T7i vs EOS R observations and questions

[scott123456789]

Got to spend some time using an EOS R today and did some comparison to my T7i.

Few takeaways:

I’ve only shot canon but the layout of the EOS R would definitely take some getting used to.
It may have been the settings but the picture rendered in the EVF of the R did not match the actual image taken.
The high ISO performance of the R totally blows the T7I to pieces. 12000+ ISO and you still get a usable image. Vs about 3200 max on the T7I.
The face tracking focus wasn’t nearly as fast as videos of the R5 but could keep up with a one year old.
Without making any adjustments I observed the HDR images from the T7I doing a better job at balancing extreme lighting situations better than the R.

Now for questions:

Background: I took my T7I to the deer stand with a 55-250 lens. I was let down by how far I had to bump ISO to render a picture that beyond cell phone size is so noisy it’s embarrassing.

I’ve always read Full Frame Cameras are brighter than crop sensor so that was the main motivation of doing comparisons to the R. So I set both cameras at 1600ISO, F4, 200 shutter and 28mm on the crop and 50mm on the full frame. I was very surprised to yield pictures with the exact same brightness and field of view. Everything I thought I understood was failing me.

Then I did some zooming. The crop at 1600 had extreme noise while the EOS R could be zoomed in as tight as the screen would allow and was apparently noise free. So then is it true that full frames are not brighter but are able to collect more light so the sensor doesn’t have to fill with noise?

One additional layer, if canon would make the RF to EF adapter available again and I dropped a crop lens on the EOS R, would the noise re-enter as their is less available light or is the sensor just that much better?


Why am I posting all this?

I want to take clean lowlight pictures without spending $5000-10000....

I have a T7I and a 55-250mm

[yaqui]

What kind of low light photos are you trying to shoot? How about a tripod and dragging then shutter?

[ATX Tyler]

In my experience (I'm shooting the EOS R currently), with that increased sensor size and also the fact that you get some extra megapixels, you're going to see a huge increase in image quality, particularly in low light with way less noise, but also whenever you crop in on a photo. So you'll have less noise, a cleaner image that you should be able to push much further in post-processing, which really becomes apparent on larger screens and even more so when you print. Additionally, with the full frame, you typically get better bokeh (the background blur).

With putting a crop sensor lens on the EOS R, you're probably going to lose some of the image quality, but it just depends on what lens, and also how fast/slow the lens in question is. Without a doubt, if you use RF lenses on the R vs a crop sensor lens on the t7i, the images are going to be vastly different in terms of quality and sharpness. The RF glass is ridiculous.

[Casey]

I have the R5 and two other full frame cameras (5D3, 1DX2). I've also owned 3 crop cameras (20D, 50D, 7D). Without question, the full frame sensors will handle noise much better than your T7. Whether you're looking at an unedited high-iso version or increasing exposure with software, the full frame file will exhibit much less noise. You will be impressed by the R over that T7.

With the R5 and my adapted lenses (EF for my other, non R mount models) I've noticed no drop off in quality. They actually claim the focusing system for R mounts will help you get more out of older EF lenses. With that being said, images are impacted by good glass more than by good bodies...generally speaking.

Clean, lowlight pictures come at a cost. I'm not sure you have to spend $5000+ to get there, though. There are some deals on full frame cameras right now that will help you tremendously. Look into the 5D4, or 5DS (50megapixel) as they have had their price cut drastically. Older models, still in production but performers. I'll sell you a gently used 1DXMark2 if you really want to get serious!

Here is a shot from the R5 with my 150-600mm Sigma ($1000ish). It was taken at 2500 iso, edited in lightroom and run through a denoise software (removing noise never hurts)

[Casey]

Same photo, straight out of the camera, zoomed/cropped. You can see I underexposed, had a little noise. The full frame image let me bring up that exposure and gave me more flexibility with the noise. I'm thinking this is where you are thinking full frames are "brighter". Proper exposure is proper exposure. Full frame let's you get there more readily with software if you missed on the camera setting. This image would have been tough to use out of most crop sensor cameras, most likely. I hope this helps.