise graphs. It's a testament to Canon's sensor design, microlens design, and internal software that it took Nikon almost three years to come up with a FF sensor that ALMOST equalled the 5D's overall,total imaging capabilities in the 200-1600 range.

Visually, that the "old" EOS 5D is the equal,or better, of the Nikon D3 and D700 in terms of per-pixel sharpness, which is a combination of resolution and acutance, as well as noise, from ISO 200-1600. It is also very clear, according to the URL I linked to above that at EQUAL IMAGE SIZES, the new 7D loses out in terms of noise,and shows lower detail than the "old" Canon 5D. Both Canon and Nikon have figured out a 12-12.8MP FF sensor is sweet!

I love how a Norwegian Nikon lover challenges me, and how a newbie who has been involved in photography for less than a year challenges me, one no doubt thinking I am a Canon lover basking Nikon, the other thinking I am bashing on the two brand new 7D's he bought,and eager to try and convince me what I have seen with my own eyes is invalid. Funny...I own both systems. I like both, for different things. Everybody sees bias where none exists. Nikon fans and Canon fans see bias where none exists.

Check out MAJOR Nikon fanboy Ken Rockwell's comments here Nikon D3 and D700 vs Canon 5D
"The Canon 5D excels in image quality. It's also the lightest and least expensive of these cameras. It has the sharpest pictures of these three cameras by a slight margin. If you're backpacking or shooting careful landscapes, the 5D could give superior image quality above anything from Nikon, at a bargain price. If you want the best picture quality for landscapes and huge enlargements, the 5D is the best camera. I'm not kidding: I have 20x30" (50 x 75cm) prints here, and the 5D is clearly superior. (Then again, medium format film is superior to any of these in 20x30" prints.)"

Wow,in actual tests of the three, the 5D proves to be the better imager!

Nikon D3, D300 and Canon 5D Sharpness Comparison
Canon 1Ds Mk III vs. Canon 5D vs. Nikon D3
Nikon D3X Sharpness Comparison

One of the most interesting tests was comparing 20x30 inch prints from the D3 and 5D and Nikon D40 here: 20x30" Print Comparison
Where the conclusion about PRINTED versus on-screen comparisons was made,
"I didn't expect such an obvious difference, but if you're too close, the Canon 5D is clearly superior to the D3. I shot the world's best 14-24mm on the D3, and Canon's not-as good (in the lab) 16-35mm L II on the 5D, and the 5D shot still smokes the D3 in sharpness. I shot the D3 on a tripod, and shot the 5D freehand. Both files were the same size.The 5D image is much better, but does show some lateral color fringes which the D3 corrects itself. If I had used the NEF from the D3 (shot but not shared here), many raw converters don't remove the fringes as does the D3 in its own JPGs.The on-print results are more striking than the differences seen on-screen at my sharpness comparison." Wow, yet another real comparison,and the "old" 5D makes a betetr 2030 inch print.

Combine Ken's multiple tests over several years, plus the tests of Fredric Frauhaus,and other commercial photographers, and it's pretty clear that Canon's original 5D sensor and image processor was *far* ahead of its time.
It's not just pixel count that determines how a camera performs, but how the images turn out. One of the more striking comments was from Rob Galbraith about why he prefers the 10.1 MP Canon 1D Mark III over the 12.1 MP Nikon D3: per-pixel image quality of the 1D Mark III is higher than that of the D3.

Last reference. Go here Nikon D3 Review: 18. Photographic tests: Digital Photography Review

and use your own eyes to see which camera has more detail at ISO settings from 200 to 1600. The winner? Canon 5D, by a nose.


:lol: Dear god. Calm down, man... it's not that serious. From your last "reference" and only reference that is the least bit scientific, the overall ISO performance of the D3 is actually better at, say, ISO 500 and upwards. Scroll to "noise graphs". I'd say it's better in the entire ISO 200 - 1600 range, based on those graphs (and text) , but I guess that's debatable.


You're talking perceived resolution, though... my bad... yes, the 5D "has significantly more detail" at lower ISO settings. I was aware of that and see what you mean now.

The EOS 5D has a much weaker AA filter, though, so that should explain most, if not all of it.
 
Alright now we're talking and I'm satisfied Derrel :)

Are you satisfied with astrostu's explanation musicaleCA? If not Page 242 of Optoelectronics and Photonics by S.O.Kasap (one of my uni texts) was my source. Basically I wasn't talking about shot or thermal noise, but quantum noise which is very similar to shot noise in a mathematical sense. You say the light gathering surface is essentially gapless, I say the pixels are essentially tiny. Sure the gaps are minuscule but there's one for every pixel on the sensor, microlenses aren't perfect, and even the literature on Nikon's website will attest to that.

Anywho I agree. Time for a beer :)
 
I started reading this topic looking for stuff on ACR for the 7D, skipped two pages and found a discussion on the D3 vs 5D????? You guys should sell your FF junk and buy MF. Do you know how bad FF is compared to MF? LOL


I just received my 7D as a replacement for my 40D. I try to spend some of my free time shooting birds so I have a 1D3 also (see, another CF) which I bought from someone who could not get it to focus. Weird how it does just fine for me. I must just be lucky.

I usually use ACR because I got it with PS extended CS4 and it has more features than DPP but still I do use DPP sometimes. I think it is easier to get straight forward results in DPP but ACR does actually perform better when you need to do something fancy like applying different settings to different parts of the image (which is usually when you messed up the shot in the first place).
I guess until the 7D is fully supported by ACR, I will use DPP. DPP has come a long way and there is actually no issue in using it from Bridge to PS going either way (ACR or DPP). Batch processing may be slightly different but I hardly ever do that - I tend to cull and then process one by one.

I'll try to give the 7D a workout on AF performance this weekend. Just messing around with it it seems to be a pretty decent piece of kit and although it cannot focus at F8 like the 1D3 it seems to manage a bit better than the 40D did.

And to the irritating Nikonians who wonder why Canon built a CF semi-pro? Because the D300 showed them there is a market for it. No, the 50D was never meant to compete with a camera $700 more expensive. Now we have a Canon CF with similar features, proper video and a better sensor. My initial impression of the camera confirms my suspicion that is it is a much better CF camera for someone with canon lenses than a D300. I haven't tested this yet but I believe it will suck with Nikon lenses so if you are silly enough to pay more for Nikon lenses that are no better than Canon lenses, you should rather get a D300.

Time for another beer...
 
I'll try to give the 7D a workout on AF performance this weekend. Just messing around with it it seems to be a pretty decent piece of kit and although it cannot focus at F8 like the 1D3 it seems to manage a bit better than the 40D did.
It's my understanding that Canon cameras focus at the widest possible aperture of the lens attached regardless of the camera settings. So if you have an f/2.8 lens attached, it will focus at f/2.8. At the moment of firing it will dilate the aperture to your selected setting (in this case f/8). If this is true, what are you doing to cause your camera to focus at f/8?
 
Teleconverters with tapped pins I think - since the 7D (like the 40D) is no pro end camera and thus its AF function is disabled after the lenses max aperture goes smaller than f5.6.
 
Now that my 7D's arrived ... Photoshop's RAW converter works fine. Apple doesn't recognize it yet.
 

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