From 7D (Mark I) to 80D - Is it worth it, and what will I be missing?

AJ

Sep 11, 2010
967
437
Canada
I "upgraded" from a 7D to a 760D, after I accidentally spilled some water on my supposedly splash-proof 7D, which fried it.

The 760D produces noticeably cleaner images. 100 iso is definitely less noisy, as are higher iso settings. I suspect the 80D will be even better yet. I also think the 760D produces better shadow detail.

The AF of the 760D works great in good light, but the 7D did better in low light. The 80D has much better AF than the 760D, of course, so I think you'll be fine.

I do a lot of hiking and travel (just got back from a 10-week trip) so I welcome the lower weight of the 760D.

I really like the flip screen for candid photography. I hang the camera around my neck so the body is at my belly, I flip the screen up, turn on live view, then tap the screen where I want focus. It then focuses and exposes. Great feature.
 
Upvote 0
The most noticeable difference would be build quality. 80D definitely feels somewhat plasticky compared to my 5Dmk3. Other than build quality I don't think 80D is in any way inferior. Whether or not 80D is a reasonable upgrade depends on what features you're looking for. I absolutely love the video quality of my 80D. Changing focus point using touch screen is so easy, so intuitive. I don't miss the joystick all that much. Do you care about wifi, build-in intervalometer, articulating screen, higher DR, and so forth? If you want a general purpose camera, you'll love 80D.

If your main interest is wildlife and sports, 7Dmk2 is the camera for you. Or have you considered getting 5dmk3 instead?


Grummbeerbauer said:
Hi everbody,

I could get a new 80D for 950€ (which is ridiculously expensive compared to some deals the US guys seem to get on a regular basis, but still ~100€ cheaper than regular for us EU guys and therefore quite a steal).
I have a 6,5 years old classic 7D, which I still like and which still works fine. At the same time, it has some deficits, in particular AF tracking was never as good as I had hoped, per pixel sharpness also left a bit to be desired, and high ISO is :eek:.
Considering that the 80D has overtaken 7D in many departments, in particular AF, video features and dynamic range, I am seriously tempted. At the same time, I am not sure if I will actually gain a lot in the IQ department... of course there are six more megapixels to be had, but when looking, e.g., at DPReview's test scene

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen?attr18=daylight&attr13_0=canon_eos80d&attr13_1=canon_eos7d&attr15_0=raw&attr15_1=raw&attr16_0=100&attr16_1=100&normalization=full&widget=340&x=-0.22805507745266781&y=-0.6170194532522065

I am not sure if I am actually getting that big an improvement here of I am not just magnifying the lens flaws even more or run into the AA filter limiting resolution.


Further, I am wondering what I might miss in the 80D compared to the 7D(I).

I think I will definitely miss the thumb stick for AF point selection... the four way controller of the 70D (which should be roughly the same as that of the 80D, right?) which I briefly played around with is not located very conveniently and feels a bit mushy. I also use "spot AF" a lot on the 7D, which isn't available on the 80D if I am not mistaken. And of course there is a noticable(?) drop in build quality from 7D to xxD series, but how much this will bother me, I am not sure.
Anything else that would spring to mind?

Any experience from other people that did the same up(?)grade?

Regards

Grummbeerbauer
-
 
Upvote 0
AJ said:
I "upgraded" from a 7D to a 760D, after I accidentally spilled some water on my supposedly splash-proof 7D, which fried it.

The 760D produces noticeably cleaner images. 100 iso is definitely less noisy, as are higher iso settings. I suspect the 80D will be even better yet. I also think the 760D produces better shadow detail.

The AF of the 760D works great in good light, but the 7D did better in low light. The 80D has much better AF than the 760D, of course, so I think you'll be fine.

I do a lot of hiking and travel (just got back from a 10-week trip) so I welcome the lower weight of the 760D.

I really like the flip screen for candid photography. I hang the camera around my neck so the body is at my belly, I flip the screen up, turn on live view, then tap the screen where I want focus. It then focuses and exposes. Great feature.

I was sure hoping for better noise performance, and for shadow lifting, this seems to hold true. But overall high ISO noise does not seem much improved (if at all) when I look at the DPReview comparison tool. But maybe this is more obvious in real-world shooting? Considering how the 7D is noisy even at ISO 100 (e.g., blue skies), things can only get better here.
 
Upvote 0
Meanwhile I borrowed a friend's 80D and played around a bit with it. I mainly used my 18-35A and 100L.

