The announcement of the 7D and my decision to buy a 5D.
I’ve been patiently waiting to make a decision. The 7D turmoil of rumored specs had an important role in holding me back, until they were officially announced…
It was both an exciting and anguishing day for me. I sat through a 2 day shower of information at the Collision Conference trying to make sense of it all.
It has been getting clearer and clearer that no one single camera is going to satisfy my needs…
Hybrid cameras concept and all the hype around them have brought a sense of faux hope that I could actually compile it all into one all mighty device… wonderful thought… budget wise, size wise and manual wise… yes, cause I’m one of those that actually reads the manual. Not to mention how much more intimate you could get with a camera you’d use in both worlds.
There’s still light at the end of the tunnel in the form of a FF35 Scarlet, but not only is it still too far away, the budget sits in a much higher “neighborhood”, which despite the inherent “better view”, it still won’t have autofocus, which I can’t live without for the type of photography I do and want to keep doing.
I had all the facts now and the hardest decision was in my hands… On top of it all I sold my old faithful 5D and couldn’t bare the idea of being alive without a stills camera!
The crop sensor in the 7D is an absolute deal killer for the photographer in me!
I remember when I upgraded to a 5D from my (then) beloved 20D, planning on keeping it as a backup camera… but once you go Full Frame a new world of creative opportunities unfolds in your view finder and you’d have to be mad to ever go back… needless to say it wasn’t long until my 20D found a new owner…
The only advantage a crop factor brings to the plate is turning your 400mm zoom into a 640mm! Or just multiply 1.6 by the focal length of your lens. Which can be very interesting for several specific uses, not to mention it usually brings a few extra frames per second performance to continuous bursts.
The biggest problem of solving such 240mm shortcomings on a FF camera, comes in the form of several thousands of $$$ or the loss of autofocus and light… which I admit is less then ideal… so much so, I haven’t taken a single surfing picture since I sold my 20D years ago… and boy, do I miss it…
400mm x 1.6 = 640mm But this is where the appeal for a crop sensor camera ends for me!
The next thing you loose when you go FF is all the crappy lenses in your kit… FF will expose the very worst in your lenses! But by the time you’ve replaced the weak links, you realize why your photography wasn’t getting to where it is now… and that’s the important part that will never allow you to go back!
Now as far as HD goes, it’s obvious that the commodities of the myriad of frame rates on the 7D make it a lot more appealing, but it all comes at price too… and we’re not talking $$$ here…
The 7D has no chance of having the same low light performance of the 5D! It won’t be a world of difference, but it just won’t match it! But the most important factor is going to be the look and feel of the footage it will be capable of producing, which once again, has no chance of having some of the wonderful characteristics that have made us all fall in love with the 5D MKII.
I hear people very excited about the proximity in size of the 7D sensor to super 35mm… it all sounds really cool! But unless you’re Rodney Charters or you were lucky enough to be “best school friend bro” with some hotshot at Panavision, I’m really curious to see which lenses are you going to use to take advantage of that???
The other BIG problem is when you need to go wide… yeah, yeah, yeah… 15mm x 1.6 = 24mm, but does it feel the same as a good old 24mm?! Not even close!
(real) 24mm
You see, not only has the lens sensor relationship been f#$%ed with, you shrunk the diameter of the barrel, if we’re talking about an EF-S lens. If you actually use a “real” 17mm, you’re only seeing less then half of the real estate that your lens provides… beyond the simple “zoom” into the lens that’s happening here, all the gorgeous, dynamic distortions your beloved wide lens used to produce will never meet the sensor and you’ll be wondering just what’s missing to your beautiful shot… well, now you know how it was lost!
And what if you actually want, or worst even, need!!! a 15mm shot? Throw a wide angle adapter bought on ebay and see how plasticky your photos and video footage will look now… but hey! It’s 24p…
15mm
Which brings me to the film look issue…
Film look does not come from frame rates, or any camera alone. If you’ve been looking for it in your 24p and still haven’t found it, try searching in your heart, cause an image full of emotion will always be more cinematic then any frame rate, on any given camera… this might have made it a whole lot more confusing… haha! But that’s why I live for this!!!
Why not the 7D, then?!
Just like this page is composed by many different words and I struggle, within my limited vocabulary, not to repeat the same ones over and over, film has a much more complex “grammar”, a lot more daunting to master and just as susceptible to individual interpretation, as the most abstract of poems. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much is a moving shot worth?
