*UPDATE* A Bit of EOS 70D Info [CR1-CR2]

[Zv]

OK here we go, upscaled on photoshop (which is destructive so .... anyway).

I wouldn't necessarily call upscaling "destructive". It is distributive, for sure, as it distributes existing information and fabricates new information...but I wouldn't necessarily call upscaling destructive. It is a better way to clearly demonstrate the difference, which I think is clear now with your latest screenshot. You could downscale the 7D image to the 5D II crop size. The differences won't be as apparent, as downscaling IS definitely destructive, however the 7D shot will pick up additional clarity and sharpness, as well as reduced noise relative to the 5D II shot.

Anyway, thanks for being honest!

You're welcome! Glad we sorted that out. 

[jrista]

Jrista
search : John Sheehy 7d aa-filter and you get answer

this is from dpreview, 3 aps and  the 7d , 7d has a stronger aa-filter like Nikon often have before  compared to for example  Pentax APS who use the same sensor as Nikon but lighter filter, d7100 has no filter and the resolution is also higher



dpreview resolution test shows 2600 LPH for the rebel   and 2500 LPH for the 7d

Lets qualify things here. The 7D has a "stronger" AA-filter than the 650D, 60D, and D7100. STRONGER THAN X. I need to be extremely clear here that having a "stronger" AA filter than any one of those cameras by no means indicates the 7D has a TOO STRONG AA filter. The sentiment that you were pushing was that the 7D is losing IQ because of it's AA filter, an AA filter that is "too strong".

I strongly dispute that notion. When it comes to digital photography, we want an AA filter to be ideally suited for the specific sensor you are using. You don't want it to be too strong, and neither do you want it to be too weak, ESPECIALLY if you shoot anything that might produce aliasing or moire. Aliasing and moire are BAD things...and in your example shot, the 7D image is the ONLY one that looks acceptable to me...it reproduces the information present in the subject being photographed better than all the others. It should also be noted that the softening caused by an OLPF is predictable softening, while it eliminates an unpredictable outcome...moire. Softening is global, and thus something we can easily correct in post with a little bit of sharpening. Correcting moire is a far more difficult task, and it must be performed locally rather than globally, only to regions actually affected by it. The concept here is no different than diffraction...stopping down to gain necessary DOF is preferred over shooting wide and ending up with a thin DOF. Correcting for diffraction in post is easy because it is global and linear, correcting for an improper DOF is practically impossible because it is localized and non-linear.

I believe my 100% crop photo of the orange-morph house finch....a bird, with lots of criss-crossing feathers and color detail...looks nearly perfect! No moire at all, no aliasing, however the detail level is exquisite. The 7D has neither a too-weak nor a too-strong AA filter. It has an AA filter that is just about PERFECT for an 18mp APS-C sensor with a 4.3µm pitch.

I stand by my statement. The notion that IQ on the 7D is lost because of an AA filter that is too strong is a myth.

[Zv]

Bryan from TDP notes that if you increase sharpness to a setting of 1 in the camera picture style profiles the image looks just fine and is about same as the 550D, 60D etc. It is a non issue. I think the 7D images are plenty sharp and most of the time I just add a little sharpening in post anyway. He also states that this COULD be due to a STRONGER (as jrista said) AA filter, but nothing about it being too strong.

[GMCPhotographics]

Jrista
search : John Sheehy 7d aa-filter and you get answer

this is from dpreview, 3 aps and  the 7d , 7d has a stronger aa-filter like Nikon often have before  compared to for example  Pentax APS who use the same sensor as Nikon but lighter filter, d7100 has no filter and the resolution is also higher

I personally found my 7D to produce slightly soft per pixel detail when compared to my 5DII/III. I've read that Canon used a stonger than usual AA filter to reduce moire in movie mode. It was a very nice camera to use, but it's IQ wasn't on par with Canon's full frame offerings. It had very high iso noise, slightly odd micro contrast and the pixels were softer than any other DSLR I've used. I loved the 8fps, very capable AF system and great handling.


dpreview resolution test shows 2600 LPH for the rebel   and 2500 LPH for the 7d

Lets qualify things here. The 7D has a "stronger" AA-filter than the 650D, 60D, and D7100. STRONGER THAN X. I need to be extremely clear here that having a "stronger" AA filter than any one of those cameras by no means indicates the 7D has a TOO STRONG AA filter. The sentiment that you were pushing was that the 7D is losing IQ because of it's AA filter, an AA filter that is "too strong".

I strongly dispute that notion. When it comes to digital photography, we want an AA filter to be ideally suited for the specific sensor you are using. You don't want it to be too strong, and neither do you want it to be too weak, ESPECIALLY if you shoot anything that might produce aliasing or moire. Aliasing and moire are BAD things...and in your example shot, the 7D image is the ONLY one that looks acceptable to me...it reproduces the information present in the subject being photographed better than all the others. It should also be noted that the softening caused by an OLPF is predictable softening, while it eliminates an unpredictable outcome...moire. Softening is global, and thus something we can easily correct in post with a little bit of sharpening. Correcting moire is a far more difficult task, and it must be performed locally rather than globally, only to regions actually affected by it. The concept here is no different than diffraction...stopping down to gain necessary DOF is preferred over shooting wide and ending up with a thin DOF. Correcting for diffraction in post is easy because it is global and linear, correcting for an improper DOF is practically impossible because it is localized and non-linear.

