Looks like the 6D may not be so bad after all

[RC]

...
For anyone that is thinking about switching I highly recommend renting a D600 like I did.  At LensRentals it was ~$200 to rent it with a 24-70 f/2.8G for 5 days.  During that time I was able to find out if I could live with the ergonomics...

I'd rather put the $200 towards a 5D3.   I  played with a 60D at a shop trying to get a feel for what the 6D might feel like.   It was so different from my 7D that I realized there is just no way I could ever be happy with a 6D.  5D3 or bust for me. 

[crasher8]

"Waiter?, check please. I just can no longer stomach these FF High ISO compared to Crop low ISO posts any longer."

[shinjuku-thief]

I don't usually mind a bit of a wait from announcement until release but this seems to long, made worse by the fact Nikon had theirs on shelfs the next week, and Apple releases their products within 2 weeks of announcements.

That's why Apple stopped having an official presence at these tech events. They want to set their own schedule.

[xps]

I've owned a 7D for over a year and just rented a D600 and I can tell you that the difference is definitely more pronounced than that... especially at lower ISO.

With all due respect...post properly executed test samples for all to review, or don't bother making the claim. Identical scenes with identical exposure by professional testing sites simply do not show the differences you claim.

I´m not sure, whether all testing magazines get "normal" Cameras you can buy on the market. It is sometimes said, that Companies send specially adjusted Cameras to them. Maybe it is true.
But what I can say: In my fotoclub, more than a dozen of people own a 7D or an 60D. And we were frustrated how big the quality gap of the IQ is. Mine 60D has low noise, lower then the 60D of my friends. But my 7D is more noisy and has  low contrasting quality. There other Camerasare much better than mine.

So, I think that Friedmud could be quite right, because his own camera is making not as good pictures as written on the online magazines.


[/quote]

That's a fair assessment. I really, really like Canon's lens library and have a significant investment there, so I'll see what the next year or two brings. (I also hate Nikon ergonomics, but I could adapt.) But I'm much more frustrated with their pricing than their products.
[/quote]
+1

[Marsu42]

@ Marsu42
Des is oba a bisserl sarkastisch! Scheane Griass vun da Wiesn. Hob mi heit mit a boa Preissn guat untahoitn.
 

But doesn't conversation on Oktoberfest mainly consist of "Prosit!", "Gsuffa" und "Guäääääää" :->?

I´m not sure, whether all testing magazines get "normal" Cameras you can buy on the market. It is sometimes said, that Companies send specially adjusted Cameras to them. Maybe it is true.

I'm sure they don't do anything that could ruin their public image when discovered, so "specially adjusted" will mean only that they make sure it's the best "normal" sample of a batch with absolutely no known flaws.

Mine 60D has low noise, lower then the 60D of my friends. But my 7D is more noisy and has  low contrasting quality. There other Camerasare much better than mine.

The 7d is known to have a large variance esp. with banding, obviously because of issues with the dual readout channels. But I never read the 60d noise was different across samples? On my 60d the iso100 noise is low, too, it's just that I'd have expected to do better if I've got a tripod and no end of exposure time.

5D3 or bust for me.

...And that's why Canon marketing achieved its goal: Release an entry level ff w/o cannibalizing the 5d3, every person with more than one Canon lens who can somehow cough up €3000 will bit the bullet and save for the (imho still overpriced) 5d3, esp. when the 5d2 is gone.

[xps]

@ Marsu42
Des is oba a bisserl sarkastisch! Scheane Griass vun da Wiesn. Hob mi heit mit a boa Preissn guat untahoitn.
 

But doesn't conversation on Oktoberfest mainly consist of "Prosit!", "Gsuffa" und "Guäääääää" :->?

I´m not sure, whether all testing magazines get "normal" Cameras you can buy on the market. It is sometimes said, that Companies send specially adjusted Cameras to them. Maybe it is true.

I'm sure they don't do anything that could ruin their public image when discovered, so "specially adjusted" will mean only that they make sure it's the best "normal" sample of a batch with absolutely no known flaws.

Mine 60D has low noise, lower then the 60D of my friends. But my 7D is more noisy and has  low contrasting quality. There other Camerasare much better than mine.

The 7d is known to have a large variance esp. with banding, obviously because of issues with the dual readout channels. But I never read the 60d noise was different across samples? On my 60d the iso100 noise is low, too, it's just that I'd have expected to do better if I've got a tripod and no end of exposure time.

5D3 or bust for me.

...And that's why Canon marketing achieved its goal: Release an entry level ff w/o cannibalizing the 5d3, every person with more than one Canon lens who can somehow cough up €3000 will bit the bullet and save for the (imho still overpriced) 5d3, esp. when the 5d2 is gone.

Sometimes you meet somebody thats alcohol level is below 3%o. So you can talk to this person....

For my person, I can say that in our fotoclub some owners of an 60D have problems with the noise. @100 iso it is not really present, starting to be visible >400 Iso. This is what we noticed.

