Canon 7D is now official

Here's the link to the DPreview site:

http://www.dpreview.com/previews/canoneos7d/

I'm getting one.

Mike Stolting

Specs look good and basically the recent rumours were right on. Here is a hands-on with a pre-production Canon 7D including video mode. I plan to buy one (too bad I have to wait until end of September when it hopefully will be in stores)

http://gizmodo.com/5349829/canon-7d-dsl ... o-for-1900

Sample images also on:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E7D/E7DA7.HTM

I think Canon went to far...again on Megapixel War, IQ looks below average.

http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/multi_ ... 0042-10239

Interesting. It has an amazing series of upgrades that not only match a lot of stuff Nikon had been putting in the D300 (electronic level, flash control, better VF), but also seems to be an improvement over many of the features on the D300/D300s. Clearly they are upping their game. My only disappointment is that I would have preferred to see all of this in a FF body, namely in the 5DII. Put all of this on a 5D and call it the 5DIII and I would buy it in a flash. Not sure I want to go back to APS-C any more.

Can someone explain as to what dual Digic 4 processor means in terms of image quality (if any)?
I can see that it speeds up processing.
My worry is that the noise is going to be an issue as it is with 50D at ISO 400 and above.
I wish they had rather gone back to 10 or 12 MP instead of going up to 18 MP.

I was hoping for a temptation to my Nikon gear, but already RG has posted some preliminary thoughts on some of the AF modes.

I can only hope for Canon that he's not correct from what I'm reading. Canon should have had this be the best AF in the world and carried it through to their next 1D series.

Does the AF point coverage look rather centered for a crop body?

Unfortunately, I see nothing (except the movie mode which I could care less about) that would take me away from a D300s....and I was hoping

The name 7D confused me at first. It made me to think this would have a full frame sensor.

Looks great on paper! Let's see how it performs!

Looks very promising.

Will it auto focus at f8?

It looks like Canon has finally listened in terms of putting together some nice features, but the 18 megs seems crazy in the crop camera. Time will tell I guess. The samples on dpreview don't look awe inspiring to me.

I am happy with the advancements, but disappointed with that diamond pattern of focus sensors that do not reach out toward the corners.
No 1DmarkIV yet?

Justin C wrote:Looks very promising.

Will it auto focus at f8?

No, and I didn't expect it to either. At the price-point the 7D will be selling at, Canon isn't going to cannibalize its more expensive cameras in the 1D series. I do wish for less MP and therefore hopefully less noise but as long as it does no worse and slightly better than a 50D in IQ I'm fine with it. Whether more MP is good or not, that's a topic debated ad nauseum over at dpreview for years now. The 7D is a (rumoured) $2,000 Cdn. camera and not a 1.3x $5,000 Cdn. camera (last I checked on Henrys.com).

But look at the features including HD video capture with your Canon lenses (hey, still images of owls in flight and HD videos of them too without having to pull out a camcorder), improved AF performance, the ability to group AF points for Ai-Servo, etc. This will be a nice action and BIF camera. A nice addition to my 40D.

The article on RobGalbraith.com on the 7D sounds favourable although more testing is required.

An excerpt:
"Canon has a winner on their hands with the EOS 7D. Though we only spent a short time with a beta body leading up to today's unveiling, a digital SLR that works this well and includes so many strong features doesn't take a lot of time to figure out.

The only open question is the AF system. All the options are there, and focus on static subjects was just about perfect with almost all lenses we tried. Continuous focus, which has been the albatross around Canon's neck since the EOS-1D Mark III hit the streets in 2007, is really the only area of the camera where a lot more testing is needed before we'd be comfortable talking about its suitability for peak action sports, not to mention using it ourselves for this purpose." - To read the full article, go to http://www.Robgalbraith.com

Karl Egressy wrote:Can someone explain as to what dual Digic 4 processor means in terms of image quality (if any)?
I can see that it speeds up processing.
My worry is that the noise is going to be an issue as it is with 50D at ISO 400 and above.
I wish they had rather gone back to 10 or 12 MP instead of going up to 18 MP.

From my understanding one of those processors handles the AF cross sensors, which should hopefully mean faster FPS when using all those AF points (50D was a serious disappointment as it drops fps drastically when tracking on all points).

I was hoping the rumours were false and Canon would follow its G-series lead, dropping MPs and making IQ the important factor. Just look how good the 1D III is (or maybe that is the point they are making?)

The spot AF mode looks really interesting. Could this be a bulletproof solution for low contrast BIF against busy BGs?

I was really, really, really hoping the 7D would be next whaling camera, replacing my 1d2n. After reviewing most of the images (full-sized) at DPReview and Imaging-Resource and all of the images on RG's site, I'm not impressed by the image quality of these early samples. It does indeed look like Canon's gone too far in cramming that many pixels onto a 1.6 crop DSLR. It's a shame they didn't just redesign the 15MP to be a better performer or even drop it back to 12 MPs (but from a marketing standpoint, I can see not "going backwards" to 12 MPs). Seems like Canon's philosophy lately has been MPs at the expense of ultimate image quality. Too bad - this being photography and not some techie exercise in MP one upsmanship, you'd think that image quality should be their ultimate goal. On the features front, the cam does have a number of very cool, mouth watering improvements that are a nice sign of things to come on future cams (altho RG's early AF findings are perhaps call for some caution).

akclimber wrote:It does indeed look like Canon's gone too far in cramming that many pixels onto a 1.6 crop DSLR. It's a shame they didn't just redesign the 15MP to be a better performer or even drop it back to 12 MPs (but from a marketing standpoint, I can see not "going backwards" to 12 MPs).

