7D Soft Images

G'day all, Thank you to KCBrown, tonylong and paparios for your answers to my question. I have every bit of confidence in the 7D. It was starting to sound like this camera required PP before you can get a decent result out of it, which obviously is not the case. I will learn how to shoot in RAW, as it gives me so much more data to play with, which means using my CS5, PSE9 or DPP a bit more to get familiar with it. I was fairly confident that this camera will give me fantastic shots SOOC, I just didn't want another 7D Bagger jumping in saying that this camera required PP for a decent image. I can't wait till my camera gets here, then I too, can pull the rest of my hair out in the initial few weeks, until I get used to all the great technology in the 7D. I think coming from a 550D, it will be a bit of a learning curve to figure out where all the settings are, but that is halve the fun of it....... (he says hesitantly LOL)

Regards, Dutch

mangrovedutch wrote in post #13046602
G'day all, Thank you to KCBrown, tonylong and paparios for your answers to my question. I have every bit of confidence in the 7D. It was starting to sound like this camera required PP before you can get a decent result out of it, which obviously is not the case.

It doesn't require PP to get good results from the 7D. It does take PP to get the best results from it. But the 7D is no different than any other camera in that regard.

The only notable difference between the 7D and other cameras is that it seems to require more sharpening (i.e., a higher sharpness setting) than other cameras do. But when you set the sharpening values appropriately, you'll get excellent images from it (as long as you do your part as a photographer, of course).

General_T wrote in post #13044730
How do you sharpen in the Camera, when shooting RAW, before downloading the pics for PP. I thought you can only adjust sharpness using a Picture Style when shooting JPEG's?

By the way, the raw files from the 7D already have a full-size jpeg embedded in them that was processed according to the style parameters you set. I'm not sure what level of compression is used but they look quite good - there are utilities that can extract them as separate jpegs (batchwise, too). The jpeg is saved in the raw file along with the unprocessed raw data. It's what you review on the back of the camera after the shot, or when you play them back later...

AJSJones wrote in post #13047721
By the way, the raw files from the 7D already have a full-size jpeg embedded in them that was processed according to the style parameters you set. I'm not sure what level of compression is used but they look quite good - there are utilities that can extract them as separate jpegs (batchwise, too). The jpeg is saved in the raw file along with the unprocessed raw data. It's what you review on the back of the camera after the shot, or when you play them back later...

I thought they were 10 megapixel jpegs, but I never have bothered to extract one. They're actually 18 megapixel jpegs?

Earlier Canon DSLRs created jpegs that were not the same size as the raw MP count, but more recent one(s) do the including 7D and 5D2
Just did a quick comparison between the "cr2" view in my Image management program (which lets me view embedded jpegs) and it looks pretty close to the view I get when I open the cr2 in DPP. The differences are small and of the magnitude one might get by slight tweaks on a slider in DPP. Definitely worth looking at for a quick "show and tell"!

OP: have you tried shooting with a tripod? what ive noticed is that new users get antsy when they are taking photos and dont stay still.

Is there really a jpg file embedded into every RAW file on the 7D? It's not like other Canon DSLRs, where you can choose RAW+jpg or just plain RAW? I was thinking about getting a 7D as a backup to my two 5D classics, just to have that APS sensor make my 70-200 f/2.8 turn into a 105-300 f/2.8, but if there's a sharpness issue, maybe I'll pass. I've heard nothing but good things about the 7D, especially its AF system (why can't the more expensive 5D series have the same AF system???), so this sharpness issue is worrisome.

PhotoMatte wrote in post #13047980
Is there really a jpg file embedded into every RAW file on the 7D? It's not like other Canon DSLRs, where you can choose RAW+jpg or just plain RAW?

All Canon RAW files embed a JPEG file. RAW+jpg generates a separate JPEG file.

ChinoChangInc wrote in post #13047926
OP: have you tried shooting with a tripod? what ive noticed is that new users get antsy when they are taking photos and dont stay still.

Hi,

No, havent tried a tripod yet. Only because I would not be using it 99% of the time so would like to be able to take decent shots freehand - if possible for me at least

Ok,

Tried a few shots while very steady with my hands and also just put the camera on the table. To me it looks sharp (DPP is using 6 as the sahrpening number). So I guess some of the "soft" I have noticed is (as all have said) user error.

But if I'm shooting at a high shutter speed (say 1/500+) shouldn't that eliminate any softness from movement?

One other question. When I select "unsharp mask" in DPP the image gets evn a little sharper looking. What does "unsharp mask" do?

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Here is an example with "unmask Sharp" (1st image) and just sharpening (2nd image)

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Unsharp Mask (USM) is one of the many post processing tools we use in Photoshop and other tools to sharpen images after the fact. I prefer to do that last, after I have done all other processing, like removing noise, adding a bit of contrast and saturation, etc.

Hi TeamSpeed,

Thanks, another piece of the puzzle.

PhotoMatte wrote in post #13047980
Is there really a jpg file embedded into every RAW file on the 7D? It's not like other Canon DSLRs, where you can choose RAW+jpg or just plain RAW? I was thinking about getting a 7D as a backup to my two 5D classics, just to have that APS sensor make my 70-200 f/2.8 turn into a 105-300 f/2.8, but if there's a sharpness issue, maybe I'll pass. I've heard nothing but good things about the 7D, especially its AF system (why can't the more expensive 5D series have the same AF system???), so this sharpness issue is worrisome.

As I mentioned before, when you are shooting in RAW, any Canon Camera (at least my 400D, 50D and 7D cameras) does generate a JPG file which is embedded in the CR2 file. Software like Canon's Zoombrowser, or some viewers like Faststone are able to show this embedded file in your screen. The example below is the JPG embedded in the CR2 file of my Canon 50D. The resolution appears to be that of the camera (that is 4752x3168). The jpg resulting size is around 1.6 Mbytes. I opened the CR2 file with Faststone and copied the image to Paint and saved it as JPG and finally resized it to display it here. The LR3.4.1 processed file result is shown later.

Miguel

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