Canon 7D review and tests

 

In 2007, I bought the Canon 1DsIII as my main camera body, and I have used it with satisfaction for two year. Now, I have "replaced" it with the 7D: the new Canon SLR offers many advantages in comparison with the older flagship, even though in some aspect the 1DsIII is still the best (and this is the reason I won't sell it). In this article, I have explained the reasons of my choice and I have tested the capabilities of the 7D.
 
 

Quick specifications comparison

 
 

Canon 7D and 1DsIII, Fullframe vs APS-C

Even though the 1DsIII is a great camera, there are various things I don't like. It is bulky and heavy, I wish it had not the built-in battery grip. It is not super fast, and its sensor is no longer the best on the market. When I bought the 1DsIII, there was nothing that offered a similar sensor: it was the best both for landscapes and wildlife. But now, let's compare the 1DsIII and the 7D sensors...  
 
Pixel size and "1.6x crop factor" for maximum reach: when talking about the advantage in terms of reach that you can get with a camera or another, you have to consider the pixel size. The sensor size or the "1.6x crop factor" does not have any importance: for example, the 8 megapixel APS-C Canon 20D does not give any "added reach" in comparison with the 21 megapixel FF Canon 1DsIII, because you can crop the 1DsIII at 8 megapixel and you will get exactly the same "1.6x magnification" of the 20D. This is because both cameras have pixels (or, more precisely, photodiodes) of 6.4µm. The Canon 7D, instead, has way smaller photodiodes: just 4.3µm. If you crop the 1DsIII to 18 megapixels, you get only a 1.1x "magnification"; in conclusion, when using the same lens, the 7D gives a real "1.5x magnification" in comparison with the 1DsIII. (not 1.6x: to get an effective 1.6x, in comparison with the 1DsIII, you would need a 21 megapixel APS-C cameras).  
 
Lenses, teleconverters and various parameters: using the 7D with 300 f/2.8 + 1.4x gives the same results of the 1DsIII with the 300 f/2.8 + 2x. The reach is the same; with the 7D and 300 + 1.4x you can shoot at f/4 while the 1DsIII with 300 + 2x is at f/5.6 (dept of field is the same, because APS-C gives 1 stop more depth of field than fullframe). Other than that, thanks to the 1 stop wider aperture, with the 7D you can use 1 stop lower ISO and getting the same shutter speed. This is true for every telephoto lens: when you would have used the 2x TC with the 1DsIII, you can use the 1.4x with the 7D; when you would have used the 1.4x now you can use no TC at all, with benefits for image quality.  
 
Wildlife, macro, reportage, portraits, landscapes: for wildlife the 7D is better than the 1DsIII, but what about the other kinds of photography? For macro, reportage, portraits I'd say they are about the same; the APS-C sensor gives 1 stop more depth of field than FF...sometimes it is an advantage, other times you may prefer less depth of field, in this case you can use a one stop wider aperture. The only exception is if you do specialist kinds of photography where you need the extremely thin depth of field of f/1.2 lenses on FF - in this case, I'd recommend the 5D2. Talking about landscapes, instead, I still prefer fullframe cameras. The reason is not the camera itself - of course you can take great landscape photos even with the 7D - but lenses: my preferred landscape lens, the Sigma 12-24, has an amazing angle of view of 124 degrees on FF; on APS-C, the widest you can get is 10-20mm, that gives the same angle of view of a 16-35mm on fullframe...I really wish that Canon made a 7.5-20mm wide angle, to get the same angle of the 12-24 on FF. Other than that, there is not any APS-C equivalent of my "milky way" lens - the Sigma 20mm f/1.8. If I had an EF-S 7.5-20mm and an EF-S 12mm f/1.8, I'd be happy to leave home the 1DsIII even for landscape trips.
 
 

Why the Canon 7D? alternatives from Canon and Nikon

Two possible Canon alternatives are the 50D and the 1D MarkIV. The 7D is better in every respect than the 50D, so if you don't have limits of budget, I'd have no hesitation to prefer the 7D to the 50D. The 5D2 was not an option for me since I already have the 1DsIII; if you don't have other cameras, instead, I'd suggest to evaluate carefully the 5D...if you do a lot of wildlife, or you want a great "all around" cameras, I recommend the 7D, but if you are specialized in landscapes I'd go for the 5D2.  
 
I have never been a fan of the Canon APS-H cameras, and the 1D4 is no exception. If does not give the added reach of the 7D, it is as heavy and bulky as the 1DsIII, it is only marginally faster than the 7D, video is identical...the only real advantage of the 1D4 is image quality at high ISO - I have not tested it yet, but I guess that it is about 2 stops better than 7D. But it is three times more expensive, and in its price class you can get the Nikon D3s, in my opinion a much better camera.  
 
What about Nikon? The D300s looks great, but overall the 7D is slightly better in my opinion. Instead, the Nikon D3s is much more tempting. Of course you can not compare the 7D with the D3s - they are different cameras at a very different price; nevertheless, when I saw how good was the D3s I was seriously tempted to switch to Nikon. The D3s is fullframe - I much prefer FF to APS-H, that is a "mid-way" format without the advantages of FF or APS-C. Moreover, the D3s has lower noise than any other camera on the market. The D3 was already a great camera, but the D3s is fully usable up to ISO 25600 (plus 51200 and 100k for "emergencies" when image quality is not essential)...this is an amazing performance. At the end I decided to stay with canon, but if you have Nikon I highly recommend the D3s, if you are looking for the best you can get. In alternative, if you want something like the 7D, the D300s comes close.
 
