Oh dear, dear dear

taz

taz

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Ian
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Having been an avid Nikon user for many years I recently bought a Canon 40D to try. It came with the 17-85mm IS 'kit' lens and a grip.
I took it out this afternoon to take a few snaps with my wifes new D7000 alongside fitted with the 24-85mm AFS lens. Now bearing in mind that I know my way around the Nikon menu system and I don't have a manual for the Canon, so it was pretty much guesswork, I am totally blown away with the colours produced by the Canon.
The Nikon was more or less set up as I like it (although I've just found out it was on standard rather than vivid) and I've no idea how the Canon is set up but WOW.
I just wonder what it would like with 'decent' glass or is the 17-85 pretty good anyway?
I am suitably impressed and now thinking about my options.
I am really considering swapping sides dammit.
 
I thought you'd swapped sides? Something about a 40D? :D
 
Can't say I blame you, the way Nikon handles colours was the main reason I called it a day after Coolpix 8700 and D40 ownership, that and the menus/controls.
 
Alan Clogwyn said:
Can't say I blame you, the way Nikon handles colours was the main reason I called it a day after Coolpix 8700 and D40 ownership, that and the menus/controls.
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The photos I took today were a repeat of ones I took with a D700 some months back and I have to say the colours, to my eye were very similar. I shall have to dig out the old photos and compare side by side.
The menu system on the Canon is going to take a little getting used to, but it seems better than it used to be (we had a 20D a few years ago). I downloaded the manual so I'll have to trawl thru' that I suppose.
 
Actually the 17-85 is renowned as not that brilliant (compared with the newer 15-85 at least).

Were you shooting jpgs? You might just have had the saturation turned up. When I've shot jpgs with my 40D, they always come out nice and vivid.
You can probably get colour profiles for the .NEF files that imitate canon colours rendering.

Honestly, it must just be a setting really. Canon do produce nice colours, but I doubt it _should_ be much/at all better than your D7000.

Colour rendering seems to be a very personal thing, I've seen enough people from both sides of the fence saying they hate the way the other brand renders colours.

Try a fuji S5 before dropping your nikkor lenses for canon colours. The S5 is supposed to have some of the best colour rendering ever. It's a nikon D200 body with fuji's sensor and still nikon F mount.
 
If you want nice colours, try a Pentax. Seriously.
 
I couldn't buy a camera that spells shutter priority TV!:naughty:
Allan
 
OK, now I'm going to eat my words.
Got another D7000 and did a test against the 40D.
Shot the 40D on a tripod with a Tokina 12-24, Canon 10-22 and Sigma 8-16 at both f4 (ish) and f8.
Then I put the D7000 with a Nikon 10-24 and then a Tokina 12-24, again at f4 and f8 (OK so I've got a lot of lenses).
I just pressed AF and shot.
Wide open the Canon did not focus to infinity for some reason with the Tokina and the Canon (maybe my settings were wrong). Of the three lenses the Sigma impressed me the most.
When you come to the Nikon combination the difference just blew me away.
I guess I'll be going back to the dark side.
 
:lol: your geting blown away alot, is it windy around your parts? :cuckoo:

I have used both Nikon (it was awful came out in a rash, short of breath etc etc.) and a Canon and IQ wise there aint much difference when using similar speced cameras...... there shouldnt really be all a camera is doing is recoedign what it sees.

I simply chose Canon because I felt it was easier to use.
 
Did you expect a 4 year old canon body to be better than the most recent generation nikon body? :thinking:
 
taz said:
OK, now I'm going to eat my words.
Got another D7000 and did a test against the 40D.
Shot the 40D on a tripod with a Tokina 12-24, Canon 10-22 and Sigma 8-16 at both f4 (ish) and f8.
Then I put the D7000 with a Nikon 10-24 and then a Tokina 12-24, again at f4 and f8 (OK so I've got a lot of lenses).
I just pressed AF and shot.
Wide open the Canon did not focus to infinity for some reason with the Tokina and the Canon (maybe my settings were wrong). Of the three lenses the Sigma impressed me the most.
When you come to the Nikon combination the difference just blew me away.
I guess I'll be going back to the dark side.
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What were you testing for here?

The canon doesn't seem to be set up properly if they wouldn't focus to infinity?

Seems more of a lens test than body test.

