Amateurphotographer.co.uk - 7D ii review of 21st November 2014, DR surprise!

[Yiannis A - Greece]

Dear friends,
Just read this review on http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/reviews/dslrs/canon-eos-7d-mark-ii-review , and to my surprise, the measured dynamic range value of 7D Mk2 at 100 ISO is...12.7!!! Opening up other reviews on the site, looking only at DR values, i found out that, at 100 ISO:

Nikon D750 = 12.71
Sony A77 MK2 = 11.94
Nikon D810 = 12.79
Nikon D4S = 12.66
Nikon DF = 12.66 (at 200 ISO) and finally
Nikon d3300 = 12.98.

Taking into consideration that, the specific review is not all bells and whistles about the 7D Mk2 but seems to point out the "goods" and the "bads" of the camera in quite a seemingly unbiased way, i feel no hesitation to say that the so called "guru-of-metrics" DXOMark is, some kind of, officially humiliated! Myself, shooting (as an owner) with the 7D Mk2 at present time and having tested (thoroughly) the D810, A77 Mk2 and D3300, i was sure that 7D Mk2 was very underrated by DXOMark and some other (strikingly) biased towards SO-NIKON sites, in terms of IQ and dynamic range; let alone the incredible high ISO performance and the AF system.

That's, for now, what i'd like to share with you; my thought, my opinion. Be lucky, be healthy, keep on living strong the joy of life.

Yours faithfully
Yiannis.

 

[Don Haines]

Dear friends,
Just read this review on http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/reviews/dslrs/canon-eos-7d-mark-ii-review , and to my surprise, the measured dynamic range value of 7D Mk2 at 100 ISO is...12.7!!! Opening up other reviews on the site, looking only at DR values, i found out that, at 100 ISO:

Nikon D750 = 12.71
Sony A77 MK2 = 11.94
Nikon D810 = 12.79
Nikon D4S = 12.66
Nikon DF = 12.66 (at 200 ISO) and finally
Nikon d3300 = 12.98.

Taking into consideration that, the specific review is not all bells and whistles about the 7D Mk2 but seems to point out the "goods" and the "bads" of the camera in quite a seemingly unbiased way, i feel no hesitation to say that the so called "guru-of-metrics" DXOMark is, some kind of, officially humiliated! Myself, shooting (as an owner) with the 7D Mk2 at present time and having tested (thoroughly) the D810, A77 Mk2 and D3300, i was sure that 7D Mk2 was very underrated by DXOMark and some other (strikingly) biased towards SO-NIKON sites, in terms of IQ and dynamic range; let alone the incredible high ISO performance and the AF system.

That's, for now, what i'd like to share with you; my thought, my opinion. Be lucky, be healthy, keep on living strong the joy of life.

Yours faithfully
Yiannis.

Very interesting....

Let's hear from the DRones.... What do you have to say now?

 

[raptor3x]

Very interesting....

Let's hear from the DRones.... What do you have to say now?

The first question you have to ask is how are they defining dynamic range? This seems to be the step wedge type of dynamic range test rather than a statistics based definition.

 

[Policar]

They're using JPEGs it looks like, and even admit that real-world testing is inferior to the 12.7 stops they found on the test wedge...

And yet they're more credible than a company measuring raw sensor data? Why? Oh right, you want to agree with them.

Who cares? If you need more DR get a Nikon, few people are regularly shooting scenes with 14+ EV.... it's hard to make that look any good on the print. Remember zone system is designed only for 10 stops and TBH Ansel Adam's work is pretty heavily baked by any standard! Those going much further go into some deep tone mapping nonsense more often than not.

I wouldn't trust this review if DR is the most important factor to you. If it is the most important factor, I'd ask why.

 

[jblake]

Dear friends,
Just read this review on http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/reviews/dslrs/canon-eos-7d-mark-ii-review , and to my surprise, the measured dynamic range value of 7D Mk2 at 100 ISO is...12.7!!! Opening up other reviews on the site, looking only at DR values, i found out that, at 100 ISO:

Nikon D750 = 12.71
Sony A77 MK2 = 11.94
Nikon D810 = 12.79
Nikon D4S = 12.66
Nikon DF = 12.66 (at 200 ISO) and finally
Nikon d3300 = 12.98.