Joe - One thing you have to remember is that noise will always look worse with more MP when you blow things up to 100%. If they had stayed at a lower noise 12 MP, the 100% view would look better. But it would also be smaller on your screen. The proper comparison would be to down-sample the 18 MP 7D images down to 12 MP, and look at noise then. You'll see quite an improvement. It's the same issue with the 50D and 40D. The 50D had worse noise on a pixel by pixel basis, but was still better than the 40D when downsampled to match the 40D's resolution. (It's also why small posts like people make on this site are pretty much noise-less.) That's why the "lower pixel count = lower noise" mantra is usually a little overblown. It's true, but not to the extent that some people think it is (unless you're purely talking about single pixel noise characteristics).

akclimber wrote:Seems like Canon's philosophy lately has been MPs at the expense of ultimate image quality. you'd think that image quality should be their ultimate goal.

I would doubt any camera company would sacrifice image quality for the MP war at this level of camera. There are too many knowledgable photogs out there in the target market for this. Despite seeming very normal around sites like this, cameras in the range of the 7D actually aren't that common, and the target market is not nearly the same as P&S pocket cams. That's the area where I'd imagine they might try to "win" the MP war at the expense of a little image quality.

It certainly looks interesting - enough to tempt me away from my faithful 1DII's.

Looking forward to some real-world tests, but with the weather sealing and smaller body, I might just switch back to the APS-C side.

dbostedo wrote:

akclimber wrote:It does indeed look like Canon's gone too far in cramming that many pixels onto a 1.6 crop DSLR. It's a shame they didn't just redesign the 15MP to be a better performer or even drop it back to 12 MPs (but from a marketing standpoint, I can see not "going backwards" to 12 MPs).

Joe - One thing you have to remember is that noise will always look worse with more MP when you blow things up to 100%. If they had stayed at a lower noise 12 MP, the 100% view would look better. But it would also be smaller on your screen. The proper comparison would be to down-sample the 18 MP 7D images down to 12 MP, and look at noise then. You'll see quite an improvement. It's the same issue with the 50D and 40D. The 50D had worse noise on a pixel by pixel basis, but was still better than the 40D when downsampled to match the 40D's resolution. (It's also why small posts like people make on this site are pretty much noise-less.) That's why the "lower pixel count = lower noise" mantra is usually a little overblown. It's true, but not to the extent that some people think it is (unless you're purely talking about single pixel noise characteristics).

akclimber wrote:Seems like Canon's philosophy lately has been MPs at the expense of ultimate image quality. you'd think that image quality should be their ultimate goal.

I would doubt any camera company would sacrifice image quality for the MP war at this level of camera. There are too many knowledgable photogs out there in the target market for this. Despite seeming very normal around sites like this, cameras in the range of the 7D actually aren't that common, and the target market is not nearly the same as P&S pocket cams. That's the area where I'd imagine they might try to "win" the MP war at the expense of a little image quality.

Not sure I buy the down sampling to compare files philosophy. I am interested in pixel level noise, regardless of file size. To check on how the files will look in print, I simplistically view them at 50% on the screen, which I have found to be very representative of the final print quality, regardless of file size. So far, I'm just not impressed by the 7D files (and I wasn't impressed with the 50D files either). Do I think that Canon has done a fine job from a tech point of view in keeping the 7D files comparable to 50D or maybe 40D files while increasing the MPs? Yep, I certainly do. That doesn't mean the files meet my needs tho As for sacrificing image quality for MPs, we'll have to agree to disagree on that front. Every camera is a balance of features/tech and I think Canon has been leaning more towards MPs than IQ lately. The reduction in the G11's MPs was, I thought, a good sign that the "more MPs the better" philosophy was being phased out. Maybe in the next round of cams....

Cheers!

Definitely looks like a formidable camera in the segment and most definitely one ups the new D300s in features. I was hoping they would stop the sill megapixel war though. Those are some tiny pixels for a DSLR.

akclimber wrote:The reduction in the G11's MPs was, I thought, a good sign that the "more MPs the better" philosophy was being phased out. Maybe in the next round of cams....

I'm wondering if the G11 MP total was more a function of a lower cost sensor that was able to be spun as being done for other reasons. I have no info if that's the case or not, but given the other cameras Canon has produced, it made me wonder.

As far as the downsampling, there's nothing to "buy". If you can downsample the 7D file to the same resolution as that of another camera, and the pixel level noise performance at that time is the same as the other camera, there's no reason to think you won't get the same quality of print. Remember, too, that the 50% view is STILL larger for a higher res image than a lower, so comparing two 50% views may not be any better than comparing two 100% views. The 50% view may approximate print results well, but only at a certain size. And the print from the higher res camera will be larger, all else equal.

Now if you come in with the mindset that "more pixels = larger prints" then you actually do have to look at the pixel level noise. (I went from a 5 MP camera to a 10 MP camera in the last year or so, and that was definitely the case for me.) And forget all my talk about down-sampling. In talking about down-sampling, I'm assuming that you want to create the same size print from both cameras. If you don't - if you want to go larger - then it WOULD definitely be very nice to get more resolution without more pixel level noise. But I'm still not certain that more pixels isn't better than less even if they are a little noisier, since you're losing resolution with less pixels, and down-sampling to reduce noise isn't even an option. That's as long as the "more pixels" version is only a little noisier - if the difference is more drastic, this argument also changes.

Anyway, we could all just wait a few more years when you'll be able to get a 50 or 100 MP sensor with the pixel noise of a D700. At least, I hope.