# 5Ds (R) in crop mode vs 7D II



## MJ (Oct 25, 2015)

Hi, I'm wondering which camera would deliver better image quality and higher resolution of a subject like an animal far away:

either one of the new 5Ds or 5Ds R in crop mode (or manually crop in post production) vs the 7D II with it's native APSC crop sensor.

Thanks


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## takesome1 (Oct 25, 2015)

*Re: Best resolution For Wildlife: 5Ds (R) in crop mode vs 7D II*

I have both 7d II and 5Ds R
5Ds R is better (resolution) but that is not a significant point.
When the subject is close and you don't crop there is even more resolution and all the benefit of FF.
The AF system of the 5Ds R is better as well.


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## MJ (Oct 25, 2015)

Thank you, takesome1.
Are there any other opinions or experiences?


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Oct 25, 2015)

Why crop a 5Ds? A 7D MK II is a much less expensive option and has other more recent and desirable features.

The difference will be negligible and depend more on the photographer than on the camera. 

The main advantage of cropping for me is that I can select the area of the photo you want, but by selecting a off center area from the FF body, then lens aberrations toward the edges reduce the quality.


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## Larsskv (Oct 25, 2015)

I have the 7DII and 5DS. Resolution when the 5DS is cropped to fit APS-C will be almost exactly the same. The colours from the 5DS is stronger and better, I think, so you might (subjectively) have a slightly better picture from the 5DS (R), when cropped. 

AF is really great on both cameras. The 7DII obviosly has twice the fps, and feels more responsive. Viewfinder blackout time is noticably faster, and adds to the responsiveness of the 7DII. When I use the 5DS, i miss the lever that is attached to the 7DII joystick, which I use to cycle through focusing modes. I really like the all cross type AF points on the 7DII. I would really love a 7DII FF edition. 

All in all, I prefer full frame. The pictures are a little bit better, regardless of ISO. Further, the best lenses are usually for FF, and I don't like how they fit range wise on APS-C. However, that doesn't really apply if your goal is pictures of animals that are far away.


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## AlanF (Oct 25, 2015)

I'd like to see some comparisons of the the 5DS R cropped at the same distance from the subject as the 7DII. TDP doesn't do this, having the iso chart fill the frame for both and the 5DS R 1.6x closer to the chart.

Most of the time I will be cropping for small birds far away and am hoping there will be a significant increase in resolution (10%?). I nearly pulled the trigger on a 5DS R a few minutes ago, but this thread is making me think again vis a vis Mt Spokane's comment.


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## takesome1 (Oct 25, 2015)

MJ said:


> Thank you, takesome1.
> Are there any other opinions or experiences?



Like I said resolution is not a reason to go with the 5Ds R.

The 7D II has a few advantages,
It cost $2K us less.
It is better at videos.
It can shoot 10fps.
If any of these are the deciding factor go with the 7D II.
If you are going to crop 100% of the time then stick with the 7D II.


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## KeithBreazeal (Oct 25, 2015)

Remember, the 5DS does have crop sensor modes. and is close to 7D II specs. Plus you get a full frame body when needed.
" With the 1.3x crop mode -- effectively the FOV of the Canon's unique APS-H sensor size -- the images will be about 30.5-megapixels and the 1.6x crop for an APS-C FOV will be about 19.6-megapixels. "

http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/canon-5ds/canon-5dsA.HTM


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## AlanF (Oct 26, 2015)

KeithBreazeal said:


> Remember, the 5DS does have crop sensor modes. and is close to 7D II specs. Plus you get a full frame body when needed.
> " With the 1.3x crop mode -- effectively the FOV of the Canon's unique APS-H sensor size -- the images will be about 30.5-megapixels and the 1.6x crop for an APS-C FOV will be about 19.6-megapixels. "
> 
> http://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/canon-5ds/canon-5dsA.HTM



The crop mode is only in jpeg, not RAW. You get blackballed from Canonrumors if you use jpegs


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## Eldar (Oct 26, 2015)

I have the 7DII, 5DSR and 1DX. After I got the 5DSR I have not used the 7DII once. I have also reduced my use of the 1DX significantly, simply because the 5DSR is as good as it is. In low light and situations that require high fps, I use the 1DX, but for pretty much everything else I use the 5DSR. Fantastic camera. But you do need disk space and a few more gigabytes of RAM does not hurt the processing.


