60D vs 70D vs 7D - Low Light purchase?

mp0510 wrote in post #16687845
Everyone's pushing the 6D. I like it. I use a 5D3 at work and love it, but both are out of the personal budget. My goal is under $1,000. I can get all three I I originally listed for that with careful shopping and through contacts at some camera stores if the timing is right. 60D is obviously much cheaper, so if it was good enough, it would be a great budget option. Right now, it seems the 70D has a slight advantage. I've been using Photoshop since version 5, and LR since 1, so the PP side is no problem, I only shoot RAW.

With all that said, what are your thoughts if I throw a 5d2 as a potential option as well? Harder to find for $1,000, but it would at least be a FF if I wanted to go a little over budget.

Heya,

Avoid the 5D2. Slow, for action.

Remember, not only do you want fast autofocus, you want fast FPS for continuous shooting while in AI servo as well.

Very best,

gonzogolf wrote in post #16687064
I want a ferrari for the price of a yugo too.

This pretty much sums it up.

Out of those 3, 70D is the clear winner.

You get what you pay for....

Here is my 2 cents, after having owned 60D, 7D, 70D, and 6D (as well as about 10 other Canon bodies.)

60D is virtually the same as the other 18mp sensor Canon bodies. I've thoroughly compared my 7D to my 60D, T2i, T3i, and T4i when I owned them. Shot over 100K photos with these 18mp sensors so I knew it like the back of my hand.

Then I bought a 6D, then a 70D, (while I still had the 7D and a T4i).

The 70D is a little better at high ISOs than the 18mp Canon crop bodies. The IQ difference is significantly larger in jpeg, but even in RAW there is a difference, not huge but there is. This difference is on 2 fronts in RAW; a little less noise and better noise characteristics, as it has been mentioned before. It's easier to process high ISO 70D images than any of the 18mp images. The old 18mp sensor contained, besides the "normal" high ISO luminance noise, some ugly black and white specks, which stuck out from the "normal" high ISO noise. These specks were tougher to clean up. The 70D does not appear to have these.
So overall a nice improvement in jpeg and a small improvement in RAW.

As for the 6D, it's much better, it's in another league. It's close to 2 stops better in RAW than the 18mp Canons, and about a stop and a half better than the 70D. In jpeg, the 6D is more than 2 stops better than the 18mp Canons.

As for the AF, well, that's the one thing that complicates the OP's decision. Ideally the 5D3 would be the solution, but it seems to be over budget.
Then there is no other way around it, the OP needs to decide which is more important to him, outer points AF (center points are good on all these cameras) or high ISO IQ.

5dmk3 for me. Shooting night time games with ambient light is not cheap. You need the best high ISO performance and very good AF in AI servo mode. Not to mention money for those superteles.

You need ISO6400 at min for shooting at f2.8. Even then some fields you won't have enough ss.

mp0510 wrote in post #16686815
I want to buy a body I'll be using for the following scenarios and would like the thoughts and feedback of actual owners of these cameras.

1. Low Light - I want to shoot available light in dark environments (think churches, abandoned buildings, etc.) where the people might be active with decent depth of field. So I'm thinking f/4 - f/8, ISO 12800, 1/200. I want the best detail possible (hence the desire for a full frame).

2. Absolute razor sharp focus accuracy in good light/flash (ISO 100, f/1.8, 1/120). Not Live view or Manual, just standard auto-focus.

2. Ability to keep focus on moving objects that might shift away from the center focus point (BIF, football, car racing).

Budget-wise, the 60D seems the best choice, since it's available much cheaper. But it doesn't allow microfocus adjustments, which I would LIKE to have. The 7D has a reputation for great focus accuracy, but is older and I'm not sure how good the ISO 12,800 will compare to the 70D in real world situations. I have no idea how well any of these can focus in dim/dark environments (churches, etc.) with just available light.

Any thoughts? Experiences?

Hi. My shot with my 70d...
Camera Model Canon EOS 70D
Shooting Mode Manual Exposure
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/60
Av( Aperture Value ) 4.0
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
ISO Speed 1600
Auto ISO Speed OFF
Lens EF24-105mm f/4L IS USM
Focal Length 50.0 mm
Image Size 3648x2432
Image Quality Fine
Flash Off
FE lock OFF
White Balance Mode Color Temperature(4500K)
AF Mode One-Shot AF
AF area select mode Manual selection
Picture Style User Defined 1(Standard)
Sharpness 7
Contrast 0
Saturation 0
Color tone 0
Color Space Adobe RGB
Auto Lighting Optimizer 3isable
Peripheral illumination correction Enable
File Size 4340 KB
Dust Delete Data No
Live View Shooting OFF
AF Microadjustment 5

mp0510 wrote in post #16687845
Everyone's pushing the 6D. I like it. I use a 5D3 at work and love it, but both are out of the personal budget. My goal is under $1,000. I can get all three I I originally listed for that with careful shopping and through contacts at some camera stores if the timing is right. 60D is obviously much cheaper, so if it was good enough, it would be a great budget option. Right now, it seems the 70D has a slight advantage. I've been using Photoshop since version 5, and LR since 1, so the PP side is no problem, I only shoot RAW.