Taking into consideration that, the specific review is not all bells and whistles about the 7D Mk2 but seems to point out the "goods" and the "bads" of the camera in quite a seemingly unbiased way, i feel no hesitation to say that the so called "guru-of-metrics" DXOMark is, some kind of, officially humiliated! Myself, shooting (as an owner) with the 7D Mk2 at present time and having tested (thoroughly) the D810, A77 Mk2 and D3300, i was sure that 7D Mk2 was very underrated by DXOMark and some other (strikingly) biased towards SO-NIKON sites, in terms of IQ and dynamic range; let alone the incredible high ISO performance and the AF system.

That's, for now, what i'd like to share with you; my thought, my opinion. Be lucky, be healthy, keep on living strong the joy of life.

Yours faithfully
Yiannis.

If you had read the sentence following the sentence that got you all excited, you would have realized that in real world photos, the 7D2's DR is not anywhere near Nikon/Sony crop, let alone FF:

"Base ISO DR is a pretty impressive 12.7EV, according to our Applied Imaging tests. But in real-world use the sensor doesn’t perform quite as well as these numbers suggest, giving more noise in the shadows at low ISOs than its rivals."

DXO; 7D2 11.8 Evs, D7100 13.7 Evs, D750 14.5 Evs. These DR value's are what the author of that article is referring to in the second sentence.

Nothing to get excited about here, just move on.

 

[Lawliet]

and to my surprise, the measured dynamic range value of 7D Mk2 at 100 ISO is...12.7!!! Opening up other reviews on the site, looking only at DR values, i found out that, at 100 ISO:

The grouping around 12.7 +- a bit of randomness is a flashing neon sign pointing towards a systematic error.

 

[2n10]

Dear friends,
Just read this review on http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/reviews/dslrs/canon-eos-7d-mark-ii-review , and to my surprise, the measured dynamic range value of 7D Mk2 at 100 ISO is...12.7!!! Opening up other reviews on the site, looking only at DR values, i found out that, at 100 ISO:

Nikon D750 = 12.71
Sony A77 MK2 = 11.94
Nikon D810 = 12.79
Nikon D4S = 12.66
Nikon DF = 12.66 (at 200 ISO) and finally
Nikon d3300 = 12.98.

Taking into consideration that, the specific review is not all bells and whistles about the 7D Mk2 but seems to point out the "goods" and the "bads" of the camera in quite a seemingly unbiased way, i feel no hesitation to say that the so called "guru-of-metrics" DXOMark is, some kind of, officially humiliated! Myself, shooting (as an owner) with the 7D Mk2 at present time and having tested (thoroughly) the D810, A77 Mk2 and D3300, i was sure that 7D Mk2 was very underrated by DXOMark and some other (strikingly) biased towards SO-NIKON sites, in terms of IQ and dynamic range; let alone the incredible high ISO performance and the AF system.

That's, for now, what i'd like to share with you; my thought, my opinion. Be lucky, be healthy, keep on living strong the joy of life.

Yours faithfully
Yiannis.

If you had read the sentence following the sentence that got you all excited, you would have realized that in real world photos, the 7D2's DR is not anywhere near Nikon/Sony crop, let alone FF:

"Base ISO DR is a pretty impressive 12.7EV, according to our Applied Imaging tests. But in real-world use the sensor doesn’t perform quite as well as these numbers suggest, giving more noise in the shadows at low ISOs than its rivals."

DXO; 7D2 11.8 Evs, D7100 13.7 Evs, D750 14.5 Evs. These DR value's are what the author of that article is referring to in the second sentence.

Nothing to get excited about here, just move on.

You do realize that there is no real world whatsoever in the DxoMark scores. Just a lab bench.

 

[Policar]

They're using JPEGs it looks like, and even admit that real-world testing is inferior to the 12.7 stops they found on the test wedge...

And yet they're more credible than a company measuring raw sensor data? Why? Oh right, you want to agree with them.

Who cares? If you need more DR get a Nikon, few people are regularly shooting scenes with 14+ EV.... it's hard to make that look any good on the print. Remember zone system is designed only for 10 stops and TBH Ansel Adam's work is pretty heavily baked by any standard! Those going much further go into some deep tone mapping nonsense more often than not.