I believe my 100% crop photo of the orange-morph house finch....a bird, with lots of criss-crossing feathers and color detail...looks nearly perfect! No moire at all, no aliasing, however the detail level is exquisite. The 7D has neither a too-weak nor a too-strong AA filter. It has an AA filter that is just about PERFECT for an 18mp APS-C sensor with a 4.3µm pitch.

I stand by my statement. The notion that IQ on the 7D is lost because of an AA filter that is too strong is a myth.

[jrista]

it looks stronger than other filter  canon have used together with theirs newer  18Mp cameras

And yet, it is neither too strong nor too weak. To turn the argument around, all three of the other cameras in your sample shot have AA filters that are too WEAK. As a result, you experience moire. Moire is something we have no decent tools to correct in post. The tools we do have are tedious, and must be applied locally. A too-weak AA filter is worse than a just-right or too-strong filter, as when you have a just-right and too-strong filter, all it takes is a little global sharpening to correct in post. Nature is FULL of interfering patterns.

It is relatively rare to not have the need for an AA filter. The cases where you might be ok are most landscapes, or if you  regularly shoot below the DLA (in which case, diffraction will soften enough to act as the AA filter itself.)
However even in nature, there are plenty of repeating or nearly repeating patterns. Birds feathers are an excellent example. Fur on wildlife. Striated detail in leaves or other natural materials that often show up in macro photography. There are also plenty of things that just experience aliasing, not necessarily moire, such as twigs in trees, power lines, strong edges on any surface or structure, etc. These are all things we have to correct in post if we don't have an AA filter or have an AA filter that is too weak.

I've never seen meaningful, visible softening in the 7D that was not due to a lens. When I use top-end telephoto glass, I see no softening whatsoever. That tells me that the bulk of "softness" people experience is due to the lens, or an incorrect AFMA setting. If you use high quality glass, softness just doesn't occur. It may not be hypersharp either, but it is still sharp as a tack every single time, and if I want things to be even sharper, I can always add just a little sharpening in post. Note, here, that the shot of the finch with the 500/4 L II + 1.4x TC was NOT sharpened. That sharpness is strait out of the camera.

[jrista]

no it looks not like that, se the difference above, the aa-filter together with the sensor is a package and which canon changes and "improve" by the time, to me with the same sharpening the new camera has more details and shows also more moire in this case and  in this detail and structure

Sure, it does have more detail. It also has moire. In my opinion, moire is an UNACCEPTABLE artifact, and indicates the AA filter is TOO WEAK. I don't want moire. It is a pain in the ass. It serves no purpose, and depending on exactly how it manifests, it might be impossible to eliminate. There isn't any point in having an AA filter at all if you are not eliminating or nearly eliminating moire. The amounts in all the other photographs are so significant that I don't understand why they have an AA filter at all. The entire goal is to ELIMINATE moire, or at least reduce it to levels where it is not obvious without deeper examination (which is the case with the 7D, which actually indicates the AA filter is still ever so slightly too weak).

MOIRE == BAD!
Softness == manageable!

You can sharpen a photo with ease, and extract detail that is there. Particularly today, with tools like those from Topaz and Nik, the ability to not only sharpen but REVERSE blurring gives us unprecedented ability to recover detail that is lost in a GLOBAL, LINEAR process like blurring from an AA filter or diffraction.

On a camera like the 7D, which is primarily built for action shooting...applications where you need reach...I expect the AA filter to be perfect. I don't want to be shooting anything...a baseball player wearing fabric, a bird with detailed feathers, an elk with its striated fur, or anything else that is likely to be shot with the 7D line of DSLRs with a weak AA filter. No one does. We don't like Moire. The only time you can actually get away without having an OLPF of the proper thickness (strength is determined by the thickness of the filters) is when you know for a fact that you will never have repeating patterns.

Landscapes is the only thing that really comes to mind as a viable situation where you would never have to worry about it, in which case it would be better to forego the AA filter entirely rather than have a weak one that needlessly softens detail without purpose. Ironically, that is also one of the only time I think most people really need two extra stops of DR, too. Well, the D800E is certainly king of the landscape photography world...but that does not mean a weak AA filter is a good thing all the time. It is not. Moire is bad news, and I believe it is even more important to make sure that consumer-grade cameras like the 650D, 700D, D7200, whatever, have properly designed OLPF filters such that they anti-alias at least as well as the 7D does, therefor serving their purpose: to eliminate moire.

