D7000 replacement in April...

[Ew]

Nikon rumors puts the d7000 replacement for April...
I'm betting that canon will play catchup as we've been seeing of late, and they will be forced to push out whatever pre-prod version of the 7d replacement by May.

What I'm really hoping for though is that Canon doesn't bite, and starts to lead with their own timeline...

 

[jrista]

Nikon rumors puts the d7000 replacement for April...
I'm betting that canon will play catchup as we've been seeing of late, and they will be forced to push out whatever pre-prod version of the 7d replacement by May.

What I'm really hoping for though is that Canon doesn't bite, and starts to lead with their own timeline...

I don't think Canon will actually release anything to the shelves until it is really ready. The "release" of the 1D X proves that. It was paper released the better part of a year ahead of when it actually hit the street, so I don't think there should be any fear that Canon won't do their customers justice for a product once it (and it's feature set) are announced.

 

[aznable]

Nikon rumors puts the d7000 replacement for April...
I'm betting that canon will play catchup as we've been seeing of late, and they will be forced to push out whatever pre-prod version of the 7d replacement by May.

What I'm really hoping for though is that Canon doesn't bite, and starts to lead with their own timeline...

7d isnt a competitor of d7000....d7000 will get a new sensor+electronics to maintain the fr

 

[CarlTN]

As far as the sensor is concerned, Canon have yet to "catch up" to the D7000, let alone its replacement. I doubt they will, because crop sensor performance hasn't been a priority for Canon for a long time, if ever. But their crop camera body performance overall, has been ok, other than the Rebel series and the 60D.

But frankly, I don't see a new Sony-designed crop sensor having 14 stops of dynamic range...and even if it did, it would fall off quickly above ISO 800 or so.

That's the real difference though, Nikon has to have someone else design and build their sensors. Canon does their own. I admire that. But the current Canon sensor was designed in what, 2007? 2008? The 7D came out in Fall 2009, so certainly the sensor was designed many months before that. It's very, very old technology now.

 

[mbpics]

As far as the sensor is concerned, Canon have yet to "catch up" to the D7000, let alone its replacement. I doubt they will, because crop sensor performance hasn't been a priority for Canon for a long time, if ever. But their crop camera body performance overall, has been ok, other than the Rebel series and the 60D.

But frankly, I don't see a new Sony-designed crop sensor having 14 stops of dynamic range...and even if it did, it would fall off quickly above ISO 800 or so.

That's the real difference though, Nikon has to have someone else design and build their sensors. Canon does their own. I admire that. But the current Canon sensor was designed in what, 2007? 2008? The 7D came out in Fall 2009, so certainly the sensor was designed many months before that. It's very, very old technology now.

http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Publications/DxOMark-Reviews/Nikon-D5200-New-sensor-and-new-leader/Measurement

The D5200 sensor has 13.9 stops of DR, and it is a NIKON-designed sensor, manufactured by Toshiba. I love this move for Nikon, as they're now seemingly in charge of their own sensor development and not tied down to any specific fab, as Canon is.

 

[jrista]

Nikon rumors puts the d7000 replacement for April...
I'm betting that canon will play catchup as we've been seeing of late, and they will be forced to push out whatever pre-prod version of the 7d replacement by May.

What I'm really hoping for though is that Canon doesn't bite, and starts to lead with their own timeline...

I don't think Canon will actually release anything to the shelves until it is really ready. The "release" of the 1D X proves that. It was paper released the better part of a year ahead of when it actually hit the street, so I don't think there should be any fear that Canon won't do their customers justice for a product once it (and it's feature set) are announced.

well let us hope so, I have lot of L lenses waiting for a camera with 14 stops DR, high resolution and no pattern noise, banding at lower levels and base iso. IF I could use for example my 70-200/2,8 IS MK2 on my d800 i would be very happy in this time of waiting for something new from Canon, but I can not. Next step from Sony will be stacked sensors with a large/huge fill factor because the electronics will be placed under the silicon surface in a own layer.

Just because you are such a DR buff, you should look into Topaz DeNoise 5. It is one of the first packages to include a usable debanding feature. It works pretty well, especially when run on the RAW file. I think you might be surprised at how much DR a Canon sensor already has when you eliminate the banding. It is not 100% perfect, but it gets you a lot of the way towards what an Exmor offers, without actually having to buy a new camera. I've been fairly pleased with it in the few cases, with my 7D, that I've had to deband. The noise floor drops considerably, which has the implicit consequence of improving DR.