The point is that I struggle to write in a language that is not my own, due to my limited vocabulary, so why would I want to loose more then half of my “words” by using a x1.6 crop factor in my dear lenses?
Don’t know about you… but 30p feels a lot less castrating to me…?!
Thank you Canon! For once again delivering us the amazing new camera that would be perfect if it only had the feature it’s missing…
Eagerly waiting the arrival of my new 5D!!!
T ; )~
Enjoying your articles.
Just picking up on a couple of your comments since a couple 7D vids that have been released…
http://www.vimeo.com/6475938 (full res version to download here: http://exposureroom.com/dublinspeople)
http://www.vimeo.com/6487566
You said… “The 7D has no chance of having the same low light performance of the 5D!… has no chance of having some of the wonderful characteristics that have made us all fall in love with the 5D MKII”
In light of these vids would you still say the 7D can’t hold it’s own against the 5D? Would be interested in hearing your thought.
Cheers,
Chris
Hi Chris,
Thank you for your comment!
It makes me very happy to know you’re both reading and enjoying my articles!
I never said the 7D wouldn’t hold its own… and Philip Bloom has already stated that the 7D is slightly noisier in low light then the 5D.
In this article I said: “It won’t be a world of difference, but it just won’t match it!”
I hope my worthing choice does justice to that?!
In face of the videos you mentioned, it’s a little too soon to comment as Mr Bloom hasn’t posted the color corrected version of Dublin’s people, yet. But I’ll take a chance and say I can already see many of the factors I pointed out.
I’ve been trying to stay on top of any videos that pop up on my TweetDeck 7D searches and so far I haven’t seen anything that could make me change my opinion…
Phillip used a 35mm 1.4 in Dublin and a 50mm 1.4 in Sofia. 35mm x 1.6 = 56mm
Watch them side by side/on after the other and compare. The mood is undeniably different. This is the result of many factors. You might even prefer Dublin… beauty is in the eye of the beholder!
But if you do feel a difference, there’s also a part in this article that modestly attempts to explain how this difference comes to be.
I’ve shot crop frame for many years. Since the first Canon pro-sumer DSLR (the surfing shot in the beginning was taken with 3MP D30, if my memory doesn’t betray me). Since I bought my first 5D (the original), I’ve learned to appreciate, care and love the unique characteristics of Full Frame and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to go back…
The “Perya” short doc is a great example of full formed piece, since most of the stuff we’ve seen so far is boke-porn reels, like Stu Masowitch calls it.
For me, the scary part is how I’m not seeing any cinematic enhancements and we’re looking at native 24p…
T ; )~
Thanks for the clarification Tito, everything you said makes sense
Oh, and Philip has now uploaded the vid colour corrected here: http://vimeo.com/6492807
Sofia does look a little glossier / slicker to my eyes. Looking forward to seeing some side-by-side tests, which I think Philip has in the pipeline.
Cheers,
Chris
Nice article, Tito.
“Curious to know what @andrevr says?!”
I’ll let someone with FAR more credibility and experience speak for me.
Must admit, I do wish he’d put the leading paragraphs at the end, tho.
For me, they would have made more sense, arranged like that.
Just my 50 cents…
Hey Andre, nice link.
On a similar theme, check this thread out here:
5D / 7D – Full Frame vs. 1.6x – Pros and Cons:
http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=182120&page=3
Some quotes from the thread….
“The fact of the matter is: for a cinema shooter, the 7D is going to deliver the same DOF and the same FOV as a 35mm movie camera. Done. End of story. No need to worry about whether a 50mm “becomes” and 80mm, because it doesn’t. Put a 50mm lens on a movie camera, and then take it off and put that lens on the 7D, and you’ll have identical results (or near-enough identical that nobody’s complaining.) The only reason a “crop factor” exists is to talk about how the lens field of view compares to that of a 35mm still camera. Has nothing to do with us motion/moving image folks. ”
“You are absolutely right, James, and here’s the main reason why I will not buy a 7D. Current APS-C lenses aren’t really fast and it’s impossible to achieve the T2.8 film look (I think 3.5 is the fastest) Using standard 35mm photography lenses makes it very difficult to obtain mid & wide angles so you will end up shooting further away than you would like, hence drastically changing your depth of field and visually ‘compressing’ the composition of your framing. Using a 7D with an adequate adaptor and cinema lenses would be an ideal situation, but I will never be able to afford a set of Cookes, Zeiss’ or an Angenieux zoom…”
“For me, it’s MUCH easier to get most of what I’m going for as far as composition, depth compression and perspective on subject(s) with an APS-C (7D) sized sensor. Where I find myself living on a 25mm or 35mm and the sort of image it produces– mentally trained to know exactly what I’m going to get if I’m ten inches away from a subject at minimal focus distance or ten feet away from a subject– on an APS-C sized sensor, I always felt like I had to have a 60 or 70mm to get what I wanted out of the MKii as far as perspective goes. A 50mm on the MKii will easily begin to distort the perspective of a subject framed head to toe, while a 25mm on a RED (while about the same focal length) looks as though the perspective is actually very different and much more natural (aka no leaning bodies or bowed lines) to my eyes.”
