Is that amount of "snow-like" noise normal for 7D? Sample images inside

Hi everyone,

I recently got my 7D, and I am very pleased with its features and performance. However, I have some gripes about image quality with high ISO images. I naturally do not expect an 18MB crop camera to be free of noise, and I am actually quite pleased with the level of the "usual" noise as I know it from my 450D, where "usual" means the colorful pixel "spray" which can be found in the darker portions of images.

What really puts me of, however, is the large number of red and even white dots that show up already at ISO 800, get worse at 1600, and are really a problem at 3200 and beyond. I never noticed anything like this with my 450D, and it gets worse once I set sharpening to anything higher than 0 in DPP. DPP's noise reduction will only get rid of the effect with excessively high settings that blur any image detail into oblivion.

I am unsure if this is a problem with my specific camera, or if it is the normal high noise behavior of a 7D. Below you find two 100% crops of two "closed cap" images, the first at ISO 1600, the second at ISO 3200, which hopefully show the effect:

I would like to have your input on whether this amount of white specs is normal for this camera model or not. If other 7D owners could post pictures created with the same test setup (i.e. ISO 1600 and 3200,

Of course the problem not only shows up in these artifical test setups, but is at times already well apparent even when viewed full-screen (i.e. not at 100%) on a 1920x1200 screen).

I would really like to like this camera so I hope this is some weired sort of sample variation. I still have a few days left of my 14 days no-questions-asked return period, so please give me your input on whether this is normal or not.

Regards

Grummbeerbauer