is it me, or 50mm misses focus?

[sandro9mm]

I went on a football match today... wanted to shoot some fans... I get varied results, only 1 photo out of stack was sharp enough to pass my limits...and even that needed abit of sharpenning! http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/39132488/ for example is okay....


but what about the rest? is it my error, or lens problem? I took 50mm 1.8 MKI - exposure time 1/60

check for urself! 1 out of 20 shots is really dissapointing for me :( never had that low rate...

http://img394.imageshack.us/img394/4279/mg3078copyoz8.jpg

[GilesGuthrie]

What's the aperture? I find that my 50/1.4 is really unforgiving at less than F/2.8.

I wonder if there's some shake in that shot? I've found that stadia are not static, and perhaps 1/60 was a little too long.

[stupot]

the 50 1.8 is notoriously bad for focusing:) its nothing new. you'd prob get better results using MF.

[sandro9mm]

aperture F2

no idea, I do have steady hands :S but thats with heavier lenses, this is too light weight and maybe I just... but there is no shake visible on the 100% crop :S

[ed rader]

aperture F2

no idea, I do have steady hands :S but thats with heavier lenses, this is too light weight and maybe I just... but there is no shake visible on the 100% crop :S

maybe stop down a bit more? i've owned the mark I, mark II and 1.4 and none of them focussed consistently well and they all needed to be stopped down a bit especially in daylight.

after owning the 85mm 1.8 for awhile you really see how poor the the 50s AF.

ed rader

[sandro9mm]

ed rader

okay, what settings would u recommend? since u owned mark I version...

[stupot]

the 50 1.8 is sharp at 1.8, stopping down will increase your keepers as any errors will be swallowed up by DOF (ny focus errors will continue to occur). but you might not want to shoot at say f5.6, one of the main reasons for buying fast lenses is you can use them at wide apertures yeh? so i still think you should give manual focus a try:)

[sandro9mm]

okay, I'll try manual :) but its kinda hard to see anything in 350D viewfinder ;( ok, I'm blind I admit :)

[ed rader]

the 50 1.8 is notoriously bad for focusing:) its nothing new. you'd prob get better results using MF.

i was thinking F2.8 but if MF works you know what the problem is.

ed rader

[Mat Fitzsimmons]

perhaps 1/60 was a little too long.
Quite possible, with crop sensors you need to use the effective focal length in the old 1/focal length rule of thumb, which would have been 1/80s

[ccp900]

it looks like the shirt is more in focus, see the england lettering, it appears more focused to me....maybe do a 100% crop on that region, might be youre back focusing

[sandro9mm]

here, I think everything is out of focus :)

http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/9884/mg3078aq3.jpg

[BryanP]

everything does appear to be out of focus so you must have shaken when you took the shot

[cdifoto]

Was it cold? Maybe you shivered just as you fired but it didn't enter your mind?

And yes, the non-USM'd 50s are notorious for poor AF. I still even have troubles with my 50 1.4 but it's usually DOF and carelessness related. :)

[sandro9mm]

BryanP

quite possible, but shake issues on photo looks differently... doesn't it? I'm convinced this is DOF + Focus issue, lens didn't get focus correctly and F2 melted him out... could that be a scenario?

[cdifoto]

BryanP

quite possible, but shake issues on photo looks differently... doesn't it? I'm convinced this is DOF + Focus issue, lens didn't get focus correctly and F2 melted him out... could that be a scenario?

Sometimes you can have juuuust enough shake that it looks like a DOF thing. That photo is borderline "could be anything". Shrug it off and try again is my usual plan of attack.

[sandro9mm]

cdi-ink.com
yes. I've 17-85 USM and I feel difference :D 50mm 1.4 is a good lens, but abit expensive for me... hope to get one soon though :)

1.8 is too unpredictble, I sometimes get amaizing razor sharp images... mainly in daylight / still subject situations...

[sandro9mm]

cdi-ink.com
yeah...more practice will help, I guess :D

[cdifoto]

You could try stopping down to like...f/22. If it still misses then it's prolly the XT's fault... :D :p

[Phil V]

It's a combination of;
the size of the focus points (the camera focussed on the contrasty shirt)
shallow dof (at f2 the shirt and the face wouldn't be in focus)
the shutter speed (the stadium will move quite a bit - I'd not shoot at less than 1/125 in a stadium).
You'll need a much higher ISO to up both the shutter speed and aperture. You'll always have issues trying to focus on a face in the shade, look closely at the face and tell me how easy you'd think it would be to focus on an eye under those conditions, f5.6 wopuld have it covered.

[sandro9mm]

Phil V

nope, it didn't try to focus on the shirt, I use central focus point all the time... never let camera choose focus points itself...

I agree with the rest, I just lack experience in situtations like that :) it was my first seriouse low light shootaround... to summarize, your suggestion - I use higher aperture over 4 and shutter speed no less than 1/125.

thanks! gonna try next time :)

[sandro9mm]

http://img85.imageshack.us/img85/2803/untitled1vu5.gif

[Lightstream]

1/60 is too low. Closer to 1/80 would be better - remember your crop factor.

(for those who say crop factor doesn't count, that means the Powershot S2 IS with its 6mm? lens would be the most awesome image stabilized camera on earth.)

[sandro9mm]

would it be wiser to take my 17-85 IS USM instead of 50mm?

[Lightstream]

Possibly. I would do that (as I've done before in other low-light situations).

[sandro9mm]

so 17-85 isn't that bad in low light as people say? damn, I should stop reading reviews :S

[sandro9mm]

and one more question, mainly I use aperture priority mode... what's ur choice? give a tip please :)

[BryanP]

I do think there was some minor shaking

I've never had problems with my 1.8 ever and the shots turn out razor sharp whenever I use it

I think its much less an issue of lens, and a better excuse for you to get yourself a 1Ds Mark II and 85/1.2L... that'll solve your problem :lol: :lol:

but on the serious note... to me I'd go test out the lens with around the same distance again with same aperture and faster shutter speed and see what you can come up with

[Lightstream]

Shot an event a few months back with nothing but the 17-85 in EXCEPTIONALLY dim lighting. Available light shots at ISO 1600, f/5.6 and 1/15 seconds of people. Had to 'time' it so as to catch them when they paused for a moment. Images came out sharp. One of my favorite low-light lenses, now that I have the 24-105 f/4L I tend to use the L more (because it is constant f/4 and that one stop can make a big difference). I still insisted on shooting available light because it was coming out so much better than the harshly-lit flash shots with my 430EX. As for bounce - let's not even go there, the ceiling was so high and so .. strange .. that bouncing became impractical. (not every roof is a good bounce target).

I agree with folks who say 1/60 is a good guideline for moving people but there are ways to compensate for it when you absolutely cannot get 1/60 no matter how much you push your hardware. It's how you do it, not what you do. Would have been very nice to have two additional stops that night though (17-55 f/2.8 sounds good)

From 17 to 24mm this lens is a bit weak in terms of pixel peeping image quality at f/4, so you need to stop it down to f/5.6. However this is only an option in good light. So I shot f/4 or whatever it took and lived with the quality which was honestly not all that bad. This is where a good lens that can be shot wide open would help, say 24-105 f/4L. In this situation I used a mix of P and M. M for E-TTL2 flash work when I need to precisely control things, and P for available light. The reason being that P will open it up to the widest aperture whenever possible because the light was too low (understanding how it works helps a lot), which was my intention, and P can also be used with the flash (just turn the flash on). Using Av would have put me into slow sync mode which was not what I wanted.