Greetings. I’ve really been slacking off with posts, particularly with keeping up with the 7D review, so let’s just jump into it.
I did some side-by-side comparison shots with the 7D and my 30D. I used the same lens (400mm f/5.6) and camera settings on both cameras to take photos of a pocket calendar from Money Magazine (ironically, the calendar hasn’t improved my money situation since they sent it to me; perhaps I should have taken them up on the subscription offer). These shots are inside at nighttime, so I was using ISO 3200, 1/80 sec, and f/5.6. Sharpness and noise reduction were set to zero on all shots. The 7D has more pixels than the 30D, but I didn’t bother to adjust the shooting position so that the subject covered the same number of pixels. To equalize the size of the subject on screen, I increased the size of the 30D image and/or decreased the size of the 7D image (I didn’t notice any appreciable difference between either method). Arguably, this may not be the technically-correct way to do it, but I wanted to be more comparable to the situation in the field. When you’re stalking a bird, it’s not going to let you get closer just because your camera has fewer megapixels. Finally, I cropped the image and then reduced the image size so it would fit on here. Again, not the best technique for comparisons, but deal with it.
Here are some shots. The first two is comparison of the cameras when the autofocus is used:
7D with autofocus on
30D with autofocus on
Next up are shots that were manually focused through the viewfinder of both cameras:
7D manually focused through viewfinder
30D mannually focused through viewfinder
Obviously, I didn’t nail the focus the first time with the 30D, so I took another crack at it:
30D manually focused through viewfinder, 2nd try
I included both of those shots because it may show the advantages of the 7D’s viewfinder. It’s much brighter and bigger than the 30D’s, so presumably, it’s going to give you a better chance of nailing the focus manually.
OK, next up are the same manually focused 7D shot plus another shot manually focused using the LCD zoomed to the highest magnification:
7D manually focused through viewfinder
7D manually focused through LCD
OK, finally here are some samples that were manually focused through the viewfinder and the shutter was tripped with the self-timer. I held on to the camera to damp vibrations:
7D manually focused, shutter tripped by self-timer
30D manually focused, shutter tripped with self-timer
So what have we learned? First, my 7D underexposed compared to the 30D. I can’t remember if this is an expected result of having smaller sensor pixels. I’ll have to check on that. (And for what it’s worth, when I lightened the 7D images, they maintained image quality.) Second, it appears to me that the 7D has better image quality compared to the 30D. I’d love to do some comparisons with the 50D if I could. Finally, both cameras produced noisy results, though that’s not surprising since they were both set at ISO 3200, but I’d say the 7D wins.
More to come on this subject: I’ll be comparing images from the “real world”.
