Canon EOS 70D

RFtinkerer

RFtinkerer

New member
Finally getting to upgrade my 10 year old 20D to a 70D. Shooting my sister-in-law's wedding in November. We've shot 6-7 weddings with the good-ol' 20D, but convinced my wife since it was her sister...well...gots to be better, rite? Also did a large banner recently for the baseball team and the poor resolution showed up. 6' x 2.5' print. Haven't done prints above 13"x19" before and didn't notice anything particularly lacking until now. Interpolation up to that size did what you'd think it'd do...soft undetailed lines up close. So now is the time, the time is now. Do another banner and wedding with better resolution, ISO sensitivity.

Looking at the reviews, the Nikon D7100 is better quality. Which would be ace, but I have a 17-35 f2.8L, 24-70 f2.8L, and 70-200 f4L that are telling me to stick with Canon! Also, the apparent great video is exciting. More fun with the DSLR, anyway. Can't wait until Thursday! :drool:

One of the irritating things is no PC sync. Guess I'll have to use flash sync with the lights, but I liked controlling the 2 other lights without bothering with the on camera flash before. Oooooooh well.
 
Yeah I got one recently.

IIRC you can use the built in flash for flash sync without actually firing the built in flash.

Just checked and yep the setting is there under "flash control" then "Built-in flash settings" then "wireless function" you can set to use external flash only when using flash sync.

Also, PC sync is working as far as I can tell, the camera comes with a pretty nice EOS utility which can operate the camera and here is an OKish android app too.

I haven't used my flash much since getting this beast because of the auto ISO setting but I know the flash sync works just fine with my 580EX

The other thing I noticed is that the pixels don't seem to matter now (unless you have a million dollar lens) when zooming its always blur before I see pixels.
 
Deimos said:
Yeah I got one recently.

IIRC you can use the built in flash for flash sync without actually firing the built in flash.

Just checked and yep the setting is there under "flash control" then "Built-in flash settings" then "wireless function" you can set to use external flash only when using flash sync.

Also, PC sync is working as far as I can tell, the camera comes with a pretty nice EOS utility which can operate the camera and here is an OKish android app too.

I haven't used my flash much since getting this beast because of the auto ISO setting but I know the flash sync works just fine with my 580EX

The other thing I noticed is that the pixels don't seem to matter now (unless you have a million dollar lens) when zooming its always blur before I see pixels.
Click to expand...

Cool. Cool cool cool. /Abed Thanks for the info!

Another thing with the flash though is that a lot of people have neato modern DSLRs or mirrorless with just as good (or better) ISO sensitivity. So they can use their cameras to take just as good portraits, weaseling off my poses, and think that they are getting as good quality. Which would be perfectly true. And truly I can't say GET OUT because I am doing this for free. But with the extra lighting I can not only control the illumination myself, I can show that I'm an ooooo PROFESSIONAL :bleh: photographer and the bride/groom should wait for MY photos. Selfish? YES, but I really think that my processing, balancing, highlight control for the dress, etc., is better than their stupid auto settings and those are MY poses damn it.

But if they post their photos on Facebook before I get my processing done I will **** them up. :mad:
 
I have shot in intentionally bad lighting conditions just to frustrate anyone who tried to mooch like that. Nothing I couldn't correct with proper setup, flash, and exposure bracketing. Seeing their confused chimping faces was very satisfying :)
 
How's the 70D?

I had mine with me when I was on my way to Florida last winter. Got a few nice shots along the way. Not sure the picture quality is much of a step up from my old Rebel XSi.
 
Hmm, I would think the 70D would be a good step up from the Xsi. Note the DXO specs:

http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Canon/EOS-450D

692 sports ISO, 12 MPix vs:

http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Canon/EOS-70D

926 sports ISO, 20 Mpix. I even use ISO 6400 occasionally. Greater dynamic range for landscapes, portraits... Not to mention a better, weather sealed body and articulated screen. All improvements.

Of course I had a 20D before so ya know. :D

Data collection for my astrophotography has been positive. I can use the screen with live view at 10x to focus on a bright star, twisting the screen to see easily. After collecting the data the ability to crop is rather impressive for details. I don't know; I'm having a blast and I haven't even used it yet for the primary application of wedding photography yet!
 
RFtinkerer said:
Hmm, I would think the 70D would be a good step up from the Xsi. Note the DXO specs:

http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Canon/EOS-450D

692 sports ISO, 12 MPix vs:

http://www.dxomark.com/Cameras/Canon/EOS-70D

926 sports ISO, 20 Mpix. I even use ISO 6400 occasionally. Greater dynamic range for landscapes, portraits... Not to mention a better, weather sealed body and articulated screen. All improvements.

Of course I had a 20D before so ya know. :D

Data collection for my astrophotography has been positive. I can use the screen with live view at 10x to focus on a bright star, twisting the screen to see easily. After collecting the data the ability to crop is rather impressive for details. I don't know; I'm having a blast and I haven't even used it yet for the primary application of wedding photography yet!
Click to expand...

I am so jelous! I am still shooting on my 50D hacked with MagicLantern Firmware. Still a beast.
 
Glad you're enjoying it!

Not sure what to say about the DXO numbers (DXO deserves a thread of its own). IMO, the XSi photos look better at 100%, with more pixel-level detail. Overall, the 70D is an improvement. I missed the flip screen when my A80 died; nice to have one again!

Magic Latern is being worked on for 70D.... hopefully available soon.
 
Mine came with the 18-135mm STM, though my sharpest lens is the 50mm f/1.8; it is very sharp when stopped down a bit. I've also used MFA to fine tune focus for each lens. My European SLR photos were taken with the XSi and I'm a bit happier with the general results than the 70D so far. Maybe I'll post a couple for comparison. Still have lots to learn....

