5D MKII and 6D Speed - FPS?

Neil64 wrote in post #16606993
Hello All,

I currently have a 7D, 175-55is, 50 1.8, 70-200is and a Tamron 18-270 for walk around lens. I shoot my kids playing soccer, indoor basketball, baseball, swimming, karate, etc.. As they get older, their sports will speed up. They are 10-12 now. I also shoot a lot of indoor family pics, usually low light and hopefully, soon some travel pics.

I have never been totally impressed with the 7D's image quality. I do not post process so....Looking back, I liked the pics out of my 40D but I think my 7D pics are nosier and lack pop. Pics I see out of a 5D seem much cleaner, sharper and have more pop. I am sure they have been post processed. I use center point focus only.

So I am thinking about buying a used 5D MkII and 17-40L. I am pretty sure the image quality will make be happy but I am worried about the speed of the camera. FPS = 3.9. vs. the 7Ds 8 FPS. I worry that the 5D MkII is going to be slow, like my old Rebel XTi which was a dog. I very seldom rapid fire when shooting sports. I can't afford to keep 2 bodies or lenses for both EF and EF-S. So I am think about buy a used 5D MkII or 6D, a used 17-40 and selling my 7D and 17-55is.

Can anyone tell me if the 5D MkII is substantially faster than the XTi? Will the 5D MkII really limit me shooting casual sports?

I'd like to get the 5D MkIII but just can't afford or justify that much money. I don't think my skills can justify that purchase either.

Thanks..

Neil

1. Learn to properly post-process your photos.

2. Yes, the 5DII will hobble you for sports shooting. It isn't the frame rate that is the problem. It's the 5DII's autofocus tracking capabilities. It is no where near as good as your 7D. Or the 5D Mark III, which is a whole different animal.

But any full frame camera also will require longer, heavier, more expensive lenses to give you the "reach" you enjoy now with the crop sensor 7D. You'll need a 300mm, in addition to that 70-200 you have now.

So, simplest solution would be to learn to post process your 7D images. It's capable of very high quality, but it's images need some sharpening and tweaking to be their best. It is a pro-oriented camera, so it's designers assumed that more advanced users would be likely to be pretty hands-on with everything from setup before the shoot, through post-processing after the shoto.

An alternative would be to work on your camera set up so that JPEGs coming straight from it are more what you want. That's possible too, but you have to nail it in-camera, and be ready to change your settings on the fly.

Thanks guys for the advice. I am going to take it and stick with 7D. Is Lightroom that much better than DPP?

I think you are on the right track, but I just want to re-iterate that the 5DII feels very very slow compared to a 7D. It's not just FPS, which I honestly don't think the 5DII gets 3.9 (more like 3 or so).

Compared to the 7D it seems like forever after pressing the shutter until the first shot is taken. Then, with the viewfinder blackout, it is really much harder (not impossible, but definitely harder) to follow a subject. Even at 8fps on the 7D you get more of a view of your subject than 3 fps on the 5DII.

After getting a 7D (and paying 1/3 of the price I paid for the 5DII) I started taking that as my general camera over the 5DII just because of the responsiveness and only used the 5DII for landscape and shooting at ISO3200 and above.

Neil64 wrote in post #16608773
Thanks guys for the advice. I am going to take it and stick with 7D. Is Lightroom that much better than DPP?

Dpp is a raw processor and really doesn't serve that much more that that. I use Photoshop and Noiseware on the resulting files from DPP. Light room is both a raw processor and photo enhancer in one, adobe combines elements of photo shop and a raw processor into one tool. Both methods produce nearly equal results.

If you've never done any post-processing work, you may find Lightroom a bit easier to work with than DPP. I find it a little more intuitive. I agree with all the other posts that say you can get a lot more out of your current camera by learning some PP skills.

EOS5DC wrote in post #16609354
If you've never done any post-processing work, you may find Lightroom a bit easier to work with than DPP. I find it a little more intuitive. I agree with all the other posts that say you can get a lot more out of your current camera by learning some PP skills.

+1 for Lightroom. I tried DPP and I just didn't like it. Lightroom was so much easier to do what I wanted as I was teaching myself.

Hi Neil,
I am happy to hear that you are going to keep the 7D.
There are several important things that you should compare between camera bodies for casual sport photography.
Here they are:
1) # of AF points (5DM2 has 9 - 7D has 19)
2) The sensitivity of the AF points (5DM2 has one crosstype - 7D has 19)
3) Shutter lag time (have not checked)
4) AF software in AIServo mode (7D has several groups - 5D has two groups: single AF point or all AF points)
5) Frame per second (7D has 8, 5DM2 has 4)
Download the user manual of a camera body which you might consider and compare these above points

BTW, as JeffreyG had said, the shutter lag is probably the most important thing.

I have both 5DM2 and 1DM3. They are both great cameras. I use 5DM2 for low light and portrait, and I use 1DM3 for sport.

In term of post-processing, I was an Adobe PS user, and I have converted to Adobe LightRoom. I do not process my photos heavily. I spend about 30 seconds to 1 minute per photos.
Here is my post-processing workflow if you are interested:
1) Crop
2) White balance correction
3) Contrast correction
4) Camera/Lens profile correction
5) Local sharpness correction using brush tool if needed

That's it!

I don't shoot with a 7D, but from what I've read, it has a very strong anti alias filter. So at least some post processing will be needed just to correct for that.

I also read that the 7D focusing system is very capable, but not easy to get the best out of it. It also seems to be the case that the 7D is particularly sensitive to exposure accuracy and under exposure is a no no.

I would recommend Photoshop Elements 11 or 12 as a starting point for PP. There are three different levels of help, beginner, intermediate and expert. Expert mode seems to be very similar to versions of Photoshop that I've used in the past.

Lightroom is excellent too, though I am newer to Lightroom and am still learning my way around it.

Lots of folks here seem to shoot RAW, but IMHO great results can be had from JPEG. Cameras can shoot more jpegs before the buffer is full, so longer bursts are possible with JPEG. One advantage of shooting JPEG is that if you're not doing much in post, you can adjust how the camera processes the image file. So try it the different settings and see if that improves your straight out of camera images..

Entry level SLRs are aimed at beginners and almost assumes that the photographer will mostly shoot JPEG and use these SOOC. So there offer lots of in camera assistance so that the user gets images that impress. So sharpening and saturation for example are typically pretty strong. Trying to undo some of these settings in post is not easy. More advance photographers want/need more control over the final image, so the in camera settings for images are less aggressive, some of the auto modes disappear and the user has greater access to tweak focusing system settings and other camera functions..

So in summary, getting a more professional camera does not in itself lead to more professional results as they require/allow more input from the user to get the very best out of the hardware and captured image data.