I´m even not sure, wheter the selection of Cameras that are tested, happens or not. But this problem is present everywhere. Just scour the www. You can find a lot of products where test have been excellent, but useres claim problems....

[Marsu42]

Sometimes you meet somebody thats alcohol level is below 3%o. So you can talk to this person....

Ok, I believe you, I really don't want to bash it. The only time I've been there is when I've been a kid - and of course the media mostly report the spectacular things like drunken persons being dragged away by the police (I recon they've got foreign national policemen there to be able to cope with the tourists :-)).

For my person, I can say that in our fotoclub some owners of an 60D have problems with the noise. @100 iso it is not really present, starting to be visible >400 Iso. This is what we noticed.

High iso noise is just an inherent problem w/ aps-c sensors, no way around this in comparison to ff. The current 18mp sensor imho is ok @iso400, just still usable @iso800 ... but then it's emergency only, you cannot raise shadows and/or have to reduce the mp size in post to cover the noise (or blur generated by nr). But if you look closely, @iso100 there's no iso read noise, but the plain color areas are uneven and just gives the image a "noisy" expression, too.

[xps]

Sometimes you meet somebody thats alcohol level is below 3%o. So you can talk to this person....

Ok, I believe you, I really don't want to bash it. The only time I've been there is when I've been a kid - and of course the media mostly report the spectacular things like drunken persons being dragged away by the police (I recon they've got foreign national policemen there to be able to cope with the tourists :-)).

For my person, I can say that in our fotoclub some owners of an 60D have problems with the noise. @100 iso it is not really present, starting to be visible >400 Iso. This is what we noticed.

High iso noise is just an inherent problem w/ aps-c sensors, no way around this in comparison to ff. The current 18mp sensor imho is ok @iso400, just still usable @iso800 ... but then it's emergency only, you cannot raise shadows and/or have to reduce the mp size in post to cover the noise (or blur generated by nr). But if you look closely, @iso100 there's no iso read noise, but the plain color areas are uneven and just gives the image a "noisy" expression, too.

My 60D is quite ok, some othery would shredder it, if they would have enough money to buy another Camera. But my 7D is catastrophic to similar cameras other persons own. 3 times @ Canon support. Just a little bit an better  IQ.  It was a scorn, when they wrote that I bought a "Montagsgerät" and that they are sorry about that....
I learned, that in future I have to be more careful in selecting the Camera body.


Information: http://www.dpreview.com/previews/nikon-d600/8 - Comparison about noise between different cameras. Interesting

[RC]

5D3 or bust for me.

...And that's why Canon marketing achieved its goal: Release an entry level ff w/o cannibalizing the 5d3, every person with more than one Canon lens who can somehow cough up €3000 will bit the bullet and save for the (imho still overpriced) 5d3, esp. when the 5d2 is gone.

Well in my case it hasn't paid off for Canon, if anything just the opposite.  When I stated "5D3 or bust", I really meant it will never be a 6D.  As far as the 5D3 goes, I've got more than enough money in my photography fund but I haven't given Canon a penny since I ordered the ST-E3-RT several months ago.   Furthermore I'm holding off on a couple of lens purchases since FF plays into my choice.

So, when will I crack and how much will I spend for a 5D3?  Well it won't be this year and it won't be $3500.  Maybe never, maybe there is a third option and I'll wait for the next generation of bodies.

So for now I'll just enjoy what I have, keep my money, and go out and take photos.

[friedmud]

So for now I'll just enjoy what I have, keep my money, and go out and take photos.

That's what I've been trying to do for a while myself... and that is definitely the right way to be.

Recently I had a few photos with a somewhat dark sky where it literally looks like it is raining because of the vertical noise bands in the more solid areas of the sky.

I've been trying to just "push on" with my 7D... but the continued poor IQ out of my camera and the prices on everything Canon releases going up... and then the announcement of the 6D (which doesn't fit what I'm looking for) all adds up to me selling my gear and moving to Nikon.

I hope that people who stick with Canon end up getting what they want eventually... I would love to wait but I can't deal with what's coming out of my camera right now...

[jrista]

So for now I'll just enjoy what I have, keep my money, and go out and take photos.

That's what I've been trying to do for a while myself... and that is definitely the right way to be.

Recently I had a few photos with a somewhat dark sky where it literally looks like it is raining because of the vertical noise bands in the more solid areas of the sky.

I've been trying to just "push on" with my 7D... but the continued poor IQ out of my camera and the prices on everything Canon releases going up... and then the announcement of the 6D (which doesn't fit what I'm looking for) all adds up to me selling my gear and moving to Nikon.

I hope that people who stick with Canon end up getting what they want eventually... I would love to wait but I can't deal with what's coming out of my camera right now...