 

[Aglet]

well let us hope so, I have lot of L lenses waiting for a camera with 14 stops DR, high resolution and no pattern noise, banding at lower levels and base iso. IF I could use for example my 70-200/2,8 IS MK2 on my d800 i would be very happy in this time of waiting for something new from Canon, but I can not. Next step from Sony will be stacked sensors with a large/huge fill factor because the electronics will be placed under the silicon surface in a own layer.

+1

and, FWIW, the new Nikon 70-200 f/4 VR can also create some hideously bad bokeh, just like the Canon.
Darn thing ruined a few shots for me this weekend with its mutiple-contoured bokeh of background structures. :-\
Of these 2, I'd still prefer the Canon if I could attach it to my D800, it's just sharper.

 

[jrista]

As far as the sensor is concerned, Canon have yet to "catch up" to the D7000, let alone its replacement. I doubt they will, because crop sensor performance hasn't been a priority for Canon for a long time, if ever. But their crop camera body performance overall, has been ok, other than the Rebel series and the 60D.

But frankly, I don't see a new Sony-designed crop sensor having 14 stops of dynamic range...and even if it did, it would fall off quickly above ISO 800 or so.

That's the real difference though, Nikon has to have someone else design and build their sensors. Canon does their own. I admire that. But the current Canon sensor was designed in what, 2007? 2008? The 7D came out in Fall 2009, so certainly the sensor was designed many months before that. It's very, very old technology now.

http://www.dxomark.com/index.php/Publications/DxOMark-Reviews/Nikon-D5200-New-sensor-and-new-leader/Measurement

The D5200 sensor has 13.9 stops of DR, and it is a NIKON-designed sensor, manufactured by Toshiba. I love this move for Nikon, as they're now seemingly in charge of their own sensor development and not tied down to any specific fab, as Canon is.

Keep in mind, people have been complaining about banding noise in the 5200 when shadows are lifted by around 2 stops. I have not seen any super serious example of it so far, but the D5200 sensor does not seem to really fare any better than Canon sensors (which can usually only withstand about 2 stops shadow lifting). The numerous mentions of banding in the 5200, and the mentions about how similar it is to Canon 5D II banding, make me wonder even more about the objectivity of DXO.

I also encourage anyone who disputes that DXO is truly neutral to download DXO Optics Pro and test it out on Canon raw files. Of all the available CR2 RAW editors, DXO Optics Pro seems to fare the worst, by far...especially in the noise and NR department. (Lightroom performs significantly better with CR2 files and NR, as does DPP, obviously.) The poor performance of DXO Optics Pro with CR2 files makes me wonder whether DXO really knows how to process them correctly, and whether that may somehow factor into the growing rift between anything Nikon and anything Canon in their tests.

 

[Aglet]

Keep in mind, people have been complaining about banding noise in the 5200 when shadows are lifted by around 2 stops. I have not seen any super serious example of it so far, but the D5200 sensor does not seem to really fare any better than Canon sensors (which can usually only withstand about 2 stops shadow lifting). The numerous mentions of banding in the 5200, and the mentions about how similar it is to Canon 5D II banding, make me wonder even more about the objectivity of DXO.

D5200 is showing shadow banding?!?

ARGHHH! damnit! That'll be seriously disappointing.
I haven't had a chance to research on it yet, was hoping it would be as smooth as the D5100 and D800.
The denser AF system would be handy for some action work.
That doesn't bode well then for higher end Nik DX bodies, not yet announced.

maybe I should buy a couple more tilted D5100s while they're still on the shelf at $400. FWIW, they're just as good up to a large enough print size.

Addendum:
One area on DxOmark where you might find evidence of low ISO shadow banding is if you look at the full review for a camera\measurements\Full SNR\log display.
E.G. On the 5D2, low ISOs you see the curve suddenly hook down at the dark end.
This may not be the entire reason or consistent enough to use as a banding guideline because they don't show this hook for the nasty-bandy 7D and show hooks on the 40D, which I have and does not show up any low ISO banding.

 

[jrista]

Keep in mind, people have been complaining about banding noise in the 5200 when shadows are lifted by around 2 stops. I have not seen any super serious example of it so far, but the D5200 sensor does not seem to really fare any better than Canon sensors (which can usually only withstand about 2 stops shadow lifting). The numerous mentions of banding in the 5200, and the mentions about how similar it is to Canon 5D II banding, make me wonder even more about the objectivity of DXO.

D5200 is showing shadow banding?!?