With all that said, what are your thoughts if I throw a 5d2 as a potential option as well? Harder to find for $1,000, but it would at least be a FF if I wanted to go a little over budget.

It's easy then: 70D. It does so many things well, and only has a couple areas where it does not excel.
So if I were you, I'd choose the 70D.

^^^ Listen to Gabe. 70D is by far the best overall camera when everything considered.

SoOC 6400 jpeg...first shot the 70D took. I think it does a good job in the camera.

IMAGE LINK: http://www.flickr.com …/61744772@N06/9​620220638/

I like high iso! 5d3, save up for it!

EOS5DC wrote in post #16687625
The noise in those shots is atrocious. My guess is you are not doing your part. The cameras are capable of much better.

It´s ETTR full res RAW shot without ANY noise reduction... that´s how it looks at 12800ISO:...

What could i do wrong in this case?

without resizing and noise reduction, ISO 12800 RAW picture is not usable on any camera...


As i already said, only big difference is SOOC jpeg high ISO shooting, where 6D excels...

palad1n wrote in post #16688366
As i already said, only big difference is SOOC jpeg high ISO shooting, where 6D excels...

No, not really....

There is 2 stops difference in RAW level, more with SOOC jpeg.

kin2son wrote in post #16688409
No, not really....

There is 2 stops difference in RAW level, more with SOOC jpeg.

no, there is not
But we are heavily biased by our gear, let´s let OP decide for himself

get a used 6D for high ISO or 70D for the crop

6D for high ISO
ISO Speed 12800

Owning both the 6D and the 70D, I'd say that at higher ISOs (3200 and up) the 6D has a solid 1.5 stops advantage in RAW. (In jpeg it's actually more than 2 stops)

You can compare below too (DPreview). Let's say the 70D is at 3200, then the 6D is much cleaner at 3200 (no surprise). The 6D at 6400 is still cleaner than the 70D at 3200, but at 12800 (6D) the 70D's 3200 is cleaner. So it's somewhere between 6400 and 12800 where the 6D loses its advantage (roughly 1.5 stops)
And that pretty much matches my findings in real-world shooting.
The 70D is about a third to a half stop better than my 18mp Canons were, so the 6D is about 2 stops better than the 18mp Canons.

http://www.dpreview.co​m/reviews/canon-eos-70d/18

It's also worth mentioning, that in many real-world situations you may get better sharpness with the 6D since it's not putting as much stress on lenses as the 70D does (due to magnification). That may happen often with mediocre lenses. This also helps the 6D a little bit since you don't have to sharpen the 6D files as much as the 70D files, and sharpening makes the noise more visible if not done smartly.
Theoretically this per-pixel sharpness advantage is negligible if you use the best lenses, so it only comes up with lenses that are sharper when used on a FF compared to a crop (same megapixels).

EDIT: playing with the DPreview tool, I believe that the Canon SL1 (100D) is very close to the 70D, almost the same, which is very good for the SL1. The T4i is a bit behind for some reason, which I've known for a while since my wife shoots with that one.

mp0510 wrote in post #16687845
Everyone's pushing the 6D.

I apologize if what I've written comes off that way. It wasn't my intention. I'm personally not trying to push the 6D. I'm just concerned that what you're looking for in a camera can't realistically be fulfilled with the 60D, 70D, or 7D. As I stated earlier, I love my 70D and it is a great camera. I would absolutely purchase it again.

Honestly, I don't think the 6D really fulfills all of your wants either. I think the 5Diii, based on what you've expressed, is the camera that fulfills your wishes the best.

I'm really hung up on what you want to see as far as noise at high ISO goes. Sure, all of the noise can be processed out of an image. That's not a problem. There is a fine line between removing noise and removing detail (when using software versus image stacking for nr). My tolerance for losing detail is very, very low. Only you know where your personal comfort level with regards to this lies.

mp0510 wrote in post #16687845
With all that said, what are your thoughts if I throw a 5d2 as a potential option as well? Harder to find for $1,000, but it would at least be a FF if I wanted to go a little over budget.

I think, when comparing the three crops to the 5d2 (and excluding the 6D), that this might be a reasonable option for you: providing you can find it at your price point. I think the 5d2 is a camera that still has a lot going for it, and I think it outperforms the crops as far as IQ goes. I'm not sure, but I think I remember that the one I played with didn't have ISO 12800 as an option.