-= Canon EOS R7 owners unite! Post photos and discuss.

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #19406245
I used Face/Eye-AF and in the viewfinder everything looked good. The kestrel e.g. was hovering above the field, wings moving, head still. The white tracking boxes were right on the head so all was well. Pressing the shutter the focus point was right where it should be: on the head. It never left the head, never drifted to something else. It wasn’t until I looked at the shots on the rear screen that I saw most all were soft, as if focus missed.

I immediately grabbed the R6, put the 100-500 on it and continued to shoot the kestrel, as I wanted to make sure the problem wasn’t caused by atmospheric conditions. But the R6 shots looked fine.

I’m not sure I understand your question, Lester, but since the R6 has only 20mpx and is full frame where the R7 has 32.5mpx and has a 1.6x crop I would think there are less pixels over the eye with the R6? Or is that not what you mean?

Just catching up with the thread, so this may have been answered already, and may be a completely ridiculous suggestion given I don't yet have an r7, but aren't there two Eye AF functions, one for animals and one for humans? I seem to have seen that somewhere.

Feel free to ignore this post if I'm out in left field on this, lol.

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #19406339
John, the more I think about it the more I think it could have been atmosphere. Maybe combined with the higher magnification so it had more impact on the R7 than on the R6? Because if it were the AF it wouldn't have done so well earlier, in the city. I mean, an AF system works or it doesn't. It can't just work very well one day and not the next. If that happens then logic dictates (how very Vulcan) there must be some external factor(s) involved.

Were your settings the same on both cameras? Stopped down on the r7 perhaps compared to the r6?

greyswan wrote in post #19406702
Just catching up with the thread, so this may have been answered already, and may be a completely ridiculous suggestion given I don't yet have an r7, but aren't there two Eye AF functions, one for animals and one for humans? I seem to have seen that somewhere.

Feel free to ignore this post if I'm out in left field on this, lol.

Yes P453 subject to detect and a separate one for eye detect.

jm4ever wrote in post #19406594
Levina I know you said that you prefer to shoot with the ES, but I wonder if the MS would have done any better. Did you test any with it?

I did shoot in MS for a short while but it startled the swallows that were flying around my head, so I quickly went back to the ES.

Jeff USN Photog 72-76 wrote in post #19406595
I may have missed the lens used, but with the R7 being 1.6x it would show any atmospherics more than the FF R6 with the same lens, if you had a 600 on the R6 and a 400 on the R7 it "should" show similar air disturbance etc. Just thinking

I shot with the RF 100-500mm on both cameras.

kd_reno wrote in post #19406607
In my experience when the air starts to shimmer increased magnification just makes it worse. I can sometimes see more detail with 8x bios than a 20x scope. So getting better results with smaller pixels makes some sense to me.

Also, the heat shimmer could explain why the tail on Levin's kestrel is in better focus than the rest of the bird. The shimmer occurs because the air isn't uniform - it's "lumpy" and the lumps are rising at different rates. They act as tiny individual lenses separately affecting focus. The kestrel's tail happened to have a relatively stable "lump" of air in front of it. I'm sure someone can give a better technical explanation.

That makes sense, Ken. I was wondering about how part of the bird seemed in better focus than the rest when I think that at that distance, and flying more or less parallel to the sensor, all should have been similarly soft or sharp. This would indeed explain the difference. Thanks!

Lester Wareham wrote in post #19406640
I was thinking of this video https://www.youtube.co​m/watch?v=tQwyMzlj1gE around 2 min in (he refers to his first out an earlier blog) where he was talking about "Subject Detect" I think that may be the actually Preview AF from his discription.

What he talks about is Subject Tracking where you get the white tracking frames (a preview of where the camera thinks it should focus, very helpful). I ran into the same problem he is talking about where subject tracking gets in the way. So I had Face/Eye-tracking AF on the shutter button with Subject Tracking active but set up my back buttons (one with Zone-AF, the other with Single Shot-AF) without Subject Tracking as it is rather aggressive and hard to overrule.

Lester Wareham wrote in post #19406669
That is seriously soft. I get plenty of those which I put down to me.

Well, as you know, you never get 100% in focus with BIF, but this is an entire, long sequence of shots that are soft. With a bird in full view, that I saw coming, no obstacles anywhere. There is no way that I can mess up every single shot in such a sequence. I've been shooting BIF for a long time and I do not mess up like this. Even when the bird was on the ground, the shots are soft.

Choderboy wrote in post #19406701
I experience the problem just as often in 'cooling down' conditions.
Water, being such a large thermal mass, it maintains fairly constant temperature. In our very mild winters, on a sunny day, a cool change often results in air temperature reducing to below the water temperature and the air goes crazy.

Air temp about 21 °C , water around 17 °C. Subjects much further away than in 2nd photo.

Soon after, a cool change. Air temp dropped to below the water temp.
Subject still OK, background turns to mush. Soon after this, subjects were mush.

Wow. That's pretty amazing. Thanks for posting these, Dave.

greyswan wrote in post #19406705
Were your settings the same on both cameras? Stopped down on the r7 perhaps compared to the r6?

I shot with the RF100-500mm. Wide open at f/7.1. No stopping down.

I'm convinced now that it was atmospheric conditions that caused the soft shots. Dave's pics show this crystal clear (pun intended) and what I see there looks just like what I see in my pics. Mystery solved I think. Thanks everybody for helping me figure this thing out. And also very good to know the camera is fine!

Although that still doesn’t explain why images are soft with a bird a distance away with no heat shimmer present.

Great illuminating discussions ~

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #19406738
I'm convinced now that it was atmospheric conditions that caused the soft shots. Dave's pics show this crystal clear (pun intended) and what I see there looks just like what I see in my pics. Mystery solved I think. Thanks everybody for helping me figure this thing out. And also very good to know the camera is fine!

did you return the camera or do you still have it and if so are you going to keep it?

Jeff USN Photog 72-76 wrote in post #19406764
did you return the camera or do you still have it and if so are you going to keep it?

I already returned it.

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #19406733
I shot with the RF100-500mm. Wide open at f/7.1. No stopping down.

Poor Levina, did you ever expect such a grilling for a camera return? Lol.
I'm sure your reasons were valid, you're an excellent photographer who knows her stuff. And far better than I can ever hope to be with wildlife.

greyswan wrote in post #19406770
Poor Levina, did you ever expect such a grilling for a camera return? Lol.
I'm sure your reasons were valid, you're an excellent photographer who knows her stuff. And far better than I can ever hope to be with wildlife.

I think it is more along the line of those of us waiting are worried we might get the same issue.

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #19406766
I already returned it.

Now I saw your photo of a kestrel, it's just a thermal blur, but I see a different problem with this camera and its autofocus. Namely, it does not keep up with the action shown in the viewfinder, in other words what the squares do is animation, what the lens does is another matter, the system simply does not keep up and is suitable for simple things. Of course, sometimes things will work out, but this is absolutely not the rule.

Levina de Ruijter wrote in post #19406738
I'm convinced now that it was atmospheric conditions that caused the soft shots. Dave's pics show this crystal clear (pun intended) and what I see there looks just like what I see in my pics. Mystery solved I think. Thanks everybody for helping me figure this thing out. And also very good to know the camera is fine!

Good discussion, and no cockamamie theories about AA filters, small pixels and other technobabble needed to resolve the problem. The simplest explanations are usually correct. Canon engineers know what they are doing!