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MillimeterCanon EOS 7D Review
Jan 28, 2010 12:00 PM, By Jan Ozer
HDSLR provides striking images with good depth of field and little noise.
Multisubject depth-of-field shots.
Next, I lined up Rose and her sister, Whatley, bracketing their buddy Jaison to further assess depth of field. Again, I'm about 4ft. from Rose at the front of the line, with Jaison about 3ft. from her, and Whatley about 3ft. behind Jaison. In the video, I pan through the line, focusing on all three in turn, then I come back to Rose with the focus set on her sister in the back.
Again, the results were very good, though the video was starting to look noisy. At this point, I started wondering whether the relatively high f/stop level of the lens (f/4) was limiting depth of field and low-light performance. This led to this exchange with my Canon product rep.
Me: The two lenses that you sent me both had a minimum aperture of 3.5 or 4, which is relatively high. This would seem to both reduce performance in low light and reduce depth of field as compared to a lens with an f/stop of 2.0 or less. I got very good results in most tests. I'm just wondering if performance in poor lighting might have been improved.
Canon: If you would have used a lens with an f/stop less than 3.5 or 4 the performance in low light would have been better. Using a lens such as a 50mm f/1.2 would have made a major difference.
Me: Thanks for letting me know. Just out of curiosity, why didn't you send a lens like that?
Canon: We didn't have any of those lenses available at that time. Sorry about that.
There you have it. If you're a serious digital SLR user or have experience with high-end videocameras with detachable lenses, or film cameras, you already know that your video will only be as good as the lens that you attach to your camera. If most of your experience comes from camcorders with fixed lenses, you've learned to get the best results with what you've got. With the 7D, if you don't like the results, you can buy and use a different lens, which is one of the camera's charms.
Overall, though, so far, so good. Great results with the charts, impressive depth of field with little noise in one test, and good depth of field with slightly more noise in another. This gave me the confidence to take the 7D out for a real test run, and here the results weren't so good.
Specifically, a couple of ballet students in my wife's company wanted audition clips to send to ballet schools and colleges. I decided to shoot with the 7D. To be honest, the pressure wasn't really on. Ballet schools and colleges are used to videos shot by parents with $300 camcorders. Assuming I could live up to that standard, my experimental work wouldn't hurt the dancers, and there was substantial potential upside.
The shoot was technically challenging. Lighting was provided by the fluorescent lights in the studio, and the positioning of the shoot forced me to use the wide-angle lens. I shot the auditions separately. In the first, I set ISO at 6400, shutter at 125, and f/stop at 4, which was the lowest available setting. The ISO was clearly too high, and there was noticeable noise in the background. The video was better than an amateur's, but not by much.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.