Canon EOS T7 - Good deal or Overrated? 2

Hardware
1

I am starting to wonder what is wrong with my camera… this 5 our 5 star camera can’t do anything satisfying, it seems.

I spent a good deal of time learning how to use various options about exposure and the manual mode, I looked at the white balance adjustment with a little white card. I also used the manual mode on cheaper cameras before., it’s not the first time I use a manual mode. It just can’t do it…

My observation is: In the same picture with very dark and very bright pixels, the EOS T7 will overexpose the brightest pixels way too much and will underexpose the darker pixels too much whatever the manual configs I set, the AWB, the exposure compensation etc, nothing really works well.

What would be nice would be to tell the camera to do something like this:
Recalibrate the sensor, 35% less exposure on the brighter pixels (I could choose the range)
Recalibrate 35% more exposure on all the darker pixels. (I could choose the range)

QUESTION 1: On the expensive cameras, like 2000$ for the body, are they much better at the task or it’s basically the same thing?

QUESTION 2: Is it normal for me to struggle with that specific problem because the cameras is most likely, not expensive enough?

2

Sounds like you have a metering issue. Do you use the live histogram preview?

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Not too much, I read a bit about using the histogram but I never used it. I take a couple of shots of the same scene, usually I set the aperture and take a couple of pictures with various exposure time, then I look at them in the LCD to see if 1 of them is acceptable. It’s always the same thing, when the sky is nice, the ground is too dark, when the ground has some exposure (but never enough) most if not all the sky is clipped to white.

We talked about me buying gradient filters for landscape but even with a filter, I find it hard to believe that it’s not possible to do better with the camera only.

This is a shot from yesterday and there was plenty of light on the ground with my eyes, plenty. But this was the only way to get a decent sky which is much more exposed in the picture then what my eyes could see. I tried to work it out with a RAW in Darktable, it’s just not doing much magic, the effects will pull too much noise out of the darker parts.

F 5.0
1/250 exposure
18.0 lens
Iso 100

2024-06-29 - Test
2024-06-29 - Test1017×680 823 KB

Bellow is the modified version with DT, the bottom part of the picture still somewhat dead… my best result was to turn it into grayscale. I don’t hate the picture but I am disappointed.

if I use a gradient filter, it will pick up the trees and I don’t know how good the picture will be with a gradient in the trees, I don’t want to spend money to be disappointed.

This picture at 6000x4000 looks pretty crappy, the effects are inducing a lot of noise in the ground, it’s ok for a very small dimension image.

2024-06-29 - Test mod
2024-06-29 - Test mod1092×616 1 MB

@paperdigits But I listen to you if you believe that using the histogram could help me… I will try it.

4

Just post this as a play raw…normally you can bring up photos a long way… also if you want to shoot HDR you might need to do some bracketing…that is what the feature is there to help with…

5

First, you should use ISO 800 for that scene with your camera (2000D in photonstophoto). It will reduce the read noise and give around almost 2 stops of shadow improvement.

Second, turn on the raw exposure indicator to see if you have any areas overexposed. I think you still room to go up before overexposure. You will need to learn your camera to see how much you can push it. The histogram will be your friend once you know it.

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I would like to clear something out first.

In my picture, the brights are too bright and the darks are too dark compared to what I can see with my eyes.

if I had a 2000CAD camera instead of a 750CAD camera, would it have a much better exposure management by default? (Without bracketing, gradient filters, and post processing?)

Better exposure management would be a computer chip in a camera, smart enough not to overexpose what is already bright and not to underexpose what is already dark. it’s just an idea I have by testing here if my problem is caused by a cheap camera or not.

From what I see now, it would be a pretty major reason to pay 2000 instead of 750.

7

I will try that during the week end, I never worked with ISO 800 and I will look at the Histogram to see some hints, I’ll give it a shot.

  • ISO 800
  • Turning the Raw exposure indicator (the histogram) to see if some areas are overexposed.
8

Its not the camera. That camera will take great images.

It sounds like you are learning photography. Go to your local library and get some free books around photography. Understand Exposure is a classic one. Then place your camera in M (manual mode). Force yourself to learn what is the proper exposure and dont trust a chip.

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9

Your eyes are perceptual sensors your camera is not so all you can do is manage exposure in a way that give you some latitude for editing. Also when you review on the camera is that where it looks off to you or is it when you go to your monitor… Is your monitor calibrated. That can help and also some monitors have contrast enhancement , black level settings and boosting and overall the monitor can be set too bright so these elements can be at play as well

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@g-man “That camera will take great images.” Ok i’ll take this as good news. I have a couple of awesome images in maybe easier scenarios maybe less HDR.

I’ll see about the book.

@priort Do you think that my first original picture has enough latitude for editing?

I have a ProArt 23.8 1080p, I believe it’s set with a bit more brightness then standard, my frame of reference is what I see at the office? Sometimes I send picture to people on their cellphone and they are much darker then what I see on my computer monitor.

I thought that the calibration of the monitor was about printing images, to get the same result between the screen and the paper. I’ll spend some time reading about this during the week end.