I wouldn't trust this review if DR is the most important factor to you. If it is the most important factor, I'd ask why.

Not to quibble but it's not correct to equate the zones in the zone system to stops. The Zones represent tonal values and the change in the values between zones varies and are not logarithmic steps the way stops are. A scene with 6 stops of DR or a scene with 20 both map to the same ten zones. The zone system is about how you map the DR in the scene to the ten zones using expansion and contraction of the tonal scale.

It is all a bit "overbaked" by modern standards but they were doing the best they could with the crude tools they had available. The concept still has value however.

BTW in the Sierra Nevada 20 stops of DR in a scene is not uncommon. Hence "the Range of Light". Adams was compressing that to prehistoric wet plates and printing papers. It was an impressive technical achievement regardless of how you feel about his pictures artistic merit. Personally I'm not always a fan.

Not usually a nit-picker but its an important distinction. The histograms we all use today are a modern evolution of Adam's Zone System. When you move the sliders in lightroom to fill out the histogram, that is the zone method's modern equivalent.

A stop correlates with a zone, all this talk of steps, stops, EV, and zones sounds like a mess but really they're pretty interchangeable. Ok... a zone is a stop of reflective rather than incident light. A stop through the spot meter.

I agree that Ansel Adams overbaked, but he overbaked well. His work is among the best HDR I've seen.

I figure if you're printing on paper that can render 4-5 stops of contrast at best you'll run into trouble once your camera reaches for more than 5-6 (velvia, for instance, got it well). But since B&W reduces information significantly you can get away with a 10 stop zone system with real artistry and it still reads on print...

Monitors show a lot more contrast. I can see the need, but I don't need more than 12 stops unless I expose wrong.

That said, this figure is taken from JPEGs with noise reduction. It's not accurate. It doesn't matter to me, but if it matters to you how much way extra DR you have buried in shadows, Nikon does offer more.

But Ektar offers more than Velvia and yuck lol. Thought Portra is quite nice.

 

[whothafunk]

to be honest, who the fcuk cares anymore. definitely not people, who shot sports, for which 7D2 is intended for.

i'm extremely happy with my 7D2 and i use it 80% for indoor sports, where crop doesn't shine due to high ISO - over 4000 up to 10.000, but it's still good, but speed and AF are just sick.

 

[Marsu42]

Just read this review on http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/reviews/dslrs/canon-eos-7d-mark-ii-review , and to my surprise, the measured dynamic range value of 7D Mk2 at 100 ISO is...12.7!!! Opening up other reviews on the site, looking only at DR values, i found out that, at 100 ISO

I very much doubt these measurements, for the simple reason that crop and ff are on par even with the same resolution. Unless Canon has revolutionized their sensor tech - and they'd praised that leap more than the 7d2 sensor - common sense has it that larger pixel should have an advantage here.

I'd still trust the dxo scores, and they say the 7d2 has very good dr, but doesn't reach ff: http://sensorgen.info/CanonEOS-7D-Mark-II.html

to be honest, who the fcuk cares anymore. definitely not people, who shot sports, for which 7D2 is intended for.

... unless it's daylight sports in high contrast. I don't want to initiate another flame war, just sayin' ...

 

[Sporgon]

Just read this review on http://www.amateurphotographer.co.uk/reviews/dslrs/canon-eos-7d-mark-ii-review , and to my surprise, the measured dynamic range value of 7D Mk2 at 100 ISO is...12.7!!! Opening up other reviews on the site, looking only at DR values, i found out that, at 100 ISO

I very much doubt these measurements, for the simple reason that crop and ff are on par even with the same resolution. Unless Canon has revolutionized their sensor tech - and they'd praised that leap more than the 7d2 sensor - common sense has it that larger pixel should have an advantage here.

I'd still trust the dxo scores, and they say the 7d2 has very good dr, but doesn't reach ff: http://sensorgen.info/CanonEOS-7D-Mark-II.html

to be honest, who the fcuk cares anymore. definitely not people, who shot sports, for which 7D2 is intended for.

... unless it's daylight sports in high contrast. I don't want to initiate another flame war, just sayin' ...

Shoot that scene on an Exmor and set the jpeg contrast too high and you'll get the same result. A 10D would cope with that.

 

[Marsu42]

Shoot that scene on an Exmor and set the jpeg contrast too high and you'll get the same result. A 10D would cope with that.

