decisions decisions!

[Jarveye]

i have had a similar question before but things have changed so here goes:

My scenario is as follows: broken 40d i cant use, using my old 350d for the moment with plans to get a new camera, but finding the 350d extremely frustrating in terms of quality etc... bascially losing my passion knowing my images are smaller and lower quality than the ones i was taking on my other body, and therefor i find myself taking much less photos.

the 40d i wasnt 100% satisfied with either, mainly in terms of noise levels as i do alot of low light photoghraphy..

im currently using a standard 70-300mm canon telephoto and my two sigmas, f2.8 24-70mm and f2.8 120-300mm lenses.

i would love a 5d mkII i suppose... but would love a mkIII even better depending on release and spec... and i dont want to be annoyed if i buy a mkII and the mkIII is released with better specs and my mkII's value is less, but i also understand there could be upto a years wait for the mkIII...

im not financially ready to buy a new body yet anyway, but i could perhaps at a push, muster the money up sooner if i decided to got for a current model - as i cenrtainly dont think i can wait much more than a couple of months for a new camera.

my other option is to perhaps go for a 7d or 60d in the meantime as it would be a great second camera anyhow, would mean i could wait for the mkIII comfortably and i think i will be in a much better financial situation to buy the mkIII in a years time anyhow.

I'm also excited about being able to use my slr for video also, so there are advantages to both a FF and crop sensor for video also...

but are the noise levels in teh 7d or 60d any better for low light than my 40d was? if not then thats another reason why i should perhaps go for a 5dmkII and just be happy with it, afterall its a great camera regardless of the MkIII...

 

[unfocused]

That's easy. Since only you know what conditions you are shooting under and what your standards are, rent one or both bodies for a few days and try them out.

If you are in Canada, CR Guy knows of a good rental place.

If in the U.S., I use LensRentals.com and find their service great.

On this forum, you'll only get the opinions of others based on their personal preferences, which may not be yours. For example, I love my 7D and would recommend it to anyone. But that's just me.

 

[Jarveye]

Ok fair point, but not helpfull

I live in the shetland isles in the northmost part of scotland, i dotn think renting is an option for me really...
unfortunatley this also means the loyalty program isnt available for me to trade in my 40d, 350d and G9 which are pretty much usless to me we have no such facility in the UK, and they wont accept it in america from the Uk either..

But, as i said - in terms of the 40d i was satisfied with most things bar its ISO performance in low light, i found even at 800/1600 noise was a problem shooting low light, night time exposures, indoors without flash and concerts etc. i do shoot a wide variety of things, but night time, and concerts are two of my favourite subjects, as is shooting with natural light in general which often requires good iso performance.

so i suppose one question i could really do with help with if not the others is, how does the 60D and 7D compair with the 40D in terms of this?

 

[unfocused]

Okay, that complicates things a bit.

I'm probably the worst person to answer the question, as I don't shoot a lot at higher ISOs. (As an old Tri-X shooter, I just tend to stick it on ISO 400 and leave it). The few times when I've needed to push to a higher ISO I've not had a problem, but I may be more tolerant of noise than others. (Again, it's the film thing -- push Tri-X to 1600 and you just expect to get grain the size of a boulder)

Sorry I can't be of more help. I do love the 7D but, maybe someone with more experience in low-light can be more enlightening.

I was tempted to offer to fly over with the 7D and let you use it for few days for the price of plane ticket, but I guess that wouldn't be particularly helpful either.

 

[Jarveye]

hah well for the price of a return plane ticket just to the mainland UK i would be half way there to buy a 60d.. the downside to island life!

 

[kubelik]

as a 30D user that racked his brain in terms of deciding whether to upgrade to a 50D, 7D, or a 5D Mark II, I can sympathise with the difficulty of the decision you're facing.

as unfocused points out, it's a very personal decision, dictated by what you shoot. my choice would be (and was actually) the 5D Mark II, and I'll outline why:

1. for what I shoot, the cleanliness of the 5DII's files were more important to me than fast autofocus and high FPS rate. I do mainly landscape, some mixed wildlife, few portraits, and very little sports action. there's still a visible difference in shadow noise between the 7D and 5DII and just noise overall once you get to ISO 1600 and higher. higher image quality all the time for me beats getting more action keepers in certain situations.

2. the lenses. canon's telephotos work equally great on both cameras; yes you get some more reach with the 7D but, again, I don't shoot wildlife that much. for landscapes and architectural photography, it's much more important to me to be able to use the 16-35 and 17-40 over the 10-20. there's a definite difference in build quality and image quality, not to mention fixed max aperture. also, having standard zooms that start at 24mm rather than 28mm equivalent is huge to me; it means not having to swap my lens off to get a shot in the 24-28mm range ... which is probably where 30% of my landscape shots end up being in.

