Canon R7 The R7 Has Landed

[Jake Shoots Birds]

I got a call on Tuesday saying my R7 was in at my local shop. I'm spending the week at the US Senior Open Golf Tournament but I managed to get them to ship it and have a neighbor sign, so I unboxed it when I got home late yesterday afternoon.

It's noticeably smaller than the R5, but it doesn't feel smaller, which is wonderful. The control layout is going to take some getting used to as it's significantly different from the R5. At the same time, by the end of the hour I had to shoot with it I found myself getting used to it. Shooting with both at the same time may be maddening, but I think I'll have no issue in a one-or-the-other situation.

First thing I noticed is how much faster the EVF kicks in vs. the R5. It may be only a few milliseconds faster, but it's noticeable. The eye tracking is also improved, which I was expecting given that this is supposed to be the same as the R3. I'm hoping the R5 gets a firmware upgrade down the road that matches it.

Image stabilization is great. I was able to shoot at 500mm (effective 800mm) at 1/15 sec. I did notice some jumpiness in it with the 1.4TC on it, but I only had it on for a few minutes to test and will need to spend more time to be sure about anything.

I love the fact that you can turn off the shutter sound on the Elec 1st Curtain shutter, so you don't have to rely on Electronic for silent shooting. I did notice that the shutter is louder than the R5's otherwise, but as I just said, this is one hour out of the box with no testing rigor so I could be out of my mind. LOL

Alas, they have not released a version of Digital Photo Professional yet that supports the Raw files, so I'm stuck with just the JPEGs for now. File size on the Raw files is about 48MB compared to about 60MB for the R5.

And I was expecting a mount converter with the camera as I had read that they were shipping them with the R7 & R10 initially. I don't have any E glass, but it would be nice to have if I were to ever want to borrow some from a friend. May need to reach out to Canon on this.

Here's a JPEG straight out of camera with only a slight crop in shot with the 100-500mm and 1.4x TC (effective 800mm). I'm happy with the sharpness.

 

[GAJoe]

I can't verify because I don't have my R7 yet but I heard that DPP 4.16.10.0 does support the R7.
I opened DPP and chose the "Help" tab to get the option to check for upgrades, uploaded it, and applied it.

 

[dougsmit]

I can't verify because I don't have my R7 yet but I heard that DPP 4.16.10.0 does support the R7.
I opened DPP and chose the "Help" tab to get the option to check for upgrades, uploaded it, and applied it.

Thank you, I had not realized the DPP4 upgrade was available yet and I was not planning on buying an R7 until I saw it. DPPReview posted a lot of R7 Raw and JPG images but previously converting the RAW required second rate, third party software and I wanted to see how bad the noise was.

Canon EOS R7 pre-production sample gallery

View Canon EOS R7 pre-production sample gallery from DPReview.

www.dpreview.com

I may wish I had trusted Canon and pre-ordered and doubt I will get one this year since they seem to have issues with managing the supply and are favoring people willing to buy the kit lens (I have several FF capable RF and EF lenses and had no interest in the $400 kit). Only one image in the 39 DPPReview set really interested me. The squirrel was shot at ISO 12800. After installing DPP 4.16.10.0, I converted that image to TIFF and made this shot for review. On the left is the full image reduced in size to the 2048 pixel limit. At that reduction, it shows nothing but it is what you will see online. At the top right is a crop section that is what will fit in the allowable 2048 pixel square. As displayed on my desktop, it also shows nothing of value but enlarging it by clicking does show noise. Whether that noise is a deal breaker or not is a matter of opinion. It would seem to show what you would see pixel peeping or making a large print from the file as converted from that one sample .CR3 of the squirrel at ISO 12,800. Yes, I would like to have seen more and higher examples but I am glad DPReview gave us what they gave us. Yes, I would like to see that same shot taken with an R5 and R6 (or any other camera of choice) standing in that same spot using that same lens at that same distance. There is no doubt that the squirrel would not stand still for that (we need a stuffed squirrel?) but the comparison would be interesting. The lower right section is the same as the one above it except it was treated in Topaz DeNoise AI 'Clear' at the default settings. Obviously many here would insist on using their favorite Adobe products. I had done this earlier using Affinity Photo which satisfies my needs without renting Adobe but I remain of the opinion that Canon knows better how to handle their files than does any 3rd party. You can disagree and post proof I am wrong if you have any software that recognizes R7 .CR3 images. Anyone interested can enlarge my example or, better, repeat my test to see what is there to be seen. 95% of all owners of the R7 will never make prints or crops that are big enough that the noise I see here will be a problem but fully half of the 'experts' will point out that the crop sensor is a step down from their R of choice. I do have a suggestion : All of you who have not received your pre-ordered R7 should cancel immediately allowing procrastinators like me to get one sooner. You will be unhappy with the R7 because it is not an R1 or R3 or R5 and there most definitely will be images that would be better if shot with those high priced options and you have infinite funds so there is no reason to buy a bargain basement cropper. Please.

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

I can't verify because I don't have my R7 yet but I heard that DPP 4.16.10.0 does support the R7.
I opened DPP and chose the "Help" tab to get the option to check for upgrades, uploaded it, and applied it.

My Pro Rep mentioned that I should look under software in the R7 support entry and since I didn't see it I figured DPP wasn't ready yet. I just updated my installed copy (which I really don't use) and it does indeed support R7 Raw files - yippee!!

I'm looking forward to not having to go this way first, but until then I've got a workaround. Thanks!!

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

OK, so I can view the files but I can't get them to display without applying noise reduction, sharpening, etc., even after turning off the Auto setting in preferences and restarting the software. Any tips? The noise reduction I'm getting is overly soft and I'd rather just see how Topaz deals with it.

 

[dougsmit]

There is a box checked by default for sharpening located under the saturation slider. Uncheck it. Noise reduction sliders are on the page with the magnifying glass over the 9 grid. There are two separate ones each defaulting to 2. Slide them to the left. I note the sharpness box is duplicated on this page also. Why? IDK. I am not aware of a way to set the defaults so you don't have to do this for every session but it is simple to do it for the first image of a session and then copy the recipe to provide a starting point for other images. I hear complaints that DPP is slow but I am not trying to do a thousand wedding photos at a time so the speed does not bother me.

 

[dougsmit]

It just struck me that it might be good to try leaving the DPP sharpening on and using Topaz Sharpen AI instead of DeNoise AI. I have also found (very cropped) images that are handled well using Gigapixel first restoring the file size lost to cropping. There are a thousand ways of doing a hundred things. Finding what works for each is our job.

 

[Jake Shoots Birds]

It's such weird deal. You have to move the sliders once for it to show the noise even if they are 0 by default. PITA.

I'm honestly not looking to change my workflow, which has always been to use DeNoise and not Sharpen, and my plan is to abandon this workaround at the first possible moment. At this point I've created a separate Lightroom catalog just for the R7 and will use DPP to cull out the dreck and then create TIFFs that I will then import into Lr and process as normal.