You can screw up with all gear, that isn't a reason for or against anything. However, if you shoot this with a d750 and 13.9ev of dynamic range, my guess is that it's much easier (or possible at all) to keep the bright sand from clipping while preserving detail in the shadows - 3ev is a big, real world difference.

As for the 10d - you're correct, at iso 100 it has nearly the same dynamic range as a 5d2 or 70d (11ev) which tells us about how Canon sees the tradeoff resolution vs dr :->

Disclaimer: I totally love all my Canon gear and feel you can produce great pictures with it. Unless you shoot movement in harsh daylight and cannot bracket, that is.

 

[Policar]

Shoot that scene on an Exmor and set the jpeg contrast too high and you'll get the same result. A 10D would cope with that.

You can screw up with all gear, that isn't a reason for or against anything. However, if you shoot this with a d750 and 13.9ev of dynamic range, my guess is that it's much easier (or possible at all) to keep the bright sand from clipping while preserving detail in the shadows - 3ev is a big, real world difference.

As for the 10d - you're correct, at iso 100 it has nearly the same dynamic range as a 5d2 or 70d (11ev) which tells us about how Canon sees the tradeoff resolution vs dr :->

Disclaimer: I totally love all my Canon gear and feel you can produce great pictures with it. Unless you shoot movement in harsh daylight and cannot bracket, that is.

That isn't a terribly challenging scene to expose. The contrast ratio of noon day sun is about 4-5 stops and the contrast ratio between the sand and darkest parts of the scene are 4-5 stops, too. So we're looking at 10 stops of contrast at most, likely less, with the exception of specular highlights kicking off bits of sand. I agree that a 10D could handle it.

I guess if you dramatically underexposed that shot it would look better on a Nikon sensor, but you'd have to be really incompetent.

Introduce a lot of backlit clouds or street lights at night or even go deep in a forest with just a few rays of light or peer into a cave or balance between the inside of a house and the outside without much light.... and you're looking at valid 14+ EV scenes no problem. Of course they would look better lit than tone mapped.

But that's why digital cinema cameras have gobs of DR (sorry, the Alexa's 14 stops eat the D800's 14s for a snack and even the C300 has more highlight detail than the 5D at least it's distributed to favor it) is because you're dealing with tricky situations without the potential to use strobes and without the time to wait on light and you're viewing on monitors/tvs/retroreflective movie screens, which have a lot more contrast than print.

But now that we see photos on our computer screens, I can see the need for a little more DR. Dealing with 10 stops of contrast on a very good screen vs 4-5 on the best prints available.

 

[Loswr]

Introduce a lot of backlit clouds or street lights at night or even go deep in a forest with just a few rays of light or peer into a cave or balance between the inside of a house and the outside without much light.... and you're looking at valid 14+ EV scenes no problem.

In other words, you'd still be clipping or blocking with an Exmor sensor. It'a a point that I've made before...~13.x stops of DR is better than ~11.x stops of DR, but the number of scenes that have more than ~11.x but less than ~13.x stops is far exceeded by the number of scenes with <11 or >14 stops. In jrista's example with the a7R home interior shots, the windows still had blown highlights despite the greater DR of the Exmor sensor.

 

[Marsu42]

That isn't a terribly challenging scene to expose. The contrast ratio of noon day sun is about 4-5 stops and the contrast ratio between the sand and darkest parts of the scene are 4-5 stops, too. So we're looking at 10 stops of contrast at most

Well, I wasn't there, so I cannot tell. But capturing a 10ev dr scene with a 10ev sensor is not optimal - you will be left with very little resolution in the shadows (probably banding with older Canon sensors) if you want to get detail there. If the shadows are plain drop shadows you don't care about and black-clip in post, it doesn't matter.

I guess if you dramatically underexposed that shot it would look better on a Nikon sensor, but you'd have to be really incompetent.

Personally, I find an exposure error of +-1 not dramatic, but I'm just simple me. If the light changes like with wildlife, it quickly happens w/o being incompetent, not everybody has the newst 7d2's or 1dx's advanced metering and the 6d is rather dodgy. In any case, having some space for highlight safety is a good idea to get more keepers.

But I agree with this beach volleyball scene the light is constant so it's possible to expose perfectly.