Now, it is obvious you don't understand the purpose of an AA filter, are unwilling to acknowledge that the 7D's AA filter is doing EXACTLY what it is supposed to do to near-perfection, and are just here to argue the benefits of anyone other than Canon and deride Canon themselves once again. I am therefor done with this conversation. I've made my points. Multiple times. Until you acknowledge that raw IQ, regardless of how it is achieved, especially if it is achieved "at any cost", is not the only thing that matters in photography, I'm out.

[Krob78]

no it looks not like that, se the difference above, the aa-filter together with the sensor is a package and which canon changes and "improve" by the time, to me with the same sharpening the new camera has more details and shows also more moire in this case and  in this detail and structure

Sure, it does have more detail. It also has moire. In my opinion, moire is an UNACCEPTABLE artifact, and indicates the AA filter is TOO WEAK. I don't want moire. It is a pain in the ass. It serves no purpose, and depending on exactly how it manifests, it might be impossible to eliminate. There isn't any point in having an AA filter at all if you are not eliminating or nearly eliminating moire. The amounts in all the other photographs are so significant that I don't understand why they have an AA filter at all. The entire goal is to ELIMINATE moire, or at least reduce it to levels where it is not obvious without deeper examination (which is the case with the 7D, which actually indicates the AA filter is still ever so slightly too weak).

MOIRE == BAD!
Softness == manageable!

You can sharpen a photo with ease, and extract detail that is there. Particularly today, with tools like those from Topaz and Nik, the ability to not only sharpen but REVERSE blurring gives us unprecedented ability to recover detail that is lost in a GLOBAL, LINEAR process like blurring from an AA filter or diffraction.

On a camera like the 7D, which is primarily built for action shooting...applications where you need reach...I expect the AA filter to be perfect. I don't want to be shooting anything...a baseball player wearing fabric, a bird with detailed feathers, an elk with its striated fur, or anything else that is likely to be shot with the 7D line of DSLRs with a weak AA filter. No one does. We don't like Moire. The only time you can actually get away without having an OLPF of the proper thickness (strength is determined by the thickness of the filters) is when you know for a fact that you will never have repeating patterns.

Landscapes is the only thing that really comes to mind as a viable situation where you would never have to worry about it, in which case it would be better to forego the AA filter entirely rather than have a weak one that needlessly softens detail without purpose. Ironically, that is also one of the only time I think most people really need two extra stops of DR, too. Well, the D800E is certainly king of the landscape photography world...but that does not mean a weak AA filter is a good thing all the time. It is not. Moire is bad news, and I believe it is even more important to make sure that consumer-grade cameras like the 650D, 700D, D7200, whatever, have properly designed OLPF filters such that they anti-alias at least as well as the 7D does, therefor serving their purpose: to eliminate moire.

Now, it is obvious you don't understand the purpose of an AA filter, are unwilling to acknowledge that the 7D's AA filter is doing EXACTLY what it is supposed to do to near-perfection, and are just here to argue the benefits of anyone other than Canon and deride Canon themselves once again. I am therefor done with this conversation. I've made my points. Multiple times. Until you acknowledge that raw IQ, regardless of how it is achieved, especially if it is achieved "at any cost", is not the only thing that matters in photography, I'm out.

Agreed, this argument and post is getting old!

[dgatwood]

I wouldn't call 7D, 5D, 1D users "vast majority". Vast Majority are PowerShot users ;-)

Not anymore.  The smartphone market is eating the lunch of point-and-shoot cameras.  Take a look at, for example, Flickr's camera stats.  The top 5 are all iPhone or Canon DSLR models.  If you further look at just Canon's cameras, the first non-DSLR camera comes in at #19.

http://www.flickr.com/cameras/canon/

Now I'm not saying that Flickr users are representative—they probably are more likely to use quality gear than your average person—but it's an indicator of the direction that the market is going.  As far as future sales are concerned, the point-and-shoot camera market is pretty much dead and buried at this point, and is a waste of R&D spending.

[jrista]

it looks stronger than other filter  canon have used together with theirs newer  18Mp cameras as here

Just for comparison...I've sharpened the 7D image just enough to compare to the image with a weaker AA filter (and note, this is a JPEG being sharpened...so compression artifacts are limiting my abilities here...give me a RAW, and I can do MUCH better! :

[Krob78]

Sigh...

[jrista]

Sigh...

Yeah...even visual evidence derived FROM HIS OWN evidence isn't even enough! Oh well...guess a Zebra really can't change its stripes.

[Krob78]

Sigh...

Yeah...even visual evidence derived FROM HIS OWN evidence isn't even enough! Oh well...guess a Zebra really can't change its stripes.

Indeed!  I think there was some biblical quotation that went something like: "no man is wrong in his own eyes"
But I'm not positive...

[dlleno]

There are several ...  the one you're thinking of is probably:  proverbs 21:2.   "every man's way is right in his own eyes..."

and thanks Jrista for the great clarification re:  color noise and moire and the AA filter. 

[Krob78]

There are several ...  the one you're thinking of is probably:  proverbs 21:2.   "every man's way is right in his own eyes..."

and thanks Jrista for the great clarification re:  color noise and moire and the AA filter.

Yes, that's the one!  Thank you Dlleno!