7D soft image?

[Pao Dolina]

Owners of the 7d do you notice soft images straight from your camera whether they be JPEG or RAW?

[arash_hazeghi]

When in focus, RAW files are pretty sharp (taking into account it is an 18 mpixel APS sensor). I never shoot JPEG. See this harrier shot. If you are getting soft images it is either out of focus or camera shake.

100% crop from this series straight from DPP above (ISO 400)

[Ed Cordes]

My 7D images have been very good. Good glass is a must.

[Michael Wolf]

So what about your old thread you had where most of your 7D images were soft & you were unhappy with the autofocus?
Did you get a second 7D & this one is better?

Michael

When in focus, RAW files are pretty sharp (taking into account it is an 18 mpixel APS sensor). I never shoot JPEG. See this harrier shot. If you are getting soft images it is either out of focus or camera shake.

100% crop from this series straight from DPP above (ISO 400)

[Desmond Chan]

Is the jury still out? Some think so.

Here's another review:

http://darwinwiggett.wordpress.com/2.../the-canon-7d/

[Mark Perry]

My 7D images have been very good. Good glass is a must.

yes, totally agree.

[arash_hazeghi]

So what about your old thread you had where most of your 7D images were soft & you were unhappy with the autofocus?
Did you get a second 7D & this one is better?

Michael

Softness and auto focus are two different things, above I said *WHEN* the images are in focus they are sharp, that does not imply images are always in focus. I still sand by my comments about AF, that doesn't mean that 7D is not capable of producing very sharp images in certain conditions as I stated clearly many times in the AF performance summary.

Thanks

[c.w. moynihan]

Here are my crops of carefully manual focused samples from f/4-f/22. The purpose is to demonstrate sharpness of the raw, straight out of the camera. No capture or output sharpening. 100% crops are approx 1300 pixles on the long side. To me f/11 is still sharp, albeit a tad less than f/8. f/16 starts to show the softness. Lense used was the 180L macro, focused using Live View.

http://gallery.rennlist.com/gallery/album817

[Aravind Krishnaswamy]

The 7D files viewed entirely on its own are quite sharp. When put up side by side with files from a 12mp Rebel XSi, the 7D files have a hair more detail but not the amount one would expect considering it has 50% more resolution.

[Michael Bertelsen]

I compared my 7D with my old 30D both using the same lens at f8. Mirror up all that stuff. I then converted from DPP to a 8bit tiff in CS3.
When I compared the images side by side at 100% there is a significant difference.
The 30D is quite a bit sharper, more detail along with more contrast.
The 7D has been micro adjusted but I just can't get tack sharp images like I can with the 30D.
I can only guess it must be the all the pixels?

Michael Bertelsen

[Aravind Krishnaswamy]

Michael, comparing images from two cameras of different pixel densities at 100% is flawed (it would be akin to viewing film with two different loupes, one a 10x and one a 12x in the film era). A more useful comparison would be to uprez the lower resolution camera (in your case the 30D) images to the same size as the higher resolution camera. Then compare the images at 100%.

[Benjamin Kennedy]

You have to recognize that when you "view RAW data" from any camera, it requires processing. It is worthless to discuss "RAW images straight from the camera." This is nonsense. Every time you "view a RAW image" you are viewing a thumbnail/image/file created by processing RAW data. Now that we have that out of the way...

If you identically process two images (from RAW data) from different cameras, you will probably get different results. Each camera needs slightly different RAW processing to get what you are after. I do not own a 7D, but have read enough posts by people that do to understand that when properly processed, "When in focus... files are pretty sharp. If you are getting soft images it is either out of focus or camera shake."

[Aravind Krishnaswamy]

Also check this out:

http://www.prophotohome.com/news/200...non-rebel-xsi/

I don't agree with some of his conclusions, but it does bring up the interesting question of RAW converter used when comparing images.

[EdNguyen]

My 7D images have been sharp so far, even at 100% magnification. Here's a close-up of a robin (1/100s, f/7.1, ISO 400, 800mm f/5.6L IS lens, fill flash with Better Beamer)

[arash_hazeghi]

I compared my 7D with my old 30D both using the same lens at f8. Mirror up all that stuff. I then converted from DPP to a 8bit tiff in CS3.
When I compared the images side by side at 100% there is a significant difference.
The 30D is quite a bit sharper, more detail along with more contrast.
The 7D has been micro adjusted but I just can't get tack sharp images like I can with the 30D.
I can only guess it must be the all the pixels?

Michael Bertelsen

Mike, when viewed at 100% 30D/20D files do look crisper and sharper than that of 7D that is due to big difference in pixel size. 30D has the same pixel pitch as the 5DMKII which is the current crown of EOS in IQ. 7D also puts a lot of burden on lens and AF, slightly oof shots or a lens with less than perfect optics such as a zoom or a TC will hurt 7D files.
However 7D has 10 million pixels more so when focus and everything else is spot on it can see a lot more feather detail than 20/30D. Detail and sharpness are two different things. Sharpness is how well the edges are defined and how crisp the photo appears, detail is the amount of information in the file.

Here is another 100% crop, note the subtle detail around the eye. It will improve with further sharpening. To get best results from 7D use DPP with sharpening set to 3 or 4.

[Michael Bertelsen]

Arash,

I knew it had to do with the pixel density, but the way you explained it makes very good sense.

Thanks very much,

Michael