problems with my 10d

[badgerbaiter]

hi there!
i just bought a used eos 10d which arrived yesterday. now i took a couple of pics with it (all on fully auto settings) and to me the pics dont look very sharp. in fact my crappy minolta z1 takes better pics.

i've attached one of the pics.. can anyone tell me if a) i am going mad, and the pic looks fine b) if it doesnt look fine, what could be wrong with the camera?

cheers in advance!

[u02bnpx]

It looks like nothing is in sharp focus in your pic. And that's not at all necessarily a camera fault. Read the 10D manual on focusing options...the material about those little red rectangles that light up is critical to understand. You might want to choose a custom function that permits only the center rectangle to light up--which is what I do with my own 10D. Hold the shutter button halfway down, and hold that rectangle over, in this case, the principal flower. Your focus is then locked in. So long as you keep holding the shutter button halfway down, you can recompose however you wish. If you let it up, you'll have to refocus.

Alternately, you could switch your lens to M, manual focus, and turn the focusing ring on the lens until your primary object of attention is in focus as you view it through the viewfinder.

If you want more than one flower in focus, try shooting in the Av mode, which enables you to select a higher F-stop, such as f8 or f11. The higher the f-stop, that is, the smaller the aperture opening, the more depth of field you'll get in the image.

Of course, you fuzzy image could be caused by using a slow shutter speed without a tripod. This invariably results in an overall out-of-focus look to the image.

I'm sure others will chime in with additional advice and/or options. Also, it would help to know which lens you were using.

Good luck!

Floyd Lawrence

[defordphoto]

What lens was used here?

[defordphoto]

Amazing what a little putzing can do. Adjusted levels to kick up whiteness and contrast and did a 150/1/0 USM. Still kindy mushy, but better. I expect a lens issue here...

http://www.defordphoto.com/Misc/flowers.jpg

[mblanton]

Looks like DOF to me.

Mike