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## rs (Oct 26, 2015)

AlanF said:


> KeithBreazeal said:
> 
> 
> > Remember, the 5DS does have crop sensor modes. and is close to 7D II specs. Plus you get a full frame body when needed.
> ...



The CR2 files are flagged with the crop settings, so a suitable raw converter (such as DPP) will automatically do the donkey work for you. However, you do end up with the large raw files to handle. Certainly not suitable for coming back from a reach limited sports event with thousands of 50MP crop marked images to sift through.


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## Larsskv (Oct 26, 2015)

Eldar said:


> I have the 7DII, 5DSR and 1DX. After I got the 5DSR I have not used the 7DII once. I have also reduced my use of the 1DX significantly, simply because the 5DSR is as good as it is. In low light and situations that require high fps, I use the 1DX, but for pretty much everything else I use the 5DSR. Fantastic camera. But you do need disk space and a few more gigabytes of RAM does not hurt the processing.



I was a little worried about file sizes from the 5DS, but found out that converting to lossy DNG in Lightroom works very well. I can't really tell the difference, and the files are about 20-25 megabytes after conversion (instead of 60-80). People should give it a try!


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## pwp (Oct 26, 2015)

Larsskv said:


> I was a little worried about file sizes from the 5DS, but found out that converting to lossy DNG in Lightroom works very well. I can't really tell the difference, and the files are about 20-25 megabytes after conversion (instead of 60-80). People should give it a try!


...then why bother getting a 5Ds? 

-pw


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## tomscott (Oct 26, 2015)

Ye I've recently had this problem and the 7DMKII won the race. As I have a 5DMKIII and wanted a second camera for wildlife specifically as I am going traveling for 2 months across Africa with 5 game parks - Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia. Then flying to Indonesia for another 2 seeing the orangutans and comodo dragons plus everything else along the way, so this is the reason I bought this camera.

When I can get close Il use the 5D and when not the 7D, also don't want to be swapping lenses out on safari so the 5D will probs have the wider more environmental perspective and the 7DMKII with more reach. With wildlife you can never have too much reach and even so with the larger sensor if your cropping 50%+ every time then I would say is there any need to spend that much and have a slow 7DMKII you'll be shooting 6fps at 20mp if you crop which you always do with wildlife its very hard to fill the frame unless the animals are tame. This pretty much made my decision and the fact I never print more than A2 so the 5DSR would be a bit lost for me. I also didn't want to deal with the extra size of files while traveling.

I spent 2 months traveling South america and 3 months across north america and shot 2tb of images in the 5 month stint with my 5DMKIII so with the 5DSR I would have to double it. Makes storage a bit more of a pain in the ass in the field.

Im actually so impressed with it! Its really narrowed the gap! ISO is very useable up to 4000 which is where I cap my 5DMKIII. The noise is also very natural rather than digital and the camera feels like a machine gun compared to the 5DIII 5DMKIII feel really quite slow in comparison. The Digital viewfinder is also great too.

Here are a few images I've taken recently with it. Really chuffed.

These are all crops probably 60% and this is at 640mm a 70-200mm F2.8 with a 2x ex.



Stag, Red Deer, Martindale Valley Cumbria by Tom Scott, on Flickr



Stags, Red Deer, Martindale Valley Cumbria by Tom Scott, on Flickr

Above are ƒ/7.1 400mm 1/320 1600ISO



Stag and his Doe&#x27;s, Red Deer, Martindale Valley Cumbria by Tom Scott, on Flickr

This one has a little crop, but if you zoom in the detail is fantastic. ƒ/8.0 400.0 mm 1/500 1250ISO

These dear are cumbrian red dear and they live in a valley almost untouched by humans. They are not used to humans and are very very skittish, and have incredible eye site and you get within 500m and they bolt doesn't matter what camo you wear the approach you take, the only thing you can do is camp out and wait and hope they don't see you and that they come close. The 7D was great to get closer to them, been struggling the the 5DMKIII and 400mm for about 2 weeks. Same techniques with the 7D got me much closer and it seems to have a lot more detail.

