7d making a grown man cry

sparky675 · May 4, 2010

bought a 7d from b&h, err 40 came up all the time,great photos, recieved the new 7d, the noise is terrible, my 40d kicks it all over, the focus is great but the noise is unreal, i was hoping to take it on vacation in 2 weeks, look at the photo, iso 200,with 70-200 2.8 lens, noise is with the 3 lenses i use most. should i send this one back also. image is not edited http://sparky675.smugmug.com/Shooting-for-fun/April-2010/kvr-4-10-38-of-72-3/857285872_WBEoY-X3.jpg try this veiw

divamum · May 4, 2010

That's noisy?

At the size posted, it looks absolutely fine to me on my monitor. Cab you post a 100% crop to show what you're seeing?

I just got my 7d today and was kind of amazed at how much LOWER the noise was than I was expecting. Granted, this is all highly subjective, but even so - I was very pleasantly surprised.

ziggy53 · May 5, 2010

Have you tried printing that image? I don't see any profound noise at all. I suspect that it will print just fine.

ivar · May 5, 2010

that shot is a bit on the blurry/soft side but I don't really see too much noise either? Like Ziggy suggested, I don't think you would see any at all when you print this.

divamum · May 5, 2010

Have to agree. I will also say that LR (and presumably Bridge) does a very nice job of handling the 7d's noise - whether it's the increased resolution, or the pattern or what I don't know, but I was amazed at how well LR and the 7d images "talked to each other". Very impressed.

I also keep reminding myself that the added resolution means 100% crops are actually kind of meaningless when thinking of web-sized imagies or "normal size" prints. I've now set LR so that my zoom factor is one notch down from that, and am only looking at 1:1 to check very specific things. I'm not disappointed by what I see....

Ric Grupe · May 5, 2010

sparky675 wrote: »

bought a 7d from b&h, err 40 came up all the time,great photos, recieved the new 7d, the noise is terrible, my 40d kicks it all over, the focus is great but the noise is unreal, i was hoping to take it on vacation in 2 weeks, look at the photo, iso 200,with 70-200 2.8 lens, noise is with the 3 lenses i use most. should i send this one back also. image is not edited http://sparky675.smugmug.com/Shooting-for-fun/April-2010/kvr-4-10-38-of-72-3/857285872_WBEoY-X3.jpg try this veiw

Having gone from a 40D to 7D I know exactly what you are talking about. I almost asked my son for my 40D back!

It's the price you pay for the resolution. My advice is just get over it and learn new ways to enhance your images while editing.....I did.....and now I got over it!

Doing wildlife, I find the cropability (is that a word?) of these files to be truely amazing. Reduce noise selectively on areas like the sky. Your image is not that bad at all.

jmphotocraft · May 5, 2010

I don't see much noise in that image. It's just a soft image, with perhaps a little motion blur. According to the EXIF data, your subject was 13.8m away. That's like 45 feet. The further away your subject is, the greater the margin of error in autofocus. I assume the image you posted was a 100% crop. If so, the woman's face takes up a very small portion of the image, so it's not unreasonable that it would be soft.

Remind yourself that looking at 18mp images at 100% on your monitor is basically equivalent to making a 52" wide print, and then scrutinizing it from 18-24 inches away. That's unreasonable. When I went from a 40D to a 5DII, I had to relearn how to evaluate images on a 100ppi monitor. If an image looks sharp at 50% on screen, then it is sharp, period!!!

mercphoto · May 5, 2010

ziggy53 wrote: »

Have you tried printing that image? I don't see any profound noise at all. I suspect that it will print just fine.

Plus One on that. If you really want to know you gotta make a print.

Ric Grupe · May 5, 2010

jmphotocraft wrote: »

I don't see much noise in that image. It's just a soft image, with perhaps a little motion blur. According to the EXIF data, your subject was 13.8m away. That's like 45 feet. The further away your subject is, the greater the margin of error in autofocus. I assume the image you posted was a 100% crop. If so, the woman's face takes up a very small portion of the image, so it's not unreasonable that it would be soft.

Remind yourself that looking at 18mp images at 100% on your monitor is basically equivalent to making a 52" wide print, and then scrutinizing it from 18-24 inches away. That's unreasonable. When I went from a 40D to a 5DII, I had to relearn how to evaluate images on a 100ppi monitor. If an image looks sharp at 50% on screen, then it is sharp, period!!!

But...the 7D is noisier than the 40D...no doubt. Easily dealt with though. CS5, or ACR 6 actually, should help considerably.

paddler4 · May 5, 2010

Noise will be most evident in parts of the image that are relatively uniform. Look at the tan wedge on the left. It looks pretty noiseless to me. The problem with this image seems to be focus.

final_alarm · May 5, 2010

wrote:

Remind yourself that looking at 18mp images at 100% on your monitor is basically equivalent to making a 52" wide print, and then scrutinizing it from 18-24 inches away. That's unreasonable. When I went from a 40D to a 5DII, I had to relearn how to evaluate images on a 100ppi monitor. If an image looks sharp at 50% on screen, then it is sharp, period!!!

I'm no expert but i have to agree with that. I thought my 7D was noisy too when i first really started shooting with it. I thought my XSI was a lot cleaner until i did some testing with both under a controlled set of conditions. My 7D was better overall and far less noisy from ISO 800 on up, it actually was better at 3200 then my XSI was at 1600 to my eyes.

Really for me the proof is in the prints and everything i have taken with my 7d that i have printed has come out fantastic.

divamum · May 6, 2010

I've just had my first test outing with the 7d, and I'm impressed. This was ISO 2000 (crappy, middle school lighting - 'nuff said....) and the only noise reduction I used was the slider in LR. MUCH better than either my xsi or 50d could have done. MUCH.

jmphotocraft · May 6, 2010

Thanks for posting a nice real-world example, divamum. Based on your other posts here, I'm inclined to take your word for it. What lens?

divamum · May 6, 2010

135L

Don't get me wrong - there IS visible noise at 1:1, I just don't see it as a big problem because it cleans up really well in LR (probably better in a dedicated NR program) and I know that with 18mp resolution I will seldom be cropping down to what would be the equivalent of 1:1.

FWIW, this shot was well exposed to start with (the exposure meter in the 7d has also impressed me so far) so I didn't have to lift any shadows in post, which is of course the kiss of death for noisy shots - in fact, the only adjustment I made was to add some NR in LR, otherwise it's SOOC. I'm sure in an underexposed shot it would be more visible, but I wanted to see how the camera would do at the higher ISO so I decided to bump it up to expose to the right if only to push it a little. I'm not disappointed

Awais Yaqub · May 6, 2010

If anyone need high ISO straight out of Camera JPGs in full res from 7D, i can email pics (pm me). For me JPG are usable even at ISO 3200. At 6400 and 12800 some Raw adjustments are required to make picture usable, here i don't trust in camera NR which takes away too much detail from the picture.

mercphoto · May 6, 2010

Awais Yaqub wrote: »

If anyone need high ISO straight out of Camera JPGs in full res from 7D, i can email pics (pm me). For me JPG are usable even at ISO 3200. At 6400 and 12800 some Raw adjustments are required to make picture usable, here i don't trust in camera NR which takes away too much detail from the picture.

And to think my 1D Mark II required Noise Ninja at a lowly ISO 800 it is flat scary how good things are getting!

7d making a grown man cry

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