Build quality and ergonomics
I can't say that I noticed much of a weight difference with an attached lens, but the grip, being smaller, feels less comfortable to hold for me. The "inferior" body material (plastic vs. magnesium alloy) is of course visible, but I barely notice that while shooting, so I guess I could live with that. The viewfinder is a bit smaller, but otherwise not too different from the one of the 7D, so it is fine for me (I was never into the hype of the "large viewfinders are IT"... since I wear glasses, it is sometimes difficult to see the full viewfinder on the 7D).
The thumb button is indeed sorely missed... the "joypad-style" four-way controller is not located very conveniently and is also feeling much more flimsy compared to the thumb stick of the 7D. Further, the thumb wheel's usability is also hindered by the four way controller, as it protrudes from it... so I cannot really spin the wheel with a flat thumb anymore, but have to use the thumb's tip - this feels awkward and is also much slower when going through a larger number of images. In addition, my thumb then often bumps into the slightly protruding edge of the flip screen - and I do have rather lean fingers.

AF
Other things I noticed: having that many AF points surely is nice, but in the short amount of time, I already noticed myself using center point + focus & recompose at times because I just couldn't deal with the four-way controller.
I also did a lot of macro shooting. I had high hopes with the touch screen and live view AF for this style of shooting, but while it works fine and is very responsive for regular motives, it didn't seem to work all to well for macro for me... I also found it much more difficult to judge where I am aiming at when the lens was strongly defocused. Through-the-viewfinder macro shooting worked fine... I would say even slightly better than with the 7D, overall keeper rate seems to be a bit higher.
Regarding phase-detect AF through the viewfinder: it mostly worked fine, but didn't "wow" me. When shooting indoors in bad light, it reacted rather sluggish at times, I had hoped better performance, because IIRC the nominal brightness range for the AF is better than that of the 7D. I have yet to compare this against the 7D directly, though.

Responsiveness
I did my shooting using a rather old SDHC card with 8GB (from my 450D :)) since I didn't have any other compatible card, so the card is probably very slow by today's standards. In particular when I fired off bursts (but still far from "buffer full"), after stopping, sometimes the camera would show a black screen with some message (along the lines of "busy") while it was writing to card, and this often took very long. A faster card will probably reduce the write times considerably, but why does it even block at all? Can't it just write the stuff to card in the background while allowing me to work normally (e.g., use the menu, switch to live view etc.)? But this didn't happen all the time - maybe I did something that triggers this behavior (pressing the "play" button, maybe?). In any case, I never seemed to have noticed something similar with the 7D.

Video
I am not that much into video work, but from the one or two short clips I made, I can only say that it is a night & day difference to the 7D. Videos, even though having the same nominal resolution, are just so much sharper! When looking at it full screen on a FHD screen, even individual frames look sharp. That combined with the very nice touch focus actually seem to finally make DSLR video usable for me (because I suck at MF and cannot afford hiring a focus puller to do my focusing ;)). Also the MP4 codec seems to be much more space efficient than the MJPEG(?)-based MOVs produced by the 7D.
The actual value of the whole video side of the 80D for myself is still questionable... maybe I discover the video guy in me, maybe I will continue ignoring it.

One main issue I had with my time with the 80D - and this is not related to the camera - is that my ancient Lightroom 4.4 doesn't support it, so I had to use DPP. While DPP seems to be getting better, it still feels much slower than Lightroom (and it also does not seem to have a feature to pre-calculate 100% previews, which speeds things up a lot for initial image selection in LR). Of course I therefore cannot really compare the results (in particular regarding noise and shadow-pushability) against my years of working with 7D RAWs in LR.
A full version of LR 6 is still >100€ here and I cannot seem to find an upgrade license anywhere, so I would have to factor that into the total cost of the 80D. And then, LR 7 is probably just around the corner... if Adobe will still make it available as purchasable software and will not fully switch to their "cloud" model here (if they do, they will have lost me as a customer, since for my needs, I will not pay ~10€ a month to replace the software I bought for ~100€ and had been using for several years, easily quadrupling the cost).



sunnyVan said:
The most noticeable difference would be build quality. 80D definitely feels somewhat plasticky compared to my 5Dmk3. Other than build quality I don't think 80D is in any way inferior. Whether or not 80D is a reasonable upgrade depends on what features you're looking for. I absolutely love the video quality of my 80D.

I can only chime in on your statement about video quality - now if it had 4K to future-proof it... ;)

sunnyVan said:
Changing focus point using touch screen is so easy, so intuitive. I don't miss the joystick all that much. Do you care about wifi, build-in intervalometer, articulating screen, higher DR, and so forth? If you want a general purpose camera, you'll love 80D.

