Canon 10D Photo Quality Question

[Swanick]

I purchased a canon 10D about 5 months ago with the 28 to 135 mm lens. I read many reviews before purchasing and had a good idea of what to expect. I do not think my camera meets the quality of the reviews that I read. I have an older 2.1 MP Sony digital camera that takes pictures with greater color depth and photo quality. I like the pro features of the camera but disapointed with the quality. I recently joined a camera club where most members have a 10D. Seeing some of their pictures lets me believe something is wrong. Has anyone else been disapointed and experenced this? :?:

[Persian-Rice]

The camera is only 50% of the package, the lenses are the other half.
Ask most of anyone here, they probably have double the value of their camera body in lenses.

Look into some better lenses, cheers.

[WestFalcon]

I have the same combination of lens and camera and I have take portraits enlarged to 16x20 that were every bit as good as my Mamiya 645. I was stunned at the quality. You must be doing something wrong. What ASA are you using? Raw or large jpeg or what? Do you sharpen them and tweak them in photoshop? Lots of variables to determine your problem. We need some information to work with first.

[Swanick]

The camera is only 50% of the package, the lenses are the other half.
Ask most of anyone here, they probably have double the value of their camera body in lenses.

Look into some better lenses, cheers.

When you say better lens, the 28 to 135 mm sells for over $400.00 and has features such as image stabilizer. The stabilizer is designed to take pictures at slower speeds and still have clear pictures. Is canon misleading customers about the quality of this lense where others have the same problem. What would you suggest as an alternat lens.

[Persian-Rice]

IS, at least from my view, is more of a feature that assist in producing sharper images under handheld conditions especially under lower light situations.

Does it have an effect on saturation or how the elements within the lens deteriorate the quality before the image reaches the sensor? no.
IS is a great and quite expensive feature which is one reason why your lens is pretty expensive. But the 28-105 does not have a rep for great image quality. I have read several times about complaints regarding image softness and saturation problems.

If you want go into a camera store and set the impression that you want to buy a umm.............70-200 F4L, which goes around 500 and change, take some test shots with that an compare. If the images are still not satisfactory then you might have a problem or you are expecting too much.

BTW are you shooting raw? are you doing any post processing?

[toddb]

This is my setup, and my photos are defiantly better then my old Sony 3MP point and shoot. In your club, have you tried taking the same picture with the same settings and see what you get? For portraits, I have learned that stopping the aperture down to F8 has given me much sharper images (was allowing the flash an auto settings ruin my shots), but I still need to do a little post processing depending on what I'm taking pictures of.

Post a sample and the settings you used.

[blackviolet]

one big difference between a point-n-shoot camera like your sony is the lack of applied 'sweetening' added to the picture in-camera.

3 main areas that this may make an (apparent) difference:

1) sharpness - the point-n-shoot applies in-camera sharpening at the expense. this adds edge separation and at a glance - makes it look like it has a sharper image. also, the relatively smaller aperture (higher f stop) makes for greater depth of field and henceforth larger depth of field (sharpness front to back).

now you can always bump up the ISO and stop down the camera (smaller aperture settings and turn up the in-camera sharpening in the 10d - personally most of us here prefer to do this post processing (photoshop, paintshop pro, breeze browser, etc.) if you have a program such as photoshop or paint shop pro, etc. experiment with unsharp mask (usm). also enjoy the nice wide open apertures you can have with the beautiful bokeh (blurry out of focus areas in front and behind behind the sharp plane).

2) colour - most point-n-shoots artifically enhance their colours, to make the greens look greener, the blues look bluer, and skin tones look tanner. in film, it's like the colour that ektachrome slide or velvia used to give. but the 10d is much closer to truer representation of colour. additionally, with auto whitebalance and the ability to custom set white balance, you can really refine this. of course if you want the enhanced (and to most people in this forum, unnatural) colour, you can do this, again, in post processing.

3) image quality - point-n shoots automatically apply jpeg compression. if you are looking to take nice sharp portraits, for example, and want to do some post processing, you would be working with a lossy, pre-compressed image. then you'd have to compress it again when you save it. with the 10d, you can work in raw, lossless format. you could work with these raw files, save them as .tif files, and have them printed, never having to have them compressed ever!

can you post some examples of your photos you're disappointed with? are you shooting with an automatic mode (green box, portrait mode, sports mode, etc.)? or are you in the 'creative zone', using aperture or shutter priority?

pleases note, if i sounded at all like i was being simplistic in my explanations, i did not intend to, just hoping to help.