Just last night I took a look at the latest samples from the Samsung NX1 with the BSI CMOS sensor, and they are noticeably sharper than the 70D. Still prefer Canon handling and image processing, however....
 
Ah, that's a good review, thanks for that. I actually did shoot the wedding last weekend and I was so glad I had the 70D for that--a night and day difference (literally) from the 20D. Almsot everything was better:

1) Autofocus. Everything this photographer discussed EXCEPT I had no problem with the AF point selection. I actually used zone selection, because it was very fast and really with my speed of shooting I could not reliably use only one point while shifting my compositions. Better everywhere, expecially in the low light, fast moving reception.

2) ISO. ISO ISO ISO. THIS SAVED MY ASS. The ceremony lighting was the worst I've ever had. No flash during the ceremony of course, but usually I could get away with shooting from the back with my 70-200 f4L and ISO 1600, tripod, without too many shots blurred by subject motion (typically about 1/30s). All until now have been in poorly lit churches, which I thought was really bad. Well my sister-in-law had the wedding outside during the late evening/night and the altar area was light mainly by clusters of Christmas lights. Romantic? Hell yeah. Good for shooting? HELL NO. I ended up at ISO 12800, f4, and barely made 1/20s to 1/30s. Yet I got her favorite shot this way during the kiss while her father (as the pastor performing the ceremony) looked on with great joy in his face while they were glowing in the Christmas lights. I have to do better noise reduction but DXO Optics has a great "Prime" option here that works well for this so whatever.

It was probably indicative that while the location's example wedding photographs had plenty of formals, day time ceremonies, and reception shots, there were none from night time ceremonies!

3) Now on to the reception. Wow. I was thinking primarily about cropping capability and ISO while getting this camera, but man it helped the reception shots. Usually I can bounce the flash from the ceiling and get "pretty good" light effects but when the area has high ceilings I end up with a light cone from the flash. Not so with this camera--extremely better lighting and color. I typically consider reception shots more snaps and throwaways from my perspective, just using them to show that families "were there" and "they had fun", only the cake cutting, them leaving for the honeymoon well-composed. Nope. SEVERAL shots during that I am proud of, very good lighting and motion capture, no real disturbing light cone effect.

4) Yep, great resolution and cropping ability. They were great. Didn't hurt that this location was beautiful, buried in the Ozark mountains with woods, river, rock formations etc. But I previously had problems with aspect ratios. 4x6", 8x10", 10x13", 11x14"...well everything is different. Sometimes they even want to flip from landscape to portrait from the same shot! So I just took a wider area shot for anything. Cropping galore and resolution for any aspect ratio necessary.

Now the bad:

1) No PC sync port. Come on Canon. Now I have to use my flash to trigger the strobes. This is what I wanted to get away from! The flash takes time to recharge and delays my ability to shoot formals. Fortunately I did these outdoors during the day, but I will get a hot shoe adapter for the next. Just an irritant.

2) While the noise sensitivity was great, now I'm spoiled and want as good and the other brands and wish Canon would catch up! :D

Love the camera, would recommend to anyone, of course the noise could improve and sharpness as you noted could be better with the elimination of the AA filter or something.
 
RFtinkerer said:
Finally getting to upgrade my 10 year old 20D to a 70D. Shooting my sister-in-law's wedding in November. We've shot 6-7 weddings with the good-ol' 20D, but convinced my wife since it was her sister...well...gots to be better, rite? Also did a large banner recently for the baseball team and the poor resolution showed up. 6' x 2.5' print. Haven't done prints above 13"x19" before and didn't notice anything particularly lacking until now. Interpolation up to that size did what you'd think it'd do...soft undetailed lines up close. So now is the time, the time is now. Do another banner and wedding with better resolution, ISO sensitivity.

Looking at the reviews, the Nikon D7100 is better quality. Which would be ace, but I have a 17-35 f2.8L, 24-70 f2.8L, and 70-200 f4L that are telling me to stick with Canon! Also, the apparent great video is exciting. More fun with the DSLR, anyway. Can't wait until Thursday! :drool:

One of the irritating things is no PC sync. Guess I'll have to use flash sync with the lights, but I liked controlling the 2 other lights without bothering with the on camera flash before. Oooooooh well.
Click to expand...

If you have that king of glass, you need to stay put, that is for sure...

I assume the Ls are Canon version of the gold ring, in which case
there were made with performance in mind...
 
12Bass said:
Look at 7D II sensor performance: http://www.clarkvision.com/reviews/evaluation-canon-7dii/

Seems to be a good choice for astrophotography, something I'd like to get into at some point. From what I gather, the sensor in the 7D II is a slightly improved version of the 70D sensor.
Click to expand...

Yeah, looks like the 7D II is slightly improved sensor from the 70D but THAT'S not what's exciting to me. The exciting thing is what he mentioned about the hydrogen alpha band...the IR cutoff filters in DSLRs cut h-alpha down to about 25% of what the true brightness and emission nebula are rich in that band. So if I wanted to capture more of that I would have to get the filter modified (he mentions this too because this is common.) That is several hundred and of course risky, then the white balance is thrown off. Now look at my Horsehead vs. his. Not a "fair" comparison because I need 4x the light he does with his 300 f2.8 while I was at 280 f5.6, so the noise is worse on mine, but will show what I mean:

Mine:

YbjEvZm.jpg


Note the much lower pink area and the brightness in the areas of h-alpha emissions in mine. His are much better there... and that is what is exciting. Oh well, I got what I got and I'm still happy...obviously upgrades are upgrades!
 
MasterGoa said:
If you have that king of glass, you need to stay put, that is for sure...

I assume the Ls are Canon version of the gold ring, in which case
there were made with performance in mind...
Click to expand...

You are correct sir. Really, it's a great camera so no issues.
 
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