I briefly played around with the wifi functionality (remote control from PC). I am not sure if I fully grasp the possibilities here, but I don't think I will make much use of it (if I were a studio shooter, the direct file transfer to a tethered laptop would certainly be interesting). Maybe smartphone connectivity will be more useful, I have yet to try this.
The intervalometer is certainly something I will try out eventually, but I could also well live without it.
The improved DR everyone is raving about (but which I cannot yet judge, due to the LR "issue" I mentioned above) will definitely be something I should like, since I tend to push shadows in >50% of my images.

sunnyVan said:
If your main interest is wildlife and sports, 7Dmk2 is the camera for you. Or have you considered getting 5dmk3 instead?

The 7DII is still >1300€ here... a tad too much for my taste. On the other hand, there is still a "student cashback" promotion running here, which would allow me to save 150€ for the 7DII. But if I made use of that cashback option, then I think the camera would no be allowed to also participate in the 250€ cashback for the 100-400...
And in the end, when the 7DII came out I decided that it would gain me too little in image quality improvement over my 7D (all this based of course on internet resources, in particular the DPReview comparison tool). I think the 80D should have better image quality for my purposes, especially regarding DR. On the other hand, when comparing 80D and 7DII at higher ISO via the DPR tool

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/image-comparison/fullscreen?attr18=daylight&attr13_0=canon_eos80d&attr13_1=canon_eos7dii&attr15_0=raw&attr15_1=raw&attr16_0=3200&attr16_1=3200&normalization=full&widget=340&x=0.31965145608805307&y=-0.06737939434295047

they seem on par. The 80D gives of course more pixels, but at least to my eyes, there is not much additional detail here.

Full frame is of course something I would like to have (who doesn't), but it just makes things even more expensive - the soon-to-be-replaced 5DIII is still >2350€ here (minus 300€ student cashback, though), but I would hate to part with the 18-35A and would need a new wideangle lens, and I would definitely need that 100-400 then, because the 70-200 F4 IS would clearly be too short on FF.
 
Upvote 0

Maximilian

The dark side - I've been there
CR Pro
Nov 7, 2013
5,665
8,492
Germany
Grummbeerbauer said:
...
One main issue I had with my time with the 80D - and this is not related to the camera - is that my ancient Lightroom 4.4 doesn't support it...
Does it support the 7D2? If not you'll have the same issue here as well.

The 7DII is still >1300€ here... a tad too much for my taste. On the other hand, there is still a "student cashback" promotion running here, which would allow me to save 150€ for the 7DII. But if I made use of that cashback option, then I think the camera would no be allowed to also participate in the 250€ cashback for the 100-400...
I'd just ask Canon about that ;)

And in the end, when the 7DII came out I decided that it would gain me too little in image quality improvement over my 7D (all this based of course on internet resources, in particular the DPReview comparison tool). I think the 80D should have better image quality for my purposes, especially regarding DR. On the other hand, when comparing 80D and 7DII at higher ISO via the DPR tool
Whatever you decide, just keep in mind that the highest quality improvement (in your case) will come with better lenses. If you have the money for the 7D2+100-400L2, go for it.

Full frame is of course something I would like to have (who doesn't), but it just makes things even more expensive...
Reading about what you're doing with photography would make me recommend you staying with APS-C.
Use the saved money for additional expenses for better lenses, etc.
 
Upvote 0
Maximilian said:
Does it [Lightroom 4.4] support the 7D2? If not you'll have the same issue here as well.

Of course it doesn't... ;)
This seems to be the official list by Adobe:
https://helpx.adobe.com/camera-raw/kb/camera-raw-plug-supported-cameras.html

Browsing that list, I learned that I could get myself
- a 700D ::)
- a 1D C 8)
- a 100D :eek: or maybe
- a D7100 (the cost of switching system would probably outweigh the savings of not having to purchase LR 6, though ;))

Maximilian said:
I'd just ask Canon about that ;)

The terms and conditions at http://www.canon.de/student-cashback/ are rather clear:

"2.2.4. Das Angebot ist auf eine Kamera und drei Objektive bzw. Blitzgeräte pro Student beschränkt. Eingeschriebene Studenten dürfen einmalig am Angebot teilnehmen. Dieses Angebot kann nicht mit anderen Angeboten kombiniert werden."

This translates to :"forget it" ;(

Maximilian said:
Whatever you decide, just keep in mind that the highest quality improvement (in your case) will come with better lenses. If you have the money for the 7D2+100-400L2, go for it.

Actually, I still desire the 100-400II, despite being disappointed with the copy that I had... I firmly believe that it was a dud.

