Rebel XT with Old Cannon Lens Problems

[AQHAGAL]

I recently bought a Rebel XT body only, because I have a Canon 28-70 (3.4 / 4.5 II) lens.
After taking several hundred pictures, they just don't seem as sharp as my older digital p/s (Olympus D40 4mp). I am blaming the lens and wonder if they need 'readjusting' from time to time? It seemed ok on my old 630, but now with digital I'm getting pickier on clarity, since I'm englarging and doing stuff for other people.
All my pictures are hand held, but they were with the Olympus, too. (The Olympus took very sharp pictures as long as the subject wasn't moving!) Is this old lens OK and just needs to go to the shop? Or should I look for a newer lens? I hate to shell out more $$, this XT broke my budget - but I love it. I would appreciate any advice!

[willg]

try the 50mm 1.8 lens...i love it

[roanjohn]

It most likely is the lens. Can you post some examples?? Sometimes, sharpness from a digital SLR will improve with post-processing. Due to agressive in camera sharpening on your P&S olympus, the images from that camera would probably give more saturated/sharper pics compared to the XT. Another thing you can do is to increase the sharpness/saturation on your XTparameters.

Also, don't forget that the 50 f1.8 only cost 70 USD............and its sharp!!! So you don't necessary have to break the bank to get good results.

Ro1

[roanjohn]

.......somebody beat me to the punch!!!! darn it!!!

ha ha ha

Ro1

[KevC]

Digital is inherently sharper than film. However, this also means it brings out lens' problems more than film.

It's possible your lens is doing just fine, except your DrebelXT is just bringing out it's flaws.

Are you shooting wide open? Lenses are sharpest a few stops down. Try f/8.

Also, you should also use UnSharp Mask in Photoshop as a post processing step. Good luck!

[raylks]

My personal experience is that digital camera such as Canon 300D gives sharp image as the film camera but the color saturation and texture is a bit inferior to that of film camera.

I support a little photoshop post-processing to sharpen the image made by DSLR, which I do for most of the images except some.

With some sharpening in post processing as well as contrast adjustment, images by DSLR is as great as the film camera, given all other factors such as composition, exposure constant.