You don't necessarily need to jump ship, though, either. If you did pick up a 6D, or a 5D III for that matter, the noise "problem" you have would instantly disappear. You wouldn't have quite the shadow lifting ability that a D800 offers, but you still could have quite a bit of shadow lifting (especially if you put Canon's extensive highlight headroom to work in your landscapes). Plus, people always seem to forget that the D800 simply has a lower noise floor, around 3.1e- rather than the 8e- of the 7D. That's not a huge difference, especially considering that maximum saturation is tens of thousands of electrons. You can easily create a bias offset frame to remove FPN/HVBN, and a little bit of standard NR in Lightroom will GREATLY normalize the playing field. The D800's advantage is more of a "noisereductionLESS shadow pushing story"...but much of the same gains can be managed with a 7D as well...it just can't be "noisreductionless".

[Aglet]

..  You can easily create a bias offset frame to remove FPN/HVBN, ..

What is your preferred method for performing this bias offset and what software do you use to perform it?

If it's not too onerous, I can readily perform this on more than a few landscape shots I took with my 7D before I realized it was not going to hold up to any push in post.

I'd like to salvage a few otherwise sweet shots I took with my 7D where banding renders the image unusable for large print.

[dtaylor]

I´m not sure, whether all testing magazines get "normal" Cameras you can buy on the market. It is sometimes said, that Companies send specially adjusted Cameras to them. Maybe it is true.

If a "special adjustment" improves performance, why wouldn't they just make that adjustment to the entire production line???

But what I can say: In my fotoclub, more than a dozen of people own a 7D or an 60D. And we were frustrated how big the quality gap of the IQ is. Mine 60D has low noise, lower then the 60D of my friends. But my 7D is more noisy and has  low contrasting quality. There other Camerasare much better than mine.

Proof? And by proof I mean properly controlled and executed tests. You pixel peepers don't realize that a 1/3 stop variation in exposure, or a seemingly innocent change in post processing, can produce quite large differences in noise at 100%.

So, I think that Friedmud could be quite right, because his own camera is making not as good pictures as written on the online magazines.

He posted an example of a "bad" ISO 100 image in another thread and got pounced on. There is nothing wrong with the image at all, no noise to see what so ever. He was upset because the blue sky is not an artificially smooth sheet of plastic. (And to think, some people ADD noise/grain because they think their digital images are too smooth and plasticky!)

You just can't please some people...

[jrista]

..  You can easily create a bias offset frame to remove FPN/HVBN, ..

What is your preferred method for performing this bias offset and what software do you use to perform it?

If it's not too onerous, I can readily perform this on more than a few landscape shots I took with my 7D before I realized it was not going to hold up to any push in post.

I'd like to salvage a few otherwise sweet shots I took with my 7D where banding renders the image unusable for large print.

There are a few ways you could do it. The simplest would be to take a bunch of dark frames of the same exposure time as the image you wish to remove that kind of noise from. Blend those frames together in something like Photoshop to create a single pattern noise frame. You want to stack them in some kind of additive way to enhance the effect of the noise.

To remove that noise from a photo, you can do so in Photoshop. Just blend the noise frame with a "difference" setting, then adjust the opacity to tune the degree of noise removal. Keep in mind that the way pattern noise exhibits is dependent to a certain degree on exposure time, so you'll need to create a dark noise frame for a variety of exposure lengths for this trick to really work. You don't necessarily need a noise frame for EVERY shutter speed, but if you frequently use 1/15th, or 2 seconds, etc. then you'll want to make a noise frame for each of those exposure times.

Its not perfect, some pattern noise (FPN and HVBN) will remain, but you can eliminate a lot of it that way.

You can also use one of the more advanced noise removal tools on the market. They keep getting better, and some are pretty good at removing pattern (including banding) noise.

[tnargs]

....Recently I had a few photos with a somewhat dark sky where it literally looks like it is raining because of the vertical noise bands in the more solid areas of the sky.

Send your unprocessed cr2 files and your camera to Canon and get it fixed. I have the same body and I have never had a dark sky 'literally look like it is raining'. You say it is 'recent' and 'a few photos', so get it looked at.

I've been trying to just "push on" with my 7D... but the continued poor IQ out of my camera and the prices on everything Canon releases going up... and then the announcement of the 6D (which doesn't fit what I'm looking for) all adds up to me selling my gear and moving to Nikon.

You mean Sony type N. Given your emphasis on sensor performance, that's the new name for Nikon. (Wouldn't it be neat if Sony took over Nikon and produced two camera ranges, the alpha and the nu?)

I hope that people who stick with Canon end up getting what they want eventually... I would love to wait but I can't deal with what's coming out of my camera right now...

Most Canon users are getting what they want NOW, thank you. Some Canon, Leica, Sigma, Pentax, Olympus, Sony and Sony type N users are not getting what they want; it's a generic disease.

P.S. if your objection to a 5D III is price, jumping to Nikon makes no sense given their pricier and optically inferior lens range. You will lose out in dollars (and in imaging results (sensor + lens) if you are a chronic pixel peeper, although I maintain excellent and satisfying photos are available from any of the major brands).