3. in terms of resale value, let's look at a few scenarios. I know you're in the shetlands so the prices will be a bit different, but in general the ratios should hold. the 5D Mark II currently sells for $2500, upon release of a 5DIII the price should drop to $2000 or so, a $500 loss if you resell it. the 7D currently sells for $1550, which it probably will still be selling at when you resell it, a negligible loss. the 60D will probably begin retailing for about $1000, and you will probably only be able to sell it for $750 or so after a year's time, a $250 loss. your best bets are the 5DII and 7D; personally, I'm willing to lose $500 in resale in order to be able to shoot with a 5DII instead of a 7D for a whole year's time.

good luck with your decision, hopefully that helps

 

[jouster]

I had the same decision to make when my little girl destroyed my 400D. My decision was to go with the 7D, for these reasons:

Original 5D: no, because I like to shoot sports and I felt the 7D made more sense from that point of view.
5Dii: no, because I believe the iii will come out relatively soon, ie within a year.
5Diii: no, because the wait is too long if you have no camera, and because it might never exist (!)
Also, I have the usual issue with my existing lens collection, which would affect all three 5Ds, released or not.

In favor of the 5Ds is their amazing image quality, which is better than the 7D whatever anyone says. I pay no attention to those who ask what I could do with one that I could not with my 7D; better is better.

I am somewhat familiar with the 40D as my wife's boss has one, and my opinion is that the 7D is superior in just about every way.

I envy you the shots you can get in the Shetlands!

 

[epsiloneri]

But, as i said - in terms of the 40d i was satisfied with most things bar its ISO performance in low light, i found even at 800/1600 noise was a problem shooting low light, night time exposures, indoors without flash and concerts etc. i do shoot a wide variety of things, but night time, and concerts are two of my favourite subjects, as is shooting with natural light in general which often requires good iso performance.

If you shoot low light, then I definitely recommend a FF camera - not necessarily Canon. 5D2 (and 50D) has a problem with pattern noise that limits its dynamic range, which can be limiting in some cases. 7D is much better in that respect, and the hope is that Canon will have fixed it also for the 5D3 (I don't know about the 60D).

The main reason for going FF is the lens advantage. You will find an excellent EF 85/1.8 for little money, but there is no competing equivalent EF-S 50/1.1 for APS-C (nor will there probably be). Same thing goes for the whole focal range.

 

[epsiloneri]

I had the same decision to make when my little girl destroyed my 400D.

And, the build quality is definitely better on the 7D compared to the 400D

 

[Jarveye]

Ok thanks guys, still not an easy desicision, i suppose youve confirmed what i was in denial about though, im probably as well going for the 5dII if i want improved images (especially with noise) over the 40D...

theres just so many featured on the 60D and 7D which i wish it had, and im hoping to see on the 5DmkIII, but i cant really wait that long,

grrr.. canon get yer f'in fingers oot!!!

 

[Jarveye]

ok... would you guys think i was silly if i decided to go for a 7D.. based on:

1) i think 7D image quality, coupled with some other features makes it a better stills camera than the 60D
2) some of the video featues like the manual audio will possibly be matched to to the 60d with a firmware upgrade?
3) this camera will be a great camera all round to see me through to the release of the 5d mkIII which will hopefully meet all my needs and come at a time i should be able to afford that also ontop of the 7d.

 

[kubelik]

makes perfect sense. the 7D is by no means a bad camera even compared side-by-side with the 5DII, as you've noted, there are a lot of features the 7D brings to the table that the 5DII doesn't.

go for it and enjoy shooting

 

[bvukich]

ok... would you guys think i was silly if i decided to go for a 7D.. based on:

1) i think 7D image quality, coupled with some other features makes it a better stills camera than the 60D
2) some of the video featues like the manual audio will possibly be matched to to the 60d with a firmware upgrade?
3) this camera will be a great camera all round to see me through to the release of the 5d mkIII which will hopefully meet all my needs and come at a time i should be able to afford that also ontop of the 7d.

Not silly at all. I'm in the same boat, and have pretty much came to the same conclusion on all points.

And since the 7D is early in it's cycle, and the 5DII is late; after much flip-flopping, I think I'm going to get a 7D now through CLP (~$1100), which will satisfy my immediate needs. Then when the 5DIII is released (presumably mid-late 2011), I'll get that, and use the 7D for a second/backup body.

