DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY NEWS

Side by Side Comparison:  Canon EOS 7D vs Canon EOS 5D Mark II

October 3, 2009 -- My EOS 7D just arrived late yesterday afternoon thanks to Jarret over at Hunt's Photo & Vieo, and I spent a better portion of last night and this morning setting up both cameras to record the same subject and at similar focal lengths and settings.  Unfortunately, I do not have two of the same lenses so these test are designed to just give a general overview and are not exact by any means.

In testing I discovered that the EOS 7D seems to record at a higher bit rate since its file size for the same recordings are always 16-18% larger than the file size from the 5D Mark II. 

In the 59 second video below.  The EOS 7D's file size was 353,685KB compared to the EOS 5D Mark II's 298,874KB. Both cameras were capturing the same scene from about two inches apart, set to 1080p, ISO 800, F/4.0, and 1/60th shutter.

For this footage the Canon EOS 7D was outfitted with the Canon EF 24-105mm F/4L IS Lens set to approx. 70mm.  The Canon EOS 5D Mark II was outfitted with the 70-200mm F/2.8L IS lens set to 70mm.  

The EOS 5D Mark II clearly has a shallower DOF due to the larger sensor, but both cameras produced nearly identical sharpness at the focal point, which was set on the Yamaha logo above the LCD panel.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II vs Canon EOS 7D (Piano Test)

Canon EOS 5D Mark II vs Canon EOS 7D (Pool Table Test)

In the comparison below the Canon 5D Mark II was recording using the inexpensive 50mm F/1.8 lens set to F/4.0, while the Canon EOS 7D was using the EF 24-105mm F/4L IS lens set also to F/4.0.

All other settings were identical: 1080p, 30fps, 1/60th second shutter, f/4.0, and ISO 1600.  Footage was split screened using Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and exported to 720p using Adobe Media Encoder. No other rendering or grading was done to either of the clips.

New Split Screen ISO Comparison

Added Sunday, October 5th, 2009
In the video below I used the identical lens (24-105mm f/4L) on both the 5DMKII and 7D. Due to the 7D's cropped sensor I had to visually match up the focal length to match the 5D's setting of 50mm.

Unlike the previous two split-screen videos (piano & pool table), the two cameras here were NOT recording simultaneously. I captured video at all ISO's with the first camera, then switched and did the same test with the other. This was the only way to set it up using the same lens.

Every 5 seconds in this video the ISO will shift from 100, 200, 400, 640, 1000, 1600, 3200, 4000, 5000, 6400, 12800. The camera's were both set on Manual and after increasing the ISO I then adjusted the aperture to bring the exposure meter back to the middle. I kept the shutter speed at 1/60th since I was recording at 30fps. On the very last ISO setting (12,800) I had to bump the 5D's shutter speed up to 1/125th to get the exposure centered since I couldn't bring the aperture beyond f/22.

With regard to noise, they both seem to be equally matched until about ISO 4000, where it looks like the 5DMKII pulls further ahead as the ISO increases beyond that point.

Sharpness seems to go back and forth. At some ISO/Aperture settings the 5D looked sharper and at others the 7D looked sharper. I'm not sure why that is and might do another test sometime this week to see if I get similar results.

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