 

Advantages of the 7D in comparison with my 1DsIII and other cameras

Continuos shooting: the 7D can shoot at 8 FPS for 21 RAW frames (24-25 RAW with a very fast CF card), while the 1DsIII shoots at 5 FPS for 17 RAWs. For landscapes or macro it does not matter, but for wildlife the higher speed of the 7D is an advantage. Other than that, the 7D is able to use faster cards, so it takes less time to empty the buffer.  
 
Silent shooting and MLU: unlike the 1DsIII, the 7D has silent shooting mode in live view. This is a big advantage, because thanks to SS you no longer need mirror lock up: when using live view, you can shoot immediately with the remote release, or with the 2 seconds self timer. With the 1DsIII, instead, you have to exit live view and to shoot with MLU active (for more info, read the article "Live View and MLU").  
 
Autofocus: I have not done yet in depth tests of the 7D AF, but the first impressions are very positive. The autofocus is really fast! In my opinion, it is even better than the AF of 1DsIII, even though it is not an huge difference. I'm going to expand this paragraph in future when I'll have more experience with the 7D!  
 
Video: the 7D - together with the 1D4 - has the best video capabilities of any SLR camera; the 1DsIII has no video at all, the 500D and the Nikon cameras are far behind in this aspect.  
 
Weight and size: the 7D is not feather weight, but it is still much lighter than the 1 series cameras. A much more important advantage is size: it does not have the integrated battery grip, so it is much smaller and easier to carry around when you are travelling. I have never liked the added bulk of battery grip and I really appreciate the smaller size of the 7D. Another size difference is the battery charger - the charger of the 1 series is huge, while the battery charger of the 7D is way smaller and lighter: another advantage if you are traveling and you want to reduce the bulk and weight of your luggage.  
 
Price: the Canon 7D is a bit cheaper than the Nikon D300s, and much, much cheaper than the 1DsIII. You can buy the 7D now, and when it will replaced by a new camera after a couple of years, you can sell the 7D and buy the new model losing only few hundreds of Euros; doing so with a 1 series camera means losing thousands of Euros. Other than that, the 7D gives a way better price/performance ratio.  
 
Other aspects: both the 1DsIII and the 7D show the remaining battery charge in percentage. This is a nice thing, and it allows to understand how much battery you still have; the three-steps battery level icon of cheaper cameras is far from accurate.
 
 

Image quality: Noise and ISO

When the 7D has been announced, I was doubtful about its image quality at high ISO...18 megapixels on APS-C are really a lot! Surprisingly, the 7D is relatively good in this aspect. It is not as good as the 1DsIII, but the difference is small - I'd say about 0.5 stop - and it is a bit better than the 500D and 50D. Of course there are some cameras that are miles ahead - the Nikon D3s is at least 3-4 stops better than 1DsIII and 7D, but in its price class the 7D is one of the best. In this test, I have compared 1DsIII, 7D and 500D from ISO 100 to 12800. The images are 100% crops from the unprocessed RAW file. The photos of the 7D and 500D have been upsampled to 21 megapixels; the photos of the 1DsIII at ISO 6400 and 12800 had been created from RAW files at ISO 3200 underexposed by 1 and 2 stops.

 
 

Image quality: Resolution and detail

In terms of detail, the results are quite obvious. The 7D is slightly better than the 500D (and other 15 or 12 megapixel cameras), but it captures less detail than the 1DsIII, even though the difference is small. These are 100% crop from the RAW files; the images of the 7D and 500D have been upsampled to 21 megapixels.  
 
1DsIII:

 

 
 
 
 
7D

 

 
 
 
 
500D

 

 
 

Image quality: Dynamic range

The dynamic range is about the same. The 7D seems to capture slightly more detail into highlights (even though it shows a slight magenta cast), while the 1DsIII captures a bit more detail in the shadows - but the differences are so small that in practice you won't see any real difference.

 
 

Image quality: FF and APS-C, comparison with the 1DsIII

At the beginning of this article I wrote "when you would have used the 2x TC with the 1DsIII, you can use the 1.4x with the 7D; when you would have used the 1.4x now you can use no TC at all, with benefits for image quality." Here is the test!

Comparing a lens without TC on 7D vs lens with 1.4x TC on FF, the 7D gives slightly better image quality - more detail and less chromatic aberration.

Comparing 7D + 1.4x vs FF + 2x, the results are about on par.
 
 

Do you still need the 2x TC?

Considering the very high pixel density of the 7D, I thought that the 2x would have not been necessary: I was wrong. Even on the 7D, the 2x TC is still able to extract a little more detail than the 1.4x, at least on high quality lenses.

 
 

Image quality: Video

I have compared the 7D video with the cheaper 500D. In future, I'm going to compare the 7D also with 5D2. In terms of features, the 7D is way better: it has much higher resolution - 1920x1080 at 30FPS vs 1280x720 at 30FPS (I don't consider usable the full HD 20 FPS mode of the 500D); you can select aperture, shutter speed and ISO; you can choose the frame rate between many options...but what about image quality? These are two stills from videos taken with the two cameras. Note that these images are resized at 1000 px; click on the image to view it at full resolution!

above: still frame from Canon 7D video (click to enlarge)
 
 
 

above: still frame from Canon 500D video (click to enlarge)
 

 
 

Conclusion

Overall, the Canon 7D is an impressive camera for its price. It is better than any previous xxD camera (40D, 50D), and in many aspects it is better than more expensive cameras as the 5DII and 1DsIII (even though for some kinds of photography, as landscapes, I still prefer the FF cameras). It combines good image quality with great speed, fantastic video, and a lot of useful features. Very recommended! :-)  
 
The 7D shows much better image quality: more detail, less artifacts and much less noise.