Canon EOS 7D Mark II Is Sharper And Has Less Noise Than EOS 5D Mark III

Geordie Amanda wrote in post #17236696
I occasionally take the odd shot of a bird and as I like to take pictures hand held, I struggle with f8, 600mm and a crop camera, but 1344mm!! Wow. I cant even imagine how you line that up. Do you use a very expensive ball head? and also an extremely stable tripod (possibly weighed down with large blocks of lead on each leg)

Practice and the right gear. I use my 1D4, 600mm f/4 IS II + 1.4III, Wimberley II, and a Girzo GT5542LS. No lead required. Framing takes practice but the setup I just described makes it really easy. The support is a very important part of successfully using long focal lengths.

butterfly2937 wrote in post #17236726
Practice and the right gear. I use my 1D4, 600mm f/4 IS II + 1.4III, Wimberley II, and a Girzo GT5542LS. No lead required. Framing takes practice but the setup I just described makes it really easy. The support is a very important part of successfully using long focal lengths.

I bet that takes quite a bit of carrying if you take it all into the wild when you go shooting

Geordie Amanda wrote in post #17236758
I bet that takes quite a bit of carrying if you take it all into the wild when you go shooting

I have a Gura Gear Bataflae 32L and LensCoat 4Xpandable bag. I use either one depending on the situation. I also have a Canon 300mm f/2.8 IS+ TCs. If I am using mostly the 600 the LensCoat bag is perfect and really easy to carry.

GeoKras1989 wrote in post #17235512
Same lens on crop and ff will, obviously, result in different FOV. His (her?) 100% crops are the same size. Impossible. You either have to upres the 5D3 shot, killing detail, or downres the 7D2 shot, hiding flaws. The comparison is completely invalid. A blatant plea for traffic from someone with nothing valid to say. I'd guess you could compare a 450D to the 5D3 with similar results.

Thank you for that insightful analysis. The uprez FF vs downrez crop is PRECISELY THE POINT of the article that you seem to have missed: is it true that in focal length limited situations the 7d2 has an IQ advantage over the 5d3/1dx?

Geordie Amanda wrote in post #17235768
That's what I thought. It seemed odd to me that a professional chap would compare the two as he did, but figured as he knows more than me, there must be a reason for it (assuming he isn't being paid to demonstrate these things?)

Geordie Amanda wrote in post #17236511
I'd assumed that as a pro birder, that AM was showing that inho, the 7DII was a better camera for his profession and that cropping a FF image was inferior. But wondered why he would post this, as I thought it was received wisdom that cropping something like a 5DIII wouldn't improve IQ over something like a 7D with it's greater pixel density on target (at least for birds and some sports).

From what I recall there was a reader that requested the comparison, so he obliged. He admits not being techy with that kind of thing, so you notice he says or ask the readers their take on it.

Geordie Amanda wrote in post #17236696
I occasionally take the odd shot of a bird and as I like to take pictures hand held, I struggle with f8, 600mm and a crop camera, but 1344mm!! Wow. I cant even imagine how you line that up. Do you use a very expensive ball head? and also an extremely stable tripod (possibly weighed down with large blocks of lead on each leg)

I use a Lensmaster Gimbal on a Gitzo No lead needed

Rob.

Went to the birdsart site, reminded me of a Stuckees on the interstate=come in and spend money.

MedicineMan4040 wrote in post #17237146
Went to the birdsart site, reminded me of a Stuckees on the interstate=come in and spend money.

He's just trying to make a living - I don't think bird photography is in the same income bracket as someone like Peter Lik.

^well to be honest I did read a bit and gotta give her credit for making the effort to compare the different bodies. Actually more I read happier I became I pre-ordered.....

timbop wrote in post #17236788
Thank you for that inciteful analysis. The uprez FF vs downrez crop is PRECISELY THE POINT of the article that you seem to have missed: is it true that in focal length limited situations the 7d2 has an IQ advantage over the 5d3/1dx?

No question at low ISOs; for FLLP (focal-length-limited photography) with Canons, the smaller pixels always win because most of the electronic noise is in the post-gain part of the pipeline and has nothing to do with pixel qualities, so more pixels covering the subject means less subject-level read noise. At higher ISOs, bigger pixels in recent cameras like the 1Dx, 5D3, and 6D were yielding less noise in normalized subject sizes for FLLP. That edge may be gone with the 7D2, though, as it has about half the read noise of the 7D, and the character of that noise is very fine and unobtrusive.

I will compare the "noise per unit of sensor area" of the 7D2 with the 6D when my 7D2 ships to me, based on pure RAW data without camera-specific optimizations.

^wish you could compare to the A7s as well....less pixel density+huge photosites would prove an interesting compare to the 6D dont you think?

MedicineMan4040 wrote in post #17237266
^wish you could compare to the A7s as well....less pixel density+huge photosites would prove an interesting compare to the 6D dont you think?

I don't have one available, but I'm sure the A7s would still have a lead on the 7D2 for high ISO noise either at the subject, image, or pixel level; it is in a class by itself. However, every leading-edge big-pixel/sensor high ISO beast is surpassed eventually by denser sensors for FLLP. When the original Canon 5D first came out, it was a high-ISO wonder. Now, it's just a camera to get a wide FOV with, because it is full-frame, and not much more.

butterfly2937 wrote in post #17236787
I have a Gura Gear Bataflae 32L and LensCoat 4Xpandable bag. I use either one depending on the situation. I also have a Canon 300mm f/2.8 IS+ TCs. If I am using mostly the 600 the LensCoat bag is perfect and really easy to carry.

I'd want an off-road 'Segue' or one of those little swamp buggies the Banana Splits used in the opening credits to carry that

Methodical wrote in post #17236806
From what I recall there was a reader that requested the comparison, so he obliged. He admits not being techy with that kind of thing, so you notice he says or ask the readers their take on it.

Thanks. I'm keeping an eye on these threads, especially as the 6D is becoming so affordable.

GyRob wrote in post #17237124
I use a Lensmaster Gimbal on a Gitzo No lead needed

Rob.

I now feel so inadequate having read the set ups you guys use for really long focal lengths

This, of course, is only for the really big lenses:
http://upload.wikimedi​a.org …d/Crawler-Transporter.jpg