EOS R7 Unhappy With Photo Quality

[Sabrena00]

Purchased the canon R7 and I don’t know if I’m happy with the quality of the photos. Tonight my friend and I took the same photos, she used an iPhone and her photos were 100% better than the R7. Am I doing something wrong?

[shadowsports]

Greetings,

Is this your first mirrorless camera?  What lens were you using and what were you shooting?  Conditions, etc?  Are you shooting in RAW or JPEG?  You want to shoot in RAW or RAW+JPEG.  If you like, please post a RAW photo for us to look at.  Due to size 33MP, you'll need to upload to box, drive, dropbox, etc and share the link with us.  

I'll take a good body and lens over an iPhone or Pixel any day.  I think your friend got lucky, and a month or two from now after you've had a chance to learn your camera it will be you with a first place photo.  

[deebatman316]

What settings are you using exactly. What are the lighting conditions like. What lens are you using with your camera. Are you using the kit lens.

[Tronhard · Accepted solution]

My first thought is what subjects are you trying to photograph and what are you trying to produce?   For a lot of social photography, I think that a cell phone is eminently appropriate for producing images for digital publication and smaller prints. Cell phones inherently have less effective sensors, simply because of their size, but they overcome this with highly-capable firmware and software that can work miracles on the resultant images.

However, for other types of photography and output, a cell phone is not suitable.  For anything requiring a long focal length for example: sports and wildlife photography, a large sensor and good optic will produce much better results, especially if one is wanting to output larger files for display or printing.

So, you may be better to use a cell phone or you may not be realizing the potential from your camera - they take a lot more getting used to compared to cell phones that do most of the thinking for you.  Understanding the physics of photography, and how to use a dedicated camera takes time and practice.  The famous photographer Henri Cartier-Bressan said "your first 10,000 images are your worst", there is some truth in that in that you have to put your time in and get to know your gear.   

The potential is greater and so is the learning curve.

[johnrmoyer]

I hope some of this might be helpful. For social media, the iPhone might sometimes be superior if the images are intended to be displayed on a small low resolution screen, but your EOS R7 is capable of producing images that are impossible on the iPhone. Comparing your camera to an iPhone might not be fair if you are new to the camera and the iPhone user has had more practice.

If you were to show one of your photos, several here could make specific suggestions for improving future photos.

If you have access to a computer, then telling the camera to save RAW or CRAW plus JPEG is a good idea. Much can be done using the free Canon DPP program when processing the RAW or CRAW CR3 file on a computer. For example white balance can be changed after the photo is made. Even if you do not use a computer, much can be done with the RAW or CRAW CR3 file on the camera using the camera menus.

Here are some links to information that I have found helpful:

https://www.canon-europe.com/pro/stories/dpp-editing-tips/

https://www.usa.canon.com/learning/training-articles/training-articles-list

https://www.usa.canon.com/learning/inspiration/inspirational-stories-list/explorers-of-light

https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials.htm

[Sabrena00]

First of all thank you. I did realize one big mistake I was doing so that helped. Does canon have a computer program to view the photos?

[johnrmoyer]

Canon Digital Photo Professional. Free download to run on Mac or PC. Also, Apple photos.app can process the Canon Camera raw files. I have used Apple photos.app on an iMac, but I do not have an iPhone. I usually use Canon Digital Photo Professional.

https://cam.start.canon/en/S002/manual/html/index.html

https://www.usa.canon.com/support/p/eos-r7  has the free Canon software downloads.

[ebiggs1]

 Sabrena00,

The camera in the iphone 13 and 14 or whatever is darn good. So, for general photos it is a good choice and that is why most of the lesser digital camera market has suffered. There is no denying that. Excluding all the fluff above, it does come down to how you want to and how you use your photos. For instance all you want is to display them on an  iphone or tablet or u/l to social media like Facebook or Instagram, etc. the iphone is king. However if you want to be able to change lenses, crop and edit your photos and make nice prints your R7 is king. The ability to have tons more camera setting options isn't even comparable. The iphone makes nice photos for sure but fails miserably when things aren't great. Good for that quick shot and selfie of you and your gal friends on that special outing for sure.

Consider this, the photo sensor in your iphone is about the size of your pinky fingernail.  On the other hand, pun intended, the sensor in your R7 is about one inch square. Many times bigger and many times better if the above editing, cropping and printing is wanted. And that all important lens changeability. There is room for both, so use your iphone where it shines and use your R7 where it shines.

[wq9nsc]

Phone cameras are primarily aimed at people with little/no experience with photography and they often do a better job than a dedicated carmera of getting a good photo in their "fully automatic" mode.  Your R7 is considerably more capable IF you take advantage of its versatility and capabilities which will require a little learning and a little more user input/control but the results will be better.

Most of my photography is sports and although I have an iPhone 14, I hate the camera because I am used to the very responsive Canon 1DX series bodies.  They are a little too cumbersome for pleasure travel and I bought a tiny Canon M6 Mark II mirrorless purely for airline travel. 

Performance wise, it isn't even in the same time zone as my 1DX series DSLR bodies but it is so much more responsive than my iPhone and it captures what I want when I tell it to do so.  But like my 1DX series bodies, it is set to save images in RAW files and it runs with manual aperture and shutter speed setting with ISO set to auto.

Spend the short amount of time to learn how to get the most out of your R7, it will be well worth your time.

Rodger

[Sabrena00]

Do you have a suggestion on how best to learn?  YouTube videos?  Suggestions for the best ones?  I wish classes were available in my area.