Critique I May Need Copious Amounts Of Humble Pie.

[Dale.]

I am quite excited, even if I may need to eat humble pie.

Most of you will know the scorn I've often poured on my 7D. It's a camera that has never worked for me, or maybe, I've ever worked for it, or maybe both. I have a problem, I don't like to give up and I have tried and tried to make the camera work but I've always been dismayed by its image quality, being grainy, noisy and bandy. I am (maybe was) on the verge of buying a second hand body to replace my 7 for use in the hide, maybe an 80D or M5.

I've read up on the subject of image quality and the 7D a lot, it's a probem the 7D has, I'm not the only one to complain about it and I do still think mine is a particularly sensitive and temperamental soul but after reading probably reams on the subject and listening to advice and experiences here (thanks, you know who you are) I have had a eureka moment today.

I have put in the extra effort and become more conscious about exposure. Some cameras will let you get away with not quite nailing it but not the 7D, so it seems. Today, I took it to the hide, the light was variable, beween dull and bright sunlight. I've also read that the 7D seems to work best at iso 160, and double multiples of, so 160, 320, 640, you get the idea. The biggest emphasis for me today, was to expose to the right, by upto 1 stop at times to the suggested metering in camera.

I got much improved results, I worked at iso 640, and overexposed, so to speak and recovered highlights in LR. I cropped the image significantly, this is a big crop, I've done some light post processing and yes, some noise reduction but no more than should be expected.


It's not just this image, I got 5 others that are just as 'clean'.

Maybe this is a eureka day, maybe it isn't, the 7D doesn't have a great reputation for image quality but maybe it just needs that little bit of coaxing. At the moment, I'm ecstatic and hopefully I was wrong about this camera. It's not a complete reversal in my thinking just yet, I still need more convincing but if that little bit more effort (and understanding) makes the difference, I'm happy to invest it.

7D,
70-200f4L,
f4,
200mm,
iso 640,
1/640 sec.

 

[holty]

and overexposed, so to speak and recovered highlights in LR

how can you recover detail if over exposed if you blow the highlights the detail is lost ?
with my d850 i always expose to the left and pull the detail out of there with no extra noise produced
maybe time to think about swapping make
welcome to the dark side

 

[Dale.]

how can you recover detail if over exposed if you blow the highlights the detail is lost?

This used to be my worry too and you do have to be careful and the fear of blowing the whites might well be one of the reasons I've found this camera so difficult, as I'd always go with the suggested metering in camera, provided I'd metered off a mid point and even underexpose by upto 2/3rds of a stop, my bad! Recovering shadows from a 7D is never going to be its strong point and also, I've become and it's been a while coming, a firm believer of exposing to the right. I'm not saying blow the whites, I'm mean get as much of the histogram and therefore data within the file over to the middle/right of the histogram. If you're careful, it's possible not to blow too many, if any whites. It's then a case of recovering, if that's the right word, the exposure in post. I'm begining to use this method on all my cameras and I'm getting much cleaner images, but it seems particularly significant with the 7D. I may have fluked it today, who knows?, but it does show that given a chance and some tact, even my copy of the 7 might be able to produce decent images. It will never be a low light camera though, it needs the light, more than most.

The Dark Side? Nah, The Force is strong young Jedi.

 

[Dale.]

I've uploaded to Flickr now and linked to it, more detail there.

Goldie. by Dale, on Flickr

 

[sk66]

Exposing to the right (but not to over-saturation) helps with all cameras as long as it is done using SS or aperture. Using ISO to push the exposure doesn't help because it doesn't actually increase the amount of light/data the sensor receives. However, underexposing a recovering is worse than using a higher ISO in order to obtain a "correct" exposure... unless your camera is ISO invariant (or nearly so). The 7D isn't even close to being ISO invariant (most newer Nikons are).

I think what you are finding is that w/ the 7D it is better to use a higher ISO in order to get the "correct exposure" for the darker parts of the image as long as you don't blow the highlights... this is typical and will generally result in less noise in the darker areas where it is more problematic (because they don't need pushed/recovered, and pulling exposure for the rest doesn't typically increase noise).

 

[Dale.]

Yes, adjusting exposure with SS and/or aperture is the way. I did push the iso (for a 7D) to 640 for this though to get a shutter speed of 640 at f4 (this lens is maxed at f4), which is slowish for wildlife, Ideally, I like 1000+ SS but that wasn't happening today at f4. I did start at 160 but I was getting a shutter speed of around 160-200 at f4 in the mostly grey conditions today, which wasn't enough for a goldie blowing in the wind on a bouncy branch. I'm even more impressed (all things considered given my past experiences of the 7D) with this at 640 iso.

