Why me, my sudden 5DmkII focusing issues

Hello folks,
I am desperately looking for an advice.
I've been owning my 5dMkii for one year now. Recently I've bought an amazing 70-200 f/2.8L IS mkII lens and shot some really razor sharp pics of my 1 year old daughter wide open. It was really amazingly sharp.
Suddenly though everything has gone the oposite way unfortunately at the worst possible moment, during my friend's wedding. What is even worse that I haven't spotted it in place on my rear lcd but yet at home on my monitor.
As I have used 4 lenses (70-200 f/2.8L IS mkII; Canon 24-70 f/2.8L; Canon 85 f/1.8; Canon 50 f/1.8) I am sure it cannot be an issue of the lens as hardly 100 pictures I would consider as OK out of more than 1000 I shot that day.
I read about many folks experiencing problems with Canon's AF however mine was working fine until now.
Any hints what could have gone wrong? What should I do/try?

Many thanks for your invaluable inputs.
lukas

Was this your first wedding?

If so, test out your camera with things you are used to shooting.

Why do these things go together?

When I shot my first wedding (of 2, I'm NOT a wedding photographer) I was shocked at how many shots were, to my eye, way below my expectations. I was able to deliver all the important parts of the wedding and reception well but a bunch of shots went straight into the delete bin.

Simply put, shooting weddings is tough and stressfull and that can have an impact on your technique and expectations.

If you shoot weddings all the time, disregard my post.

-F

Fernando wrote in post #14535641
Was this your first wedding?
If so, test out your camera with things you are used to shooting.
Why do these things go together?
When I shot my first wedding (of 2, I'm NOT a wedding photographer) I was shocked at how many shots were, to my eye, way below my expectations. I was able to deliver all the important parts of the wedding and reception well but a bunch of shots went straight into the delete bin.
Simply put, shooting weddings is tough and stressfull and that can have an impact on your technique and expectations.
If you shoot weddings all the time, disregard my post.
-F

Hi Fernando,
this was certainly not my first wedding. I would say it was my first relaxed wedding where I had 0 stress at all, so yes my question lies rather on the camera itself. I wish it was me.
thank you
lukas

Lukas,
There could be several factors but what i can think of, is some camera settings have changed, either intentional or accidentally. Try identify what settings you have changed recently, and revert it to see if that helps.
Another possibility is, the focus screen got dirty. Hence throwing the used-to-be-accurate AF system off. Not sure about cleaning the focus screen yourself though. A rather high risk task.

Look at the EXIF information on each bad shot, and see if they were taken with a setting that you didn't intend. Sometimes, you'll hit the shooting mode dial, or the exposure lock or the focal point button by mistake.

Focussing then recomposing?

Could you be moving the focus ring slightly after AF?

tvphotog wrote in post #14535759
Look at the EXIF information on each bad shot, and see if they were taken with a setting that you didn't intend. Sometimes, you'll hit the shooting mode dial, or the exposure lock or the focal point button by mistake.

Hi mate,
thank you for your hints. Shooting mode dial was all the time on full manual - M. I use exclusively center point as I did not get good results in the past with other points. And exposure lock? Even if I ever touched it mistakenly I would be very surprised touching it in more than 90% of cases.
Thank you very much anyways.

JohnB57 wrote in post #14535969
Focussing then recomposing?

Could you be moving the focus ring slightly after AF?

Hi John,
yet another good hint. However 70-200 is quite long lens and I personally do not hold it on focusing ring rather on the zooming ring so this won't be the case here. Even on 24-70. On 50 f/1.8 there is not even manual focusing working once lens is set on AF without real pressure. So to summarize it. I am not aware of changing anything in my style of shooting so this is not the case here.
Just to add few more details. I took 70-200 out with me today to take some random shots to really see whether focusing issue is persistent. I was intentionaly not recomposing. Shooting in "one shot" mode, center point, right after focus shutter released pressed to avoid any delays and possible movement of the camera. Not sure whether at least one picture was acceptable. Really very weird.

Just how far off is the focus? Is it consistently front or back focusing? Can you post a few examples?

These are wild guesses :
Did your diopter accidentally get changed? Your problem doesn't sound like a diopter problem, but just checking.

You say the images are fine on LCD but not on computer - is it possible you're viewing images on computer at over 100% or "zoomed in", especially if you're using a browser to look at JPEG?
(Don't laugh - this happens occasionally on forums - people post a sharp photo, and someone else says "this looks blurry to me" - the first thing to check is browser zooming!)

Lukas, I just returned a 70-200 II for focusing issues. Tested on my 7d and my 5d2, some were sharp and in focus and some were not even close. Couple times the AF locked up and wouldn't even focus well outside of MFD. Local shop tested and had no problems, but there is clear night and day between the two to me.

Why say all this? Even the best fails sometime.

We probably could give much better information if you would post a "bad" picture with attached EXIF info. Then we can tell what you are doing "beyond" your verbal description. A perfect example of " a picture is worth a thousand words".

Strange thing is, all his 4 lens gave the same below par results that day. So, it's safe to say the problem lies in the camera and/or user. Having seen the OP's past images, i trust his handling during a wedding shoot. That narrows it down to the camera. But why all of a sudden that particular day the camera produced such far below standard results, i have no idea. Don't even know where to start looking.

Hello friends,
much has been said however lots of information seems to be missing.
So firstly, I have been in photography (D-SLR) for about 6 years having owned 30D; 5D and now 5D mkII. I have shot up to 10 weddings already and I have 2 small incredibly energetic kids so I have really some experience with portraiture photography so far. I do not want to say I am the best photographer (still long way ahead of me) but I truly know how to operate my camera.
As it was requested already and I fully agree, it is much easier to once see the pics than just blindly talking about them.
So to sum it up one more time. According to the counter of my camera which is currently slightly above 5K shots, I haven't experienced any focusing problems of above mentioned impact until about 4K shots. During my last Saturday wedding I took roughly above 5 hundred shots with canon 24-70 f/2.8L lens and almost 300 shots with Canon 70-200 f/2.8L IS mkII. The rest (about 140 shots) with canon 50 f/1.8 and canon 85 f/1.8.
I truly do not find 10 pin sharp pictures out of all the pics.
So I decided to take my camera with 70-200 lens out yesterday to test it. I am attaching pics that were taken 3 months ago when my 70-200 lens arrived vs. the ones taken yesterday. Important thing to note here is that yesterday I did not recompose! All the time using center point for focusing, focusing with thumb and firing right after focus was achieved whereas older pictures where recomposed after focus was achieved. As can be seen results are drastically worse now.

Please click on the image so you can explore it in 100% magnification:
OK focus no.1 ISO400, 185mm, f/2.8, 1/50sec!
OK focus no.2 ISO800, 200mm, f/2.8, 1/125sec
OK focus no.3 ISO100, 190mm, f/2.8, 1/200sec
and now pics from yesterday (these pretty much copy the quality of the pics taken last Saturday when shooting friend's wedding)
Bad focus no.1 ISO800, 200mm, f/2.8, 1/80sec
Bad focus no.2 ISO1600, 200mm, f/2.8, 1/125sec
Bad focus no.3 ISO1600, 200mm, f/2.8, 1/125sec
Bad focus no.4 ISO1600, 200mm, f/2.8, 1/125sec

Moreover I have an impression that this camera cannot rely cope with ISO higher than 800. It is either down to my focusing issue or high ISO adds to the problem even more.

Have you been able to confirm the focus points that were active were the ones you selected?

Wondering if there was a glitch in the AF selection or something?