Introduce a lot of backlit clouds or street lights at night or even go deep in a forest with just a few rays of light [...]

+1, but personally no can do bracketing here because there's always a horse around

But now that we see photos on our computer screens, I can see the need for a little more DR. Dealing with 10 stops of contrast on a very good screen vs 4-5 on the best prints available.

I admit I don't understand this - out dr is independent of out sensor dr (capturing clean shadows with resolution and preventing clipped highlights)

In jrista's example with the a7R home interior shots, the windows still had blown highlights despite the greater DR of the Exmor sensor.

I agree with these types of scenes (esp. w/o movement) bracketing is the way to go. For me, the benefit of more dr is in natural scenes - using Magic Lantern's dual_iso and looking at the raw histogram, I can see how much dr the scene has and when the bare Canon sensor wouldn't do (backlit scenes, bright sky with shadows on the ground, sun near or in the frame).

 

[Policar]

A stop or two off is a HUGE error if you're metering right. If you're getting that kind of error from metering, Canon really does have a problem! When I shot 135, my F4 could expose properly for Velvia, which has +/- 1/3 stop exposure latitude, when set correctly, though I'd still spot meter (with an external meter) to check.

You can't tell, but if you've been spot metering scenes for years (which any of us shooting MF and LF I'm guessing have) you can easily guess... and that scene has around 8-9EV of meaningful dynamic range (even if you exposed wrong it's only the white sign, maybe the reflections off the sand, or the black shirt in shadow–nothing important to have tons of texture in–that would clip) and the 10D should have no trouble with it even if you expose a stop wrong one side or the other.

What I meant is that the contrast on a print is 4-5 stops of contrast at most, usually 4. For the best print. So you either have to tone map (cheesy) or shoot a flat image if your scene has a lot of contrast. Or wait on good (flat) light. That's why Velvia had 4-5 stops of DR and made for the best landscapes. It's funny everyone wants all this dynamic range for landscapes when ideally landscapes were something you'd approach trying to get as flat in-camera as possible because you knew the final print would only have so much contrast. Or the zone system accommodated 10 stops of DR, but Ansel Adams' B&W prints would look a bit cheesy tone mapped that far in color, let's be honest, and not many of us have surpassed his technique even digitally! But a computer screen has a 1000:1 contrast ratio nearly (9-10 stops of DR) so you can shoot higher contrast material and still have it "pop" like slides on a lightbox with less tone mapping.

 

[Policar]

Introduce a lot of backlit clouds or street lights at night or even go deep in a forest with just a few rays of light or peer into a cave or balance between the inside of a house and the outside without much light.... and you're looking at valid 14+ EV scenes no problem.

In other words, you'd still be clipping or blocking with an Exmor sensor. It'a a point that I've made before...~13.x stops of DR is better than ~11.x stops of DR, but the number of scenes that have more than ~11.x but less than ~13.x stops is far exceeded by the number of scenes with <11 or >14 stops. In jrista's example with the a7R home interior shots, the windows still had blown highlights despite the greater DR of the Exmor sensor.

Shooting with the C300 and Alexa side by side, you soon see just how many scenes fit into the 11-15 stops of DR range. But that's for video. I still disagree for stills, a little extra detail can't hurt. Clipping isn't so bad in a very high contrast scene, but clipping later rather than sooner is best.

Canon's sensors are still fine for what I need, I don't see all the fuss, but I'm aware that there are those to whom a little extra shadow detail matters and try to respect that.

 

[Marsu42]

You can't tell, but if you've been spot metering scenes for years (which any of us shooting MF and LF I'm guessing have) you can easily guess

In defense of my 6d's metering, I'm probably not using it as I'm supposed to because there's no mode that does what I want. I'm mostly at eval, but often don't have the time to use exposure lock. As eval takes the active af point into account - and that's the center at the 6d - it tends to screw up after recompose. It's just that my 60d didn't have that amount of variance like the 6d does, the metering seems to be tuned better on the long-running crop system.

With center-weighted metering it's better, but then you either have to track with the center or be really careful to use expo lock all the time. I wish there would be a "dumb" eval metering that simply matrix-averages the scene and prevents blown highlights :-\ ... esp. on the 6d it's usually no problem to raise shadows.