ARGHHH! damnit! That'll be seriously disappointing.
I haven't had a chance to research on it yet, was hoping it would be as smooth as the D5100 and D800.
The denser AF system would be handy for some action work.
That doesn't bode well then for higher end Nik DX bodies, not yet announced.

maybe I should buy a couple more tilted D5100s while they're still on the shelf at $400. FWIW, they're just as good up to a large enough print size.

Addendum:
One area on DxOmark where you might find evidence of low ISO shadow banding is if you look at the full review for a camera\measurements\Full SNR\log display.
E.G. On the 5D2, low ISOs you see the curve suddenly hook down at the dark end.
This may not be the entire reason or consistent enough to use as a banding guideline because they don't show this hook for the nasty-bandy 7D and show hooks on the 40D, which I have and does not show up any low ISO banding.

Well, the Nikon sensor design does not use CP-ADC with digital CDS like Exmor does. They use what could be called a form of "bucket ADC", which is what a lot of Canon's patents around parallel readout seem to involve. The Nikon design reads out columns in buckets through ADC's dedicated to those sets of columns. I doubt they could actually use a full column-parallel ADC like Exmor, as that would infringe on Sony's patent. They may have a deal with Sony to use Exmor in Nikon cameras, but I do not believe that deal extends to Nikon using Sony patents in their own sensor designs manufactured by other fabs.

Canon is probably in the same boat. They have not yet released any sensor with Exmor-like performance because there are a number of patents for Exmor in the way. I do believe Canon has something similar. It may not actually be column parallel, it may be block parallel, and who knows exactly how it will affect (improve?) noise characteristics.

Anyway, if you want Exmor quality, you'll have to get something that actually has an Exmor in it. That will may even end up being the case for the next decade or so, depending on exactly when the Exmor patents were filed and granted.

 

[Aglet]

I have tested all nikons zoom around 70-200 including the new 70-200/4 , no one can match my 70-200/2,8 is mk2

We should start a new thread on this because I've been getting more disappointed with overall performance of new lenses, especially the zooms.
They can be razor sharp but sometimes they also cause very ugly bokeh in some situations.

Have you had a chance to test any other brand 70-200mm?
I have a Tamron that is also quite sharp but I haven't been using it for closer focus work to see if it also produces ugly bokeh.

 

[CarlTN]

Interesting points about the banding noise, my older XXD Canon sure has tons of it above ISO 2500. I need to try some software to fix some of my work, that's for sure. Photoshop works well until the banding starts.

Notice in your link to Nikon's own data, that the DR falls to about 10 stops by ISO 800. I mean, who really cares if you've got 13, or 14 stops below that? What counts is what's above ISO 800.

If you're shooting below ISO 800, you're still going to use highlight tone priority if you have elements in the image which are extremely bright and you don't want them to look too pale or blown out...or at least I do. That is COMPRESSING the dynamic range of what gets stored on the file. You certainly don't need that many stops down where the noise is lowest anyway...because a jpg is only 8 bits. Does this sound wrong to you? If so, what would you do with a "future" sensor that was 16 or 18 stops at ISO 100? Shoot raw, then print from a 48 bit upsampled TIFF file (probably 20 GB in size) and display the resulting "print" on a transparent backlit, multi-stage screen using some exotic led's or xenon lamps? Get real. Our eyes see huge dynamic range, but print media can't display it. They can only display a dynamically compressed approximation, as in HDR technique, etc. It's called "painterly" for a reason. The reason is dynamic range compression.

 

[CarlTN]

As for the Canon 70-200 f4/L having "terrible bokeh"...I've had mine for 3 years, and I love the bokeh. It is very smooth, at least on my crop camera. I don't notice much bokeh at the wider end, but near to 200mm, it seems very smooth to me. (Closeups of wildflowers, etc...really "pop").

For comparison, I've had my 135 f/2L even longer, for 4 years. Sure its bokeh is quite a bit smoother, loads stronger...and very lovely...but to call the 70-200 f/4's terrible...is wrong. It's more than nice enough, especially considering the price. Perhaps the IS version has bad bokeh...it certainly has a totally different element grouping and design. I wouldn't know.

Or it could be, that all of you who don't like yours, got a bad sample, and mine is the only good one? I'm ok with that.

The 135 f/2 spoils me. I personally don't feel the need to drop over $2k on a 70-200 f/2.8 IS II. Sure they're nice, but for that money, I would just put that towards a 200 f/2, or something else. I would especially not buy one if I had the better noise performance of a full frame camera. At 3.5 pounds, it doesn't feel that much lighter than the 200 f/2...at least not to me. The longer, heavier supertelephotos...do indeed feel way more hefty to lug around, though. I think the relative short length of the 200 f/2 is a big factor here.

