Whether you’re doing environmental portraits or onsite fashion, high ISO performance is a big plus. We were pretty conservative, we set up a tungsten lighting set and shot it at ISO 800, mostly to get down to some nice shallow depth of field, shooting at f4. ISO has a big impact on resolution, so it will be interesting to see what the results look like. Because the depth of field is so shallow, focus will be a critical issue.
Here are the three main shots again, as JPEGs out of the camera.
Canon EOS 5D Mark II |
Canon EOS 7D |
Canon EOS 50D |
You have the same color shift, except a little more pronounced than the daylight shots, and maybe the 5D MII is even shifting to yellow more.
When you take a look at 100% you start to see the effects of noise processing on resolution. You’re also seeing what sheer megapixels and better noise processing can do to help out this loss. (5D MII, 7D, 50D)
Canon EOS 5D Mark II |
Canon EOS 7D |
Canon EOS 50D |
Looking at the files processed in Canon’s Digital Photo Professional we’re seeing an interesting similarity between the 5D MII files and the 7D. It seems like the 5D MII is getting closer to the yellowish rendering of the 7D. The magenta cast on the 50D seems a little less pronounced. All in all, the DPP software seems to bring all the cameras a little closer together.
Canon EOS 5D Mark II |
Canon EOS 7D |
Canon EOS 50D
|
The 100% views seem almost identical to what we saw in the JPEG samples.
Once again, we bring the files into Adobe Camera RAW and take a look, at the Default settings.
Canon EOS 5D Mark II |
Canon EOS 7D |
Canon EOS 50D
|
This seems to be a little tighter still- the magenta cast in the 50D files is a little less pronounced, and there’s more orange and yellow, giving a fuller tone.}
Taking a look at 100% shows the same improvement in sharpness as the daylight shots, except for one little thing- the 7D. All the files have increased quality as far as noise and detail goes, but the 7D still feels soft, especially mushy in the eyebrows.
Just for argument’s sake, here’s the 7D shot that we applied basic levels of USM.
Canon EOS 7D with USM Applied
The edge definitions are there in the second, USM sample, they just are lacking contrast.
This could very well be a function of Adobe Camera RAW and the status of the version that processes the 7D files. As we’ve said, it’s still in beta, (5.6b), and we’d wager it’s going to be tightened up a bit for the 7D camera profile to read the sharpening a bit better. All in all it’s a great showing for the 5D MII, as we’d expect, an impressive job by the 50D except for that magenta cast throughout, and not a great show by the 7D at ISO 800.
