Canon 7D at ISO 3200, and DPP processing vs Adobe Lightroom

By National Geographic Photographer IRA BLOCK

UPDATE READ VIDEO FIRST IMPRESSION HERE

I was starting to worry about the horrible orange color in the 7D raw files, when I remembered reading that the new adobe raw and lightroom raw would be able to open and process the 7D files, but not support them. What this means is that adobe hasn't really evaluated the raw files and assigned a real color value to the rendered files you see in their programs. 

If you notice both Adobe Raw and lightroom develop have setting under camera calibration that lets you choose 'photo styles' similar to the picture styles on the Canon cameras. In the camera you are selecting what look the jpeg will have, in the raw processor you are picking how the initial raw file will be rendered.

I loaded the new Canon DPP that came with the 7D, and hey, the files look great. I'm not a fan of DPP, it's slow and clunky, but obviously Canon spent some time on how the files should look. The photos I took today are all shot at ISO3200, on auto white balance with the 24-105mm lens, cropped with the lens to match image area. They were all shot on manual exposure to keep the exposure the same, and i did use autofocus. It is interesting that i had more sharp images with the 7D than the 5DMkII. As you can see the color between the 7D and the 5D is a lot closer using DPP. Again, there were no adjustments made in the raw processing, we opened the files and then saved them as jpegs.
For comparison, included are some files from the 7D using Adobe Camera Raw - and yes they look very orange.

As for shooting at ISO 3200, the 5DMkII is less noisy, but i think the 7D is acceptable. The close up images are cropped at about 100% with nothing else done to them.

Canon 7D above iso 3200 processed with DPP

Canon 7d above iso 3200 crop processed with DPP

Canon 7d above processed with Adobe Lightroom iso 3200

above Canon 5d MK II iso 3200 processed with DPP

above Canon 5d MK II iso 3200 crop

If you need accurate focus, and high frames per second, i would use the 7D even at 3200. Otherwise, stick with the 5D  above 1200. I still wonder how good the 7D would have looked if they kept it a 12 megapixel camera instead of cramming so many pixels on a teeny sensor.

Next I'll play with the video, unless Stephen has beat me to it.

-Ira Block

Read Ira's initial review of the camera here

Comments

[Mick B. Laughton]

John B sure wants you to know that using the 7D with Lightroom 2.5 isn't optimal. No, he really wants you to know that. Pay attention, John B is in da pixel-peeping house. Did he mention LR_Tom's post?

[John.B]

The Lightroom Program Manager, Tom Hogarty, has announced that CR5.5/Lr2.5 have extremely preliminary support for the 7D, that files open but they are a long way from having final code in place. http://twitter.com/LR_Tom/status/4010132137

Posting what amounts to pre-beta high ISO compares on the web doesn't actually tell us anything without using a version of Lr/CR that has actual 7D support. We won't know how well high ISO pictures from the 7D look with the Adobe toolsets until at least CR 5.6 and Lr 2.6 are released (and there isn't even an Adobe Labs beta of these versions at this time). Better to wait.

Besides, Lr/CR has always tended toward orange-ish skin tones from Canon raw files.

[Milos Djuric]

i am more of a nikon-guy, but the 7d seems very interessting...

[Stephen Alvarez]

I remember a similar issue with the 5D MK II when it was new before Adobe fully supported it. As you say Ira it will be taken care of soon.
On the whole I think that DPP give me greater color fidelity in conversion, but I find myself using photoshop for it convenience.