7D Mark II

[Fay]

After a long wait my brother and I got our hands on a couple of Mark IIs. Problem is after a week of work we still feel like pictures are soft. I originally started trying to adjust with some of the methods on the web. I finally said @#$ with that and bought a LensAlign MKII and then the Focus Tune V3. Over the weekend we got the system set up and learned the basics of the software. Adjustments were made after doing 5 shots in steps of five. Then when we had the general area we shot 10 images in steps of 1 around the indicated best spot. Several times we did an even tighter refinement again using 10 shots for the software to scan. This was done with the 100-400 at both ends of the zoom and the 600 with and without the 1.4 extender. I think I got the 100-400 zeroed in, but brother is still frustrated. Neither of us like the results with the 600 after micro adjustments.

One thing we did notice is that when the lens was locked down on the tripod and we pushed the TC-80N3 remote controller button half way the focus point tended to drift down. The image stablization was on with all lens. I usually don't tripod my 100-400 and when using the 600 the tripod is typically not locked down so I was told the IS being on was okay.

So any suggestions or words of wisdom would be appreciated. To be truthful I am a very short way from taking the camera back and replacing it with a different body.

Thank you. Fay and Robert

[Fay]

Here are 3 pictures taken inside the National Aviary in 2 different areas. All of them are taken with the Mk II with the Canon 100-400 and ISO is 4000. There has been no cropping or correction made to the images. They were taken within 30 minutes of each other with natual light. I also had an off camera flash available, but can't tell from the data if I actually used it.

The first is a finch http://www.rfyphotos.com/p850884880/h19d04730#h19d04730 at f 5.4 at 285 mm

The second is an ibis http://www.rfyphotos.com/p850884880/h19d04730#h202bebd at f 4.8 at 160 mm

The third is a warbler http://www.rfyphotos.com/p850884880/h19d04730#h86567ff at f 5.4 at 260 mm

Any thoughts or ideas would be helpful.

[ebiggs1]

"Any thoughts or ideas would be helpful."

I may have missed it but you guys are shooting RAW?  And your color space is AdobeRGB?  You are using ACR to process?

I never shoot anything without those settings anymore.  There just isn't any reason to shoot jpg any longer.

[RobertTheFat]

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

"Any thoughts or ideas would be helpful."

I may have missed it but you guys are shooting RAW?  And your color space is AdobeRGB?  You are using ACR to process?

I never shoot anything without those settings anymore.  There just isn't any reason to shoot jpg any longer.

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Why Adobe RGB? I thought the conventional wisdom was that Web sites and most printers are set up to use sRGB and that as a practical matter, Adobe RGB is useful only on printers that have been specially set up for it.

A RAW file isn't specific to a given color space, is it? I.e., you should be able to generate a TIFF or JPEG in either sRGB or Adobe RGB without losing any information that the gamut is capable of representing. Right?

[ebiggs1]

Bob from Boston,

You are right!  A RAW file has no color space. The ACR converter is where the RAW file get a color space assigned. I should have made it clear that this conversion is done by the converter. If you are shooting specifically for printing, AdobeRGB offers more range and versatility in the images taken.

Actually, to get the full benefit of shooting RAW, the output of the RAW converter should be set to a wide gamut format for transfer into Photoshop. If you're using ACR, you can also set it to 16 bit Pro Photo RGB.  sRGB is 8 bit and restricts you to the color range that can be printed or even viewed on screen.

[Skirball]

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@RobertTheFat wrote:

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@ebiggs1 wrote:

"Any thoughts or ideas would be helpful."

I may have missed it but you guys are shooting RAW?  And your color space is AdobeRGB?  You are using ACR to process?

I never shoot anything without those settings anymore.  There just isn't any reason to shoot jpg any longer.

---

Why Adobe RGB? I thought the conventional wisdom was that Web sites and most printers are set up to use sRGB and that as a practical matter, Adobe RGB is useful only on printers that have been specially set up for it.

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Most printers, yes, but that's because there are a whole lot of cheap printing shops out there (CVS 1 hour, Costco, Snapfish, Shutterfly, etc).  But a high end print shop is going to use AdobeRGB or ProPhoto.

Of course, using it really doesn't mean squat if you don't have a wide gamut display capable of displaying AdobeRGB, calibrated, and you profile both the monitor and the printer/paper you're using, embed it in the final picture, soft proof, and then send it off to a high end print lab (or have a good inkjet at home, like a Pixma Pro or something along those lines).

But I think a lot of people just know that AdobeRGB is a wider gamut than sRGB, and therefore 'better'.  And the majority use it without having all the details above, rendering it kind of useless.  Of course, most of the photos end up on the web, where it's only displaying in sRGB anyway.

[Fay]

But the question remains. The pictures I liked to. Are they grainer/noisier than I should expect with the Mk II? Or am I being unrealistic? I will gladly send a raw file to someone that can answer those questions.

Fay

[Skirball]

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@Fay wrote:

But the question remains. The pictures I liked to. Are they grainer/noisier than I should expect with the Mk II? Or am I being unrealistic? I will gladly send a raw file to someone that can answer those questions.

Fay

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Not unrealistically so.  There are too many variables involved to say exactly how much (or how little) noise should be in a photo; but those are in the ballpark of what I would expect from a crop camera at ISO 4000 without any NR applied in post.

[Fay]

Drats. The pictures shown earlier in the thread looked so much better. Fay

[ebiggs1]

"But the question remains. The pictures I liked to. Are they grainer/noisier than I should expect with the Mk II?"

Fay,

The real question is whether you are satified with the pictures and "grainy" results.  What a camera produces without post processing is really not a good indicator of what can be done with it.  In the end, as I do not have a 7D Mk II to try, I have to believe it is very good at high ISO's and better than the current 7D is.  At least the remarks I have seen seem to indicate so.

[Fay]

I only shoot in Raw using the AdobeRGB color space and process with ACR. I just sent it to the web as jpeg because that was what was needed for the website.

Fay