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11

Yes, I think it’ll help, but honestly, the first photo in the post is pretty decent and what I’d expect to see. Maybe boost the shadows and midtones just slightly, otherwise, I think its a nice photo! Your second edit is less good, mostly because you’ve pulled the shadows up way too much, so the contrast between the nice, subtle sky and the foreground is too low, so it looks fake or over-HDR.

Yes.

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12

It sounds like you are learning photography and also learning your camera and editing. After 54 years of photography I still keep learning. JPG images have a much more limited range of capture compared to RAW files. I cringe when I have to edit a JPG image because there is so little I can do to recover highlights and bring out shadow details. Are you editing RAW files? If so share some images that trouble you.

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I do think so. And also there are choices right… That lovely sky could be in a version with the foreground in silhouette and be a great image or you bring it up to introduce some aspect hidden there that you think should be a visual component with the sky as a backdrop…or there are versions in between…I think your photo is fine…

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Ok ok, the result I get here is interesting, thanks. I slept over this and I am working hard this morning (It’s not the morning anymore)

@Terry Yes, I had a first success with the RAW a couple of days ago, it’s building my confidence and I am working with RAWS on a daily basis now.

First, I don’t want to buy a book, they are too difficult to sell and I am never able to give them them away for free, they take too much space. I love physical books but I just have too much things here.

Is there a good open source document available to learn the basics about exposure, aperture and Iso on a landscape photography context? For the moment I ask my questions to Brave AI and build my own document bank along with watching videos.

I feel autonomous already with the settings of the camera, for the moment, the only problem I have is about the exposure.

  • I learned here that the camera is working normally so case closed about the camera. I’ll continue with the EOS T7, improve my technique with the device and post processing. I am now able to create a better RAW then the JPG (according to my taste), so there was major improvement lately.

  • Thanks for the comment on the picture also, it’s not that bad so it’s relevant info for me. I also think that the original is better then the modified with no shadows.

NEW GOAL (From this morning)

I started to dispose of things here, making room, putting stuff for sale and raising some funds to finance the following project.

We discussed before of this common difficulty of taking these HDR pictures of landscape with bright skies and dark grounds.

→ I decided to go along the path of using rectangular gradient filters where the gradient is adjustable in height, I’ll need more then 1 of these filters with various transmission to be able to control the exposure or my clouds just like I want.

If you know a brand with decent rectangular filters that will not compromise the resolution of my photos with distortions and funny stuff, I am taking suggestion. Same thing for a decent support for them.

15

I can’t say about the filters, but as for expections and implementation you could take a look at this channel

https://www.youtube.com/@DarktableLandscapes/videos

and see how the images have been collected and processed…It might help to calibrate your expectation and see what common start and end points can be achieved. The scene you capture in situations like sunrise and sunset often have challenging light and huge DNR. Our eye exceed our camera and with our brain make perceptual corrections to this light. Our camera can only capture this light as best it can with the linear DNR that its sensor has. Then you process that image and display it on devices with even lower DNR. Here there are challenges and some might say opportunites with the processing but you are at each stage using tools and devices where the DNR is being compressed for output…

Often one image capture even in a very good camera will be inferior to a bracket where you have over and underexposed versions of your image that you can merge to give you back some of that DNR that cannot be captured at one exposure and a single shot… so I would suggest that you maybe also try some brackets and see how that works for you…

This one might be similar to the photo you shared…

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16

I have a lightly used Kase drop in filter set that I need to sell, if you’re in the US.

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17

Thanks for the info, here it was instructive.

I listened to some videos about ND filters today and I am a bit disappointed by the limitations of the technique. IF the landscape is pretty flat… OK but it’s not the case all the time, I like to have objects and trees on the sides of my pictures.

The bracketing technique, I need to have my tripod with me all the time and wind is an obstacle.

Looks like it’s required to pick the right technique for a specific situation.

@priort Thanks for the video, another interesting video. I’ll have a look at the channel.
@paperdigits I am in Canada.

18

I personally don’t use gradient filters. I find them slow and awkward to work with. They were very important for landscape photography when we shot in color slide film. However, with digital you can create a gradient filter effect when working a RAW file. I feel working through some of the good videos on using DT will help build your confidence.

As for the camera and exposure, I am a very experienced photographer yet I still choose to do bracketed exposures for landscape and travel photography. This gives me a normal exposure and one that is lighter and one that is darker. Then in DT I will usually edit the brightest image that doesn’t have clipping in the highlights.

In DT I set the exposure module to give me the best highlights. I then use use a combination of modules to recover the shadows. These modules can include the shadow and highlights module, the tone equalizer module, the color balance RGB module and even additional instances of the exposure module masked to the shadow regions.

There are some great videos about DT like the one shared above. Also editing some of the images that others post in the PlayRaw category can be a great learning experience for the best of us.

Good luck

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19

I might PlayRaw my previous image a bit later or tomorrow, but I need to study some things on DT before I can give it a shot myself (for the second time)

I am going to watch some videos…

20

Having the images perfectly aligned and without changes between them helps, but it’s not strictly necessary:

  • if you’re not going to combine them and you just choose the best exposure (like @Terry said), alignment and changes are not relevant
  • if you combine them using some HDR workflow, it’s relatively easy to pre-align them on the computer. Also, small changes can be corrected (depending on the fusion program)

So, taking braketed images handheld it’s perfectly fine.

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