 

[den]

I have images from a 7d mk1 were I used iso 3200 the image was exposed to the right and using just Lightroom 3 to process they were used on a magazine calendar , no issues whatsoever .
You seem to be over thinking with all you're settings to the point you seem to be changing you're equipment instead of changing your settings on the tool you have in hand the 7d noise issue as been discussed for years , yes it's a camera you have to work with and it was at the time to me a big jump from the 30d ,40d , 50d and to some point the 1d mkii..To much emphasise about blowing whites were sometimes it just can't be avoided no matter what you do especially with wildlife , my example would be a kingfisher were I would be happy getting 99% of the image correct at the expense of the 1% of white on the bird , hope that makes sense ..Would I go back to a 7d well yes if it was the only camera I had and I very rarely use the histogram to rely on my exposing of a shot..

 

[Dale.]

I have images from a 7d mk1 were I used iso 3200 the image was exposed to the right and using just Lightroom 3 to process they were used on a magazine calendar , no issues whatsoever .
You seem to be over thinking with all you're settings to the point you seem to be changing you're equipment instead of changing your settings on the tool you have in hand the 7d noise issue as been discussed for years , yes it's a camera you have to work with and it was at the time to me a big jump from the 30d ,40d , 50d and to some point the 1d mkii..To much emphasise about blowing whites were sometimes it just can't be avoided no matter what you do especially with wildlife , my example would be a kingfisher were I would be happy getting 99% of the image correct at the expense of the 1% of white on the bird , hope that makes sense ..Would I go back to a 7d well yes if it was the only camera I had and I very rarely use the histogram to rely on my exposing of a shot..

Thanks for this Den, much appreciated and helpful. One lesson I've learned from these forums is about exposing to the right. I used to expose to the left, the advice I've gotten here and the 7D itself have taught me that's not the way to go, particularly with a 7D. I got a 5Div last year and it's night and day but I think that's to be expected but it's always bugged me that I never got the 7D to work, until now it would seem. I spent 2 hrs in the hide again today and got good results with it again by exposing to the right. Yeah, some of the whites go close to blowing but so far, nothing really that can't be recovered in post. It's amazing what can be recovered from a RAW file.

I'm happy I'm getting decent results from it at last, even so, I need a little more convincing but so far, so good. It may even save me some money and I can shelve the plans for the 80D or M5.

One from today's short stint, a juvenile. I've done a little NR on it but not much at all, that's just me being fussy, there was probably no need. Exposed 2/3rds to the right and adjusted in LR. I did this until I got something that was pleasing to the eye, resisting the urge to look at the LR histogram until I was done. Pleased to say, the histogram was about what I'd expect after all the LR work was done to the file. Again, a decent crop as I'm using the 70-200 at the moment for space/handling convenience but I'll be trying the 100-400 tomorrow.

7D,
70-200f4L,
iso 320,
f5,
1/1000 sec,

 

[Dale.]

And another, and I did flump the exposure on this one, I didn't expose to the right(or left) by accident, my bad for not watching what I was doing. It did come out grainier than the exposed to the right images and I have had to be a little more aggresive with the noise reduction which reinforces the theory of exposing to the right. With plenty of light available for this, it was still a very usable file.

Dare I hope I've cracked it with this camera?

note:- how dare a pesky goldfinch land on the branch I was photographing?

 

[den]

I have used the 7d the 40d the 80d along with my 1dmkiv and 1dx this last 12 months at some time or another on the Little Owls and no one as noticed or they have and not pointed it out....I know some people can get a lot out of a raw image and i can fully understand that but i dont like spending long processing a image in fact it takes me a few mins..I must admit i did find one camera i used (borrowed) that took me a while to adjust to and that was a 5d mk3 but pretty good at a high iso ...

 

[Dale.]

I have used the 7d the 40d the 80d along with my 1dmkiv and 1dx this last 12 months at some time or another on the Little Owls and no one as noticed or they have and not pointed it out....I know some people can get a lot out of a raw image and i can fully understand that but i dont like spending long processing a image in fact it takes me a few mins..I must admit i did find one camera i used (borrowed) that took me a while to adjust to and that was a 5d mk3 but pretty good at a high iso ...

I try to spend as little time as possible in post these days, life is too short, I just do the basics.

If you were closer, you could try my 7, I wouldn't mind being wrong about it!