As for sharpness, it's also hard to fault my 70-200 f/4. There are some very slight left-to right sharpness oddities as it goes from around 90mm to 130mm...but other than that, it's pretty uniform. And even at 200mm...recently my work called for scaling an image up to 9000 x 6000, for a 20x30 print...and it looks fairly sharp even at that size. This shot was at f/4.5 at about 1/2000 shutter, ISO 320, "infinity" focus, AF on center point. The sharpness is barely going away by the bottom corners, not consequencial. If it had been, I could have "fixed" that in ACR easily enough...even before scaling it up.

 

[CarlTN]

Well, I never notice banding noise at ISO 800 or below, even with loads of exposure, saturation, brightness, or other boosting in post...especially not below ISO 1600. It's really ISO 2500 on mine, where it is completely unusable. However, if the image's subject content "disguises" the banding noise, sometimes I can get away with it even up to ISO 3200. 6400 is good for not-remotely-pro casual shots, at least on mine. From what I have seen, the 7D's noise performance is only barely better than mine, so that's not saying much for it.

As for people who never shoot above ISO 800, I assume you're always either doing long exposures, flash photography, shooting in bright sunlight at all times...or otherwise shoot a really fast lens such as f/1.4 (but even it is never in low light)? I have a couple of those, and still wind up needing higher than ISO 800, when shooting my "wildlife landscapes" at sunset, or dusk.

I never said "everyone" shoots above ISO 800. I just said that's where a loss of DR counts, because there's always more than enough DR below that.

 

[Apop]

I also dont think the d7000 is a competitor of the 7d,

Ok IQ wise it may be true, but then the newly released 650d is also a competitor (slightly lower noise then a 7d).

I owned both the d7000 and 7d, the bodies got such a different feel to them, the 7d feels more rugged.
Also the AF system (imo) is superior on the 7d , not to mention higher fps

De d7000 was a great camera, but the size and placement of the shutter button did not make it comfortable for me.

It will be interesting to see how the 60d replacement fares against the d7000 replacement...

 

[David Hull]

Interesting points about the banding noise, my older XXD Canon sure has tons of it above ISO 2500. I need to try some software to fix some of my work, that's for sure. Photoshop works well until the banding starts.

Notice in your link to Nikon's own data, that the DR falls to about 10 stops by ISO 800. I mean, who really cares if you've got 13, or 14 stops below that? What counts is what's above ISO 800.

If you're shooting below ISO 800, you're still going to use highlight tone priority if you have elements in the image which are extremely bright and you don't want them to look too pale or blown out...or at least I do. That is COMPRESSING the dynamic range of what gets stored on the file. You certainly don't need that many stops down where the noise is lowest anyway...because a jpg is only 8 bits. Does this sound wrong to you? If so, what would you do with a "future" sensor that was 16 or 18 stops at ISO 100? Shoot raw, then print from a 48 bit upsampled TIFF file (probably 20 GB in size) and display the resulting "print" on a transparent backlit, multi-stage screen using some exotic led's or xenon lamps? Get real. Our eyes see huge dynamic range, but print media can't display it. They can only display a dynamically compressed approximation, as in HDR technique, etc. It's called "painterly" for a reason. The reason is dynamic range compression.

You might give the NR plug-ins from Topaz or Nik a try but I don't think they were effective on the two dimensional pattern noise that was present in the older cameras. On the newer stuff like the 5DIII and 6D where the noise pattern is much less and only vertical, they appear to be quite effective (at the expense of some slight detail reduction).

To me the only real benefit of the additional DR is that you can pull the shadows a bit more on those cameras w/o worrying about pattern noise -- there are a few cases where this would be beneficial. However, to get any benefit from this at all, you will need to run your camera with the ISO set at ISO 400 or less (preferably ISO=100). I have always found it interesting that in the majority of the examples provided, the shot could be made with either camera if it were used correctly. By that I mean that in almost every case, the shooting scenario does not preclude the use of a multi shot approach -- take a look at the examples provided in this thread.

 

[jrista]

yes, You can believe that if its suits you.
this is my 5dmk2 and my d800, exposed in the same way to get the high lights in the sky intact
then the darker parts are lifted and adjusted the same. The results from the Canon is visible more pattern noise , banding, lower signal , less color information.

You should run the 5D II RAW image through Topaz DeNoise 5, and use the debanding feature. You might be surprised how much DR is recovered. The blacks may not be as rich, as Canon uses a bias offset which eats a chunk of shadow DR, but the noise would very likely disappear. DeNoise has shadow tone recovery features as well, which could restore or deepen some of those shadow tones. Once you eliminate the banding noise, Canon sensors fare a hell of a lot better against there competitors.