[scottbergerphoto]

When I see complaints about lack of color depth from a Canon DSLR, it usually means one thing, that someone took a shot with Adobe RGB selected as the color space and then opened the image in a non color managed application like Windows Explorer, etc. If you get the same results using a color managed application like PS CS or change your shooting parameter to sRGB and use a non color managed application, then something is wrong with your camera. While images from a 10D need to be sharpened, the color is beautiful out of the camera.
Regards,
Scott

[Swanick]

Thanks everyone for your response. I generally take outdoor pictures and try to keep the ISO at 100 whenever possible. I use the creative zone (Av) and generally select f-11 as this gives me the best depth of field for what I shoot. I set the parameters to RGB and adjusted the contrast, sharpness, saturation and color all to +2 and use the jpg mode set to large-fine. Depending on the light I may have to stop down the exposure. Shooting at f-11 means the use of a tripod with this lens. I will ask a member of the camera club to compare pictures and will let you know the outcome.

[Jesper]

The camera is only 50% of the package, the lenses are the other half.
Ask most of anyone here, they probably have double the value of their camera body in lenses.

Look into some better lenses, cheers.

When you say better lens, the 28 to 135 mm sells for over $400.00 and has features such as image stabilizer. The stabilizer is designed to take pictures at slower speeds and still have clear pictures. Is canon misleading customers about the quality of this lense where others have the same problem. What would you suggest as an alternat lens.

The Canon EF 28-135 IS USM is a fine lens. It's not a professional quality "L" lens, but many people regard it as Canon's best consumer level lens and you can make great photos with it. Don't let people tell you that everything but "L" lenses is crap! If you stop it down a bit (for examle to f/11 as you write), your photos will be absolutely sharp (if the shutter speed is fast enough). You do not need to rush out to get another lens!

But... Digital photography doesn't stop after you've pressed the shutter button and uploaded the images into the computer. To get the best out of your photos, you'll want to do some post processing on the computer with Photoshop or other image editing software. You'll want to play with the colour balance, contrast, saturation etc. Ask the people at your photo club what equipment they use and especially what they do on the computer to get good prints.

By the way, this is no different than with film. With film, people had to work in the darkroom to get the best prints. Now you'll have to work in the digital darkroom (which is better because it's not dark and you don't have to handle toxic chemicals.... :) )

[TonyKInTexas]

When a 70-200 lens sells between $700 and $1700 (depending on features and the speed of the lens (F4 to F2.8)), then you begin to see where his statement comes from.

Just a few, high quality, fast lenses will run in to lots of money.

The camera is only 50% of the package, the lenses are the other half.
Ask most of anyone here, they probably have double the value of their camera body in lenses.

Look into some better lenses, cheers.

When you say better lens, the 28 to 135 mm sells for over $400.00 and has features such as image stabilizer. The stabilizer is designed to take pictures at slower speeds and still have clear pictures. Is canon misleading customers about the quality of this lense where others have the same problem. What would you suggest as an alternat lens.

[TonyKInTexas]

There are a lot of fine lenses, made by Canon, Tamron and Sigma. I have a Tamron 28-75 Di F2.8 lens which is wonderful. I am thinking of getting the Sigma 70-200 F2.8 APO HSM EX lens (I cannot afford this lens in L glass <frown>) as my next lens and then it is off for a 17-35/17-40 WA zoom.


When you say better lens, the 28 to 135 mm sells for over $400.00 and has features such as image stabilizer. The stabilizer is designed to take pictures at slower speeds and still have clear pictures. Is canon misleading customers about the quality of this lense where others have the same problem. What would you suggest as an alternat lens.

The Canon EF 28-135 IS USM is a fine lens. It's not a professional quality "L" lens, but many people regard it as Canon's best consumer level lens and you can make great photos with it. Don't let people tell you that everything but "L" lenses is crap! If you stop it down a bit (for examle to f/11 as you write), your photos will be absolutely sharp (if the shutter speed is fast enough). You do not need to rush out to get another lens!

But... Digital photography doesn't stop after you've pressed the shutter button and uploaded the images into the computer. To get the best out of your photos, you'll want to do some post processing on the computer with Photoshop or other image editing software. You'll want to play with the colour balance, contrast, saturation etc. Ask the people at your photo club what equipment they use and especially what they do on the computer to get good prints.

By the way, this is no different than with film. With film, people had to work in the darkroom to get the best prints. Now you'll have to work in the digital darkroom (which is better because it's not dark and you don't have to handle toxic chemicals.... :) )