“The 7D is pretty much right on with the Sensor Size of say, the RED. And RED is around S35mm size, the same size frame that nearly everything is shot on that you watch in theaters. Full Frame is not the current acquisition standard in Cinematography. By acuiring images with 7D’s image sensor you will be immediately within range of reproducing the same cinematic characteristics that everyone has been striving toward for so many years. Pulling focus @ Stops of 2.8 will be simple for the practiced focus puller. And even wide open at 1.4 it’s not too difficult at all. DOF, Angle of View, Field of View will be plenty good for this stuff. It’s a very happy medium between everything, and works very well.”
“With the 7D, you get 35mm movie-camera field of view and depth of field. The 7D’s sensor is almost exactly the same size as a 35mm movie camera. So you’ll get the same perspective, the same depth of field, the same “feel” as 35mm movies. The 5D doesn’t give that, it’s too shallow (as compared to movies). The 7D replicates the DOF characteristics of a motion-picture camera perfectly”
Would be interested in hearing peoples thoughts on that.
Cheers,
Chris
Hi André,
Thank you so much for reading and commenting my article!!!
I found the article you sent me very interesting. But you should clearly note Mr. Rockwell’s is focusing in a completely different angle then mine.
I clearly state throughout my whole article that it is in lens language that I feel castrated with a crop sensor camera. I didn’t mention resolution a single time…
There’s a few thing’s that I question, though:
“If you just want to make great photos of things that matter, don’t worry about this baloney and get whatever you find convenient.”
- Maybe we should all go and buy point and shoots then, cause they’re are definitely the most convenient?! And they come in pretty much all the Mega Pixel flavors you may need…
“Don’t start counting pixels until you can make the right pixels.”
- Neither his article nor mine seem specifically oriented at photographers that are just starting out, looking for their first camera. At least mine isn’t and if anyone is looking at a 5D as their 1st camera, please don’t say I was the one recommending it.
The only thing that with all due respect just stands out as flat out wrong is that you can get away with lesser lenses on a Full Frame camera?!
I stated exactly the opposite and not only do I speak of my costly experience of having to replace many of my lenses when I went FF, but also of the countless places where I have read exactly the opposite.
A full frame camera will expose the worst in your lenses, mainly because it’s in the edges that both distortion and vignetting becomes more prominent, and a crop sensor will stay 1.6x further away from the edges then a FF camera…
I really appreciate your presence in my blog! Hope you find my comments helpful and always feel free to disagree! It’s what makes it fun and us artist, not engineers…
T ; )~
Hi Chris,
Great to see your continued interactivity at RadRaven’s ; )~
I’ll be honest to say this steps a little out of my league, but here’s my 2 cents:
“I hear people very excited about the proximity in size of the 7D sensor to super 35mm… it all sounds really cool! But unless you’re Rodney Charters or you were lucky enough to be “best school friend bro” with some hotshot at Panavision, I’m really curious to see which lenses are you going to use to take advantage of that???”
(excerpt from my article)
One HUGE factor I don’t see anyone talking about, is the depth of the 7D’s sensor pit?! There is a reason why you haven’t seen a PL mount for the 5D MKII when there’s already a great one for the GH1 (a much less popular camera) nor any announcements of one in development… Film sits a lot closer to the lens then DSLR’s sensors. That’s one of the biggest differences from the micro 4/3 system.
If you use a Canon lens on a Red camera for instance, you’re going to have a very identical crop factor… which brings exactly the same limitations I report in my article. I don’t know if you can use an EF-S lens??? But once again, all the advantages and disadvantages between crop sensors and FF are the same…
I also believe you need an adapter to make that combination even possible, not just an EF mount… but don’t quote me on this one…
I don’t know how Panavision went about it… but how many of us can afford to rent a lens you can’t even buy?!
