Canon 7D or 70D, which one and why?

[JWalker175]

I am looking into purchasing a new camera body, the 7D or the 70D obviously and I cannot decide which one to get. U have read/watched countless reviews and comparisons but they dont really help me that much. I mostly photograph landscapes, travel photos, and my dog (who is still a puppy and moves around very fast). I currently own a T2i. 

From what I've read, the 70D is a lot better at videos but I almost never shoot videos so the video quality is not very important to me.

[TCampbell]

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@JWalker175 wrote:

Thank you, for low-light indoor photographs which camera performs better?

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The cameras have similar performance in low-light.  The 70D has a newer sensor and has an edge over the 7D, but it's not an enormous difference.  In side-by-side comparisons you'd probably see the 7D is slightly nosier ... if you look at the images long enough. 

Lens selection makes a big difference here.  If you're shooting in low light, use a lower focal ratio lens.  

Suppose you're taking a photo using the kit zoom lens (18-55mm f/3.5-5.6) and using 50mm.  The lowest possible focal ratio for that lens, when using the 50mm focal length, is going to be f/5.6.  -OR- you could use your 50mm f/1.8 which is able to do f/1.8.  

Dropping from f/5.6 -> f/4 is one stop.

f/4 -> f/2.8 is another stop

f/2.8 -> f/2 is another stops (so that's 3 full stops)

f/2 -> f/1.8 is 1/3rd stop.

That's a total of 3 1/3rd stops.  Each "stop" doubles the amount of light the lens can collect when the shutter is open... combine those stops and the f/1.8 lens is collecting nearly 10x more light as compared to the f/5.6 lens.  The problem with f/1.8 is that it also has a very shallow depth of field so depending on how much you need to keep in focus beyond just your focused distance it may not be suitable... perhaps you back off to f/2.8... or perhaps you back off to f/4 for more depth of field ... but f/4 is still twice as much light as f/5.6.

[ebiggs1]

One thing to remember, though, is a lens can not put something in a picture that is not there.  The availble light is all there is unless you add in more.