I would say the 5D has more latitude to crop the images look better but you get closer with the 7D… so...

Since going FF with the 5DMKIII I never thought I would go back to a crop camera but the 7DMKII really is a fantastic camera, blown away by it tbh.

Price was one of my main plusses, I bought the 100-400mm MKII with the change and a 1.4x to go with it so I have 1000mm with the 7DMKII. I had the Tarmon 150-600mm originally for my 5DMKIII but I wasn't happy with it so I decided the 7D with the 100-400 was the combo for me. 

Im still waiting for the lens to arrive so will evaluate when it does.

If you need an action cam then the 7DMKII is the one. I paid £800 for mine and the 5DSr is going for about £2500. The video is also a nice feature. I agree the 5DSr is an epic camera and has all the benefits of the 7DMKII apart from price and the speed. 

Obviously as above if you have a 1DX having this camera is a bit of a waste of time and your always going to use that more… but at 1/6th the price is a hell of a bang for buck you can't really go wrong with it! 85-90% of the 1DX in a small light package.

Ive also found the sensor has much better colour noise quality than my 5DMKIII. I don't find noise to be an issue with the 5DMKIII but the colour noise is a really big pain for me, not sure if anyone else gets this. But I'm forever setting the lightroom settings to 35-40 on the colour noise reduction and sometimes up to 80 on the smoothness tab!!!

If the 5DMKIV doesn't have a significant increase I will swap my 5DMKIII for the Sr but for the time being the 5DMKIII and the 7DMKII is a killer combo. I would rather have 2 than 1.

If your interested in looking at some great images taken with a 7DMKII have a look at Issacs flickr thread. His images also made my decision as they are stunning.

https://flic.kr/ps/2QwEL3


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## rs (Oct 26, 2015)

Larsskv said:


> Eldar said:
> 
> 
> > I have the 7DII, 5DSR and 1DX. After I got the 5DSR I have not used the 7DII once. I have also reduced my use of the 1DX significantly, simply because the 5DSR is as good as it is. In low light and situations that require high fps, I use the 1DX, but for pretty much everything else I use the 5DSR. Fantastic camera. But you do need disk space and a few more gigabytes of RAM does not hurt the processing.
> ...



Why delete the original source file which is compatible with any raw converter worth its salt to an Adobe proprietary format which doesn't work with every raw converter out there? I can understand individuals making that choice for themselves, but I wouldn't go so far as to recommend every one does it. Next thing you know, Adobe will update LR with a version which is 6 times slower on import, and you've pigeon holed yourself into using it. I'd recommend keeping your options open by not deleting the original format.


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## Larsskv (Oct 26, 2015)

pwp said:


> Larsskv said:
> 
> 
> > I was a little worried about file sizes from the 5DS, but found out that converting to lossy DNG in Lightroom works very well. I can't really tell the difference, and the files are about 20-25 megabytes after conversion (instead of 60-80). People should give it a try!
> ...



Because of the 50 megabytes resolution... And all the other things the 5DS do so well. 

I'm not worried about the lossy DNG files. Adobe will support them, and I guess other converters will too.


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## KeithBreazeal (Oct 26, 2015)

The 5DS R is a Frankenstein mix of the 7D II and 5D III with a larger sensor. The pixel pitch is the same as the 7D II, so in crop mode it's essentially the same. I rarely shoot in "machine gun mode", so the fps doesn't matter. I do like the ability to do more than one creative crop from a single frame and still have plenty of pixels to work with. 



Thom Richard Hot Stuff screen shot 5172 web © Keith Breazeal by Keith Breazeal, on Flickr

The other nice thing is panoramas. Normally I'd shoot 4-5 frames with overlap in the vertical. The 5DS R will provide nice results in one horizontal shot. When you figure the overlap and how many pixels your actually using from each frame, it's about a dead heat.



Canon 5DS / Bodie 1 shot pano screen shot © Keith Breazeal by Keith Breazeal, on Flickr


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