OK, so now let’s try a slightly more scientific test for the pixelpeepers among us here. Here’s my Canon 7D.

For tonight’s second short test, I just used the Canon 24-70 f/2.8L zoom lens. Set to 24mm on the 7D, and to 38mm on the 1Ds MkIII, to give the same field of view.

I fired an umbrella-mounted studio strobe through pocketwizards, with the cameras set to:

• manual
• 1/125th second
• f/8
• 100 ISO.

Because of the varying zoom setting, which gives the same field of view, the two are still inevtably different – but being the same lens, and at f/8, this difference matters little. Essentially, this is a fair test.

We get, in both cases, a nice sharp image like this out of Canon DPP (that is all I used, and with no alterations at all):

Great picture on both cameras.

And that is where the story might stop. But because I am curious – how good is the 7D image compared to the 1Ds MkIII’s – I now crop to a 1200 x 800 pixel wide area in both cases. Here they are at full size (and you can click to see these crops unaltered, at their actual size):

7D:

And 1Ds MkIII:

When you click and compare both of these unaltered images, it shows how good the 7D is for a crop sensor body.

The white balance difference is hardly noticeable when properly exposed like this.

There is clearly a tiny bit more noise in the 7D image. But it is tiny, and the 7D has better blacks. The difference is so small that at this low ISO and with this good light, no real difference should be seen in practice. And with the 7D’s many other advantages, that is a great thing. This camera will remain at my side in shoots.