Thank you again for your participation, Chris!
T ; )~
Agreed.
Robust (but polite and reasoned) debate is what makes us better
With due regard for Ken’s sometimes um, unconventional and simplistic views, in this case we align and his ‘different’ angle is exactly what I wanted to highlight.
I’m not disagreeing with your POV, I’m saying there are different frames of reference from which to look at this, so while I agree with you for you, I don’t necessarily with you for me, or for Sharon.
See:
“Neither his article nor mine seem specifically oriented at photographers that are just starting out, looking for their first camera. At least mine isn’t and if anyone is looking at a 5D as their 1st camera, please don’t say I was the one recommending it.”
Yes agreed, but I think you’re missing an important category here. There’s a HUGE wedge of folks who are not 1st time DSLR users, but are also not at your level of critical requirement. And that pretty much wraps up people like me. Hence my particular views on the subject. And my advice to people making the jump from PNS, or entry DSLR.
1. What do you want to shoot? If you don’t know, then pretty much ANY camera will do. Go take 10, 20, 30 thousand pictures, until you DO know.
2. Once you DO know (portrait,landscape or whatever combo of the available genre’s) choose the glass that will give you the best chance of success at those types of image.
3. Now hang as little sensor behind that, as is needed to do justice to the glass.
Now of course I realise that’s pretty simplified (and you can see why I favor Ken’s views in this regard
) and it would be trivial possible to construct a clever argument to poke all kinds of holes in it, but it has one undeniable advantage for me. It’s what I honestly believe.
I think too many people take well-meant advice, albeit well-meant for a different class of shooter, and mentally promote themselves into that class, and then go spend $$$$$$$$ on gear, that they have no idea how to get the best from, and become disillusioned with the ROI.
So yes, I agree with ‘not a 5D for a first DSLR’ but I extend it further to maybe not a 5D for the next camera either. Perhaps a 5D, when the glass you need to make the shot, needs a 5D to complement it, eh?
“lesser lenses on a Full Frame camera”
Haha! Ken at his best. Exaggeration for effect. I think he was trying to drive the comparison point, but I agree with you, get the best glass you can afford, for the job.
Cheers!
André
Hi André,
Thank you again for your presence at RadRaven’s!!!
It seems like we’re on the same page on everything!?
When I suggest my articles to anyone, my intention is to offer people information they might find useful.
This article in specific has on the tittle “My Decision”, which means this was based on my thought process for my own necessities.
I try to construct my articles in the same way I would like to see other people more experience or more technical then me, write their own.
Don’t know if it’s noticeable, but I do try to stay away from heavy jargon as much as possible, resorting to comparisons and metaphors to clarify the process and make it accessible for people of all levels to be able to make their own assessments.
When I suggested the read to your friend, I wasn’t trying to imply she should get a 5D. I know nothing about her or the work she produces. I was just pointing her to some extra information, as I happened to stumble upon one of her tweets that had both 5D and 7D in it…
I see a lot of comments, tweets and blogs, about the 7D as a better choice over the 5D specs wise, but don’t see half as much information about aesthetics and technical artistic choices, therefore the reason I thought there was room for doing these type of articles.
Another thing I would like to make clear is that I have nothing against the 7D! I’m actually considering getting one for a double mount setup, to take advantage of both the 5D and 7D strenghts. And interestingly enough, if I don’t come up with a different solution in the meanwhile, the 7D will be used to take stills while the 5D shoots HD… nothing’s linear in this world and that’s why I love it. I’ll do a post on that setup when the time comes.
I had a person recently message me, saying how relieved they were after reading my article, as he was considering selling his 5D to get a 7D, before…
I hope you and your friend have taken something out of my scribbles? That’s all I’m here for. Besides I don’t even have any links to any merchants… I have no personal gain on the choices people make. I’m doing this for fun and if I can help someone in the process… fantastic!!!
Thanks again for your interaction!!!
T ; )~
André,
Just a quick add on note; after looking at the beautiful work you have in your photoblog, in my most honest and unbiased opinion think that the type of work you do, would benefit TREMENDOUSLY with a full frame camera and the right lenses… just my 2 cents…
T ; )~
I like the happy face on the side of your website! Very nice!
Thank you! Glad you like it ; )~