Maximilian said:
Reading about what you're doing with photography would make me recommend you staying with APS-C.
Use the saved money for additional expenses for better lenses, etc.

Yes, I concluded that, too. And there are other "areas of investment" (in particular outside of photography;)) where I can gain more with that money.
 
Upvote 0
I got another chance to try the 80D. To work around the LR 4.4 issue, I converted the RAWs to DNG, and LR would import them just fine. All shots processed to taste. Some selective sharpening. I did this on a laptop with a pretty crappy, uncalibrated screen, so I hope the colors are not too far off. I set LR's JPEG export quality slider to <80 to meet forum image size restrictions for the dragonfly and the water lily.
All were shot with the 100L, including the big bird in flight (it just went overhead when I was doing some macro shooting).
 

Attachments

  • 80D_1b.jpg
    80D_1b.jpg
    3.5 MB · Views: 229
  • 80D_2b.jpg
    3.5 MB · Views: 212
Upvote 0
next 2
The "bee in flight" shot happens to be among the better ones I got over the years :-[, although it is still blurry due to bee movement. I used my 580EX in HSS mode to get better shutter times, since my macro ring flash (make "El Cheapo") doesn't support HSS.
The big bird looks a bit washed out, but when I play with contrast, the detail of the undercarriage is mostly gone in the shadows.
 

Attachments

  • 80D_3.jpg
    80D_3.jpg
    2.1 MB · Views: 209
  • 80D_4.jpg
    80D_4.jpg
    740.1 KB · Views: 154
Upvote 0
Earlier on the same day, I had been using the 7D, same lens, same location. Overall, I took only about 1/3 of the shots with the 7D than I did with the 80D, but the 80D seems to be giving me a better keeper rate.
AF is much more responsive, but sometimes I had trouble focusing on fine detail - I am pretty sure that the 7D's sport AF would have performed better here.
Below three shots done with the 7D for a non-scientific comparison.
The young blackbird just landed directly in front of me, I had the camera set to macro mode, including enabled flash, so the shot was overexposed quite a bit, which lead to some burned out highlights.
For the KC-135 I would have pushed the shadows more... well, actually I would have discarded it, but I decided to keep it and process it with the same recipe that I used for the Globemaster.
The bee in flight shot would normally also be discarded, I added it, as it is representative for what I would get with the 7D. I don't think it is pure coincidence that the first time I use the 80D, I just manage to get more lucky.
 

Attachments

  • 7D_1.jpg
    7D_1.jpg
    644 KB · Views: 148
  • 7D_2.jpg
    7D_2.jpg
    1.7 MB · Views: 214
  • 7D_3.jpg
    7D_3.jpg
    1.4 MB · Views: 159
Upvote 0
dilbert said:
Grummbeerbauer said:
...
Maybe "build quality" was not the proper term... I am not saying that the 80D is in general assembled more shoddily. But AFAIK, the 80D has more (if not all) parts of the body built from plastics instead of the magnesium alloy of the 7D, giving it a less tank-like feel.

To put this in perspective, would you rather have a camera that was built like a tank but took crappy pictures or a camera that was rather fragile but took excellent pictures?
If the "rather fragile" is the quality level of 70D, 80D series, I'd be happy with fragile cameras, since the pictures are very good.

The 80D seemed stronger than the camera of 35mm film, EOS 3, which was considered professional in his time.

canon-eos-3-corpo-booster-grip-analogica-22872-MLB20237992957_022015-F.jpg
 
Upvote 0
dilbert said:
To put this in perspective, would you rather have a camera that was built like a tank but took crappy pictures or a camera that was rather fragile but took excellent pictures?

Maybe you got me wrong here, I wasn't really complaining about build quality of the recent xxDs (i.e., the way they are put together), my point was more about body material.
Anyway, I think that the metal body of the 7D gives me a bit more reassuring feeling than the all plastic body of the 80D. But since I do not use the camera to drive a nail into something and since I never dropped my 7D, I think this is not much of a difference. The longer shutter life (if I am not mistaken, the original 7D was rated for 150k actuations, while the 80D is rated for 100k), on the other hand, could be relevant.
 
Upvote 0
wsmith96 said:
You keep coming back to the 80D here, even after all of the recommendations and criticisms provided. I think it's time to just go ahead and get the camera. It sounds like you enjoy it and that it is providing more keepers than your 7D, so what is stopping you from proceeding to buy it?

Well, I am usually thinking twice (or thrice or more... ;)) before spending three-digit++ money on non-essentials like photography gear.
The problem is that for me, the picture is not clear here... some people recommend it, others say stick with the 7D.
Still undecided. Any comments on the sample images?
 
Upvote 0