 

[CarlTN]

Interesting points from all of you. I do need to try Topaz...however mine is currently an older XXD body, not a 5D2.

Mikael, that's a good illustration of your point. However, in that situation, multi-shot HDR is really more called for, in my opinion. My body has a bit worse noise than the 5D2...hahaha. How would the D3s compare using similar under-exposed technique at low ISO, to the D800 (accounting for image dimensions, however you might want to do that)?

My cousin has the 5D3, and he mostly uses Lightroom 4 (although he has CS6). I tried to reduce some of the "grain" noise on a couple of his RAW shots done at around ISO 4000...on his computer using LR4. I must say, LR4 is far less effective at reducing that, than CS5 ACR is, on similar grain noise on my own files, done with my older body. Of course, those have similar amounts of noise way down at ISO 1250...haha. His files were exposed normally, not under-exposed. This grain noise seems to have a hard texture...sort of like you're trying to sand it smooth with sandpaper that is too fine. You can argue over which type of noise it is, I'll read it.

I can see why the D800 gets such high marks from DXO, but still, I don't think it tells the whole story. And ergonomically, the D800 is unusable for me. Also, I don't care for Nikon's lens lineup...especially their 135 f/2 lens. That alone would make me not ever switch to Nikon. Talk about a lens for old farts, looks like it was designed in the 1950's. There are plenty of other reasons too, of course.

 

[jrista]

Interesting points from all of you. I do need to try Topaz...however mine is currently an older XXD body, not a 5D2.

Mikael, that's a good illustration of your point. However, in that situation, multi-shot HDR is really more called for, in my opinion. My body has a bit worse noise than the 5D2...hahaha. How would the D3s compare using similar under-exposed technique at low ISO, to the D800 (accounting for image dimensions, however you might want to do that)?

My cousin has the 5D3, and he mostly uses Lightroom 4 (although he has CS6). I tried to reduce some of the "grain" noise on a couple of his RAW shots done at around ISO 4000...on his computer using LR4. I must say, LR4 is far less effective at reducing that, than CS5 ACR is, on similar grain noise on my own files, done with my older body. Of course, those have similar amounts of noise way down at ISO 1250...haha. His files were exposed normally, not under-exposed. This grain noise seems to have a hard texture...sort of like you're trying to sand it smooth with sandpaper that is too fine. You can argue over which type of noise it is, I'll read it.

I can see why the D800 gets such high marks from DXO, but still, I don't think it tells the whole story. And ergonomically, the D800 is unusable for me. Also, I don't care for Nikon's lens lineup...especially their 135 f/2 lens. That alone would make me not ever switch to Nikon. Talk about a lens for old farts, looks like it was designed in the 1950's. There are plenty of other reasons too, of course.

HDR is really the right way to go for high DR scenes, even with the D800. One thing no one ever discusses is the loss of color fidelity in the shadow tones when doing extreme shadow lifting like that. It doesn't really matter if there is banding noise there or not...you are still losing the same amount of color fidelity with either a Canon or a Nikon camera. The only way to really preserve the color fidelity of the shadows in a high DR scenario is to take bracketed shots, and combine as HDR in post. You should end up with much greater (i.e. orders of magnitude greater) color fidelity in the shadows, as well as finer highlight tonality, when using HDR vs. under-exposing and lifting shadows by 3-5 stops.

 

[jrista]

yes, You can believe that if its suits you.
this is my 5dmk2 and my d800, exposed in the same way to get the high lights in the sky intact
then the darker parts are lifted and adjusted the same. The results from the Canon is visible more pattern noise , banding, lower signal , less color information.

You should run the 5D II RAW image through Topaz DeNoise 5, and use the debanding feature. You might be surprised how much DR is recovered. The blacks may not be as rich, as Canon uses a bias offset which eats a chunk of shadow DR, but the noise would very likely disappear. DeNoise has shadow tone recovery features as well, which could restore or deepen some of those shadow tones. Once you eliminate the banding noise, Canon sensors fare a hell of a lot better against there competitors.

why would I do that? no software who eliminate banding etc are doing that with out that Im loosing resolution/details
it is much better if Canon improves theirs read out noise

Well, as always, you are entirely missing the point. However, there is no point in arguing with you, as your position is staunch... I really don't know why you don't just go out and get a D800 and be done with it. Why wait when you clearly prefer an alternative brand?