But still, as above, different generations of dslr! A 60/600d would be a better comparison.
 
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squishy said:
Did you expect a 4 year old canon body to be better than the most recent generation nikon body? :thinking:
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Have to agree here. The 40D is more like 5 years old actually, and I would expect a similar spec but much newer camera to deliver better IQ. You also need to test it on high quality glass, a decent/similar OEM lens is needed for tests.

Modern bodies are all much of a muchness, and greater thought needs to be put into the "system" rather than just the body.

Steve
 
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odd jim said:
What were you testing for here?

The canon doesn't seem to be set up properly if they wouldn't focus to infinity?

Seems more of a lens test than body test.

But still, as above, different generations of dslr! A 60/600d would be a better comparison.
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Actually it was intended more as a comparison of the lenses especially as I had the Tokina available in both flavours.

But the point is when I first tried my wifes D7000 against the 40D I preferred the Canon but today there was no comparison.

I'm not saying it wouldn't focus to infinity, but just activating the AF (single shot mode) without changing any focus points, it didn't.

I'll put a link to the samples tomorrow hopefully.
 
manualfocus-g said:
Is it also not possible that the Canon mount Sigma lens may be faulty or a worse copy? Either way, the reality is that the D7000 has the best APS-C sensor out there, and as such should be delivering cleaner high ISO images and a stunning amount of dynamic range.
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Actually I think I said I liked the Sigma the best.
 
Something in the 40D or the lenses you tested it on is dodgy.
 
Taz, I guess there's nothing wrong with a little experimentation.

See you next year when the 7Dmk11 comes out then :D
 
taz said:
Since I bought it on these hallowed forums just a few days ago I should hope not.
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Copy variances will always exist due to manufacturer tolerences, and there's a good chance the owner won't know unless they know what they are looking for or have another copy to compare against.

Anyway, I mis-read the post as it appears the Canon lens is also having problems, AF wise, which suggests an AF system issue or user / configuration error.
 
taz said:
I wasn't so bothered about the focus issue, but was more concerned about the actual appearance - contrast and colour
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But again, half of that is how the lens performs, not the body.
 
taz said:
Why - since I like using wide angles I wanted to test the lenses I was looking to use. These are the best lenses available at this range.
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The biggest difference, other than actual quality, between 3rd party and OEM lenses is the variation in quality. OEM lenses (seem to) have tighter quality control than the likes of Sigma and Tamron. Personally I wouldn't be happy with the results of any tests with 3rd party lenses unless I had compared them with 2 or 3 models and on a couple of bodies.

Steve
 
taz said:
Please explain
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Some of the shots from the 40D are clearly either drastically miss-focussed or there is a fault with the lens or sensor.

This one seems particularly bad:
http://s1118.photobucket.com/albums/k610/taz1951/?action=view&current=CC10f4Large.jpg

That's not just focussed missed, something else is wrong there.
As odd jim said, if you have a lens that's faulty like that it's probably doing no good to the lens' colour and contrast rendering as well.

Apart from that, where you have shots with the 40D that look OK (the shots with the 8-16) they look very comparable to the D7000 to me (at web size any how)
Are these from RAW files or SOOC jpegs? Because how the jpgs look depends largely on how you've set the camera to deal with them, and if it's from RAW files, the contrast and colour depend nearly entirely on how you deal with them.
I expect the D7000 has better jpg conversion at standard settings than the 40D.

But honestly, if you shoot RAW and process well there won't be that much in it between them in terms of colours and contrast. The D7000 will have more dynamic range to play with though.

Make no mistake, the D7000 does have a better sensor, but you can hardly judge the 40D going on results from lenses that are blatantly off.
 
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I hadn't looked at the test shots, but let's look at a wide open Tokina shot. Comparing CT12F4 to NT12F4, the Nikon shot has a 2 x longer exposure (if you take into account the fact that you used different ISO settings), which is why it looks so vibrant in comparison to the Canon shot. Also, it looks like the Nikon shot has DRO (or whatever the dynanimc range optimiser is called) switched on as it doesn't look like a normal shot at all, almost HDR, with shadows looking brighter than they should.

As for IQ, the Canon and Tokina shots look appalling wide open. Surely a focusing issue, otherwise I'd have to presume that both lenses were faulty. The Sigma looks fine to me. Very strange.
 
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