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Problems with Focus on 300D


sathish_rao

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I have had the 300D for more than 2 years now. However, I have not been too

happy with the sharpness of the pictures. All along I thought it was the lens

which was causing the focus to be a little soft. I upgraded my lenses to 24-

70L, f/2.8 and 70-200mm,f/2.8L. I was shocked to see the photos I took with

these lenses to be just comparable with the 18-55 kit lens. I know that the

lenses are capable to real high sharpness and quality. Thats when I started to

doubt my camera. No matter how I approched it I could not get consistant

sharp images. I changed the focus to single point and set the contrast,

saturation and sharpening to +1. I even mounted the camera on a trip and took

pictures at more than 1/1000th of a sec. Still same issue. I read the article

on focus issues in the 10D and thought of putting my camera through the test.

Here are the results. I can figure out if I am doing something wrong here.

The center line which was the point of my focus, seems a little soft, none of

the other lines seems to be sharp enough either. I would appreciate any input

on this. My next step is to send it to canon service, however, I dont know if

they will fix it or come back and tell me that the camera is within specs !<div>00HXNv-31544984.thumb.JPG.bb06dc834235d7bcd8fbffde853b2add.JPG</div>

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Maybe if you told us what you see wrong in the shots you posted, we could talk about that.

 

Lacking appreciation of the context, I have to agree with everyone else -- you're apparently shooting with wide-open apertures and concomitantly short depth of focus, but the images are so sharp at the center of focus we can see the jagged edges of the apparent ink-jet printer lines and the multi-colored fibers in the paper in your macro shot!

 

What's missing in your presentation is awareness of what bothers you about these images.

 

Bruce

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Absolutely nothing wrong with the sharpness of your images. This is as good as it gets with a 300D. As Bob said, if you want anything with more detail, resolution and sharpness, you'll really use medium format. I've seen awesome results from a phase one digital back.
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The samples look pretty sharp to me. However you shouldn't expect like L-series from those lenses.

 

In the Kid's portrait, if you try to increase DOF, you will get much better results, f2.8 is not very suitable with that short distance.

 

And would you say what kind of sharpness you are expecting? Isn't it a kind of obsession?

 

Maybe if you increase the sharpness with a software, then your photoes will look like "top photo.net list" more.

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I dont believe I have unrealistic expectations. I have seen what the camera can produce. Here are two examples of what I deem as sharp. They have been taken with the exact same camera model and with a 100-400mm L lens. I consider these photos sharp. I don't believe these are unachievable or you need medium format to capture sharp pictures. In fact I am very surprised at all the responses I have recieved in this thread. Each one of you who have contributed to this thread have produced exceptional sharp pictures in your own portfolio. So, I dont understand how my expectation of what sharpness I am looking for is unrealistic.

http://www.photo.net/photo/3461106&size=lg

http://www.photo.net/photo/3442622&size=lg

Higher f stop can definetely provide a better DOF, however, even with a shallow DOF, you should see atleast one point in the frame which is in sharp focus. This is not the case in the example I have show earlier. I have tried f stops of 8 and 11 also, with the same kind of results. This is definetely not a case of unrealistic expectations as all of you seem to infer. There is something wrong and I am trying to figure this out. There is 10-20% of the time I get really sharp pictures. I have carefully monitored what I am doing, but unfortunately there isnt anything different I am doing that I can tell. It almost points to the camera being finicky. So, even if I send the camera for repair I dont know if I can get them to diagnose the problem and fix it since it is not consistant. Hence I decided to post in this form and see if any of you have experience such issues with the camera. Clearly there is a problem, but I cant put a finger on it.

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If you live in a warm and humid place,and you move your camera from cold indoor environment to a place with high humidity, a little fog can be trapped insideboth lense and on the sensor.

 

And if you post one of those "10-20%" sharp outputs, we can discuss it better.

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