 

[neuroanatomist]

ok... would you guys think i was silly if i decided to go for a 7D.. based on:

1) i think 7D image quality, coupled with some other features makes it a better stills camera than the 60D
2) some of the video featues like the manual audio will possibly be matched to to the 60d with a firmware upgrade?
3) this camera will be a great camera all round to see me through to the release of the 5d mkIII which will hopefully meet all my needs and come at a time i should be able to afford that also ontop of the 7d.

Makes sense to me. I love my new 5DII, but I'm not getting rid of my 7D - it's a great camera!

 

[unexposure]

you could also consider buying a 550d which sells for about 400£ less than 7d in the UK. When it comes down to image quality and iso-noise, they're pretty much the same compared down to 40d. the handling on the other side should be very similar to your 350d.

this would also have one main advantage: you don't get used to the loads of af-points and impressive frame-bursts of 7d, when finally upgrading to fullframe via 5d mkIII which surely will still have 9af points (just joking) and some pretty "slow" fps. ;-)

 

[Jarveye]

can someone tell me if there is a quality difference in the images between the 60d and 7d? taking away the fps, and the fact the 7d has a dual processor, does this effect the image quality?!?

i read in a review the 7d performs better in low light, but they both have the same MP count and ISO capability, so im not convinced, if i knew for sure the image quality was better id go for 7d, but if not i might consider the 60d

 

[neuroanatomist]

can someone tell me if there is a quality difference in the images between the 60d and 7d? taking away the fps, and the fact the 7d has a dual processor, does this effect the image quality?!?

i read in a review the 7d performs better in low light, but they both have the same MP count and ISO capability, so im not convinced, if i knew for sure the image quality was better id go for 7d, but if not i might consider the 60d

Image quality is somewhat subjective. For example - the 7D's AF system is superior to the 60D, so that may translate to more in-focus shots.

If you believe the DxOMark data, the three bodies that share the same sensor (7D, 60D, T2i) have the same overall sensor score, but the 7D has better low-light performance. But, 'better' is relative - the difference of 70 ISO units means less than 1/10 of a stop, so that's likely not something you'd ever actually notice in practice.

 

[Edwin Herdman]

i read in a review

Could you link us?

I haven't had time to keep pace with the 60D reviews that must be trickling out, and just keeping my eyes glued to the DPR homepage (obviously they take a long while for some of their reviews), but I still wonder how conclusive that review would be, in light of what neuro says here. Osiris reported a while back that AF for stable situations - but not sports in low light - seemed at least as good as even the 7D.

Taking it a bit further, then, you'll want to consider how important autofocus reliability is to your style of photography, and if it's important then you want to know which kind of AF you use most. There are sizable differences between relatively stable situations, and sports (or other fast moving scenes).

Edit: To answer your original question - to boil down my post, the question is: "How much camera do I need?" Answer that and pay as little as you can to get to the target, just as we thrifty folks of Scot ancestry are wont to do

If you are doing landscapes, buildings, people standing around etc. I think that you can buy just about the cheapest one on sale and be happy with it, honestly. I complain all the time about the T1i's noise but that's because I like to shoot at dusk and even at night, and I don't like the high noise fixes. The T2i / 60D / etc. seem better in the aspect of "hot pixels" but that's about it - overall image quality doesn't improve nearly as much as the price, certainly not enough to the point where I would feel justified spending the extra cash on image quality unless I was going to a bigger sensor.

 

[neuroanatomist]

The T2i / 60D / etc. seem better in the aspect of "hot pixels" but that's about it - overall image quality doesn't improve nearly as much as the price, certainly not enough to the point where I would feel justified spending the extra cash on image quality unless I was going to a bigger sensor.

I think you've nailed it. I started in dSLR-land with the T1i, and fairly quickly (5 months) upgraded to the 7D. I was happy with the IQ from the T1i as it relates to the sensor - I really don't notice much practical difference between shots with the two cameras using the same lenses. By 'practical' I mean prints up to 16x20 - sure, if you pixel-peep you can find differences. I upgraded for features, not sensor - AF for shooting birds in flight, mostly, although sometimes the T1i also had issues with the AF keeping up with a running toddler. Another reason was that I thought that the fast lenses with thin DoF would benefit from AF Microadjustment - and they do.

As a general rule, your best bang-for-the-buck in terms of improving your image quality from a technical standpoint is to invest in lenses. The T2i/60D/7D all share the same sensor, but for the same cost the T2i + 17-55mm f/2.8 will deliver substantially better image quality than the 7D + 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6. If your subject demands good AF performance, you might need a better body - but even in that case, you need a good lens, too (one with ring USM so the lens AF speed isn't the limiting factor).