New to Canon 7D, not entirely happy with quality.

Hi Community, I recently purchased a Canon 7d in August after switching from the Pentax system. I was impressed with initial shots but my keeper rate was not too high. I put this down to familiarity with the extensive auto focus system, purchased some good books and thought I would give myself some time with the camera. In this time I purchased the 24-105mm F4/L IS USM lens, and the EF-S60mm f2.8. However I am not happy with the quality of most of the shots I am producing, especially from the 24-105 lens which should I am sure should be sharper. I have read online extensively but I am stumped as to why most of the shots are coming out the way they are. I am new to Canon so I joined this forum to try and get some general advise and find where I am going wrong. I seem to be getting a large amount of noise from shots at ISO100 which doesn't seem right to me. I mainly photograph my children. I have attached some shots, let me know if they need to be in a different format, or if the full size RAW's are required to be uploaded somewhere.

Appreciate your help and guidence.
Thanks

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Need to share the EXIF data for your images...

Welcome to POTN. What focus settings are you using? Another thing to consider is if you're using IS on the 24-105. IS has an affect on how quickly the lens will focus.

jwp721 wrote in post #13551641
Need to share the EXIF data for your images...

Sorry I had the minimise metadata checked in LR, try these.

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They definitely look soft....

Mike R wrote in post #13551666
Welcome to POTN. What focus settings are you using? Another thing to consider is if you're using IS on the 24-105. IS has an affect on how quickly the lens will focus.

Hi, thanks for the response,

In the first shot of my Daughter its is Zone AF, AI Focus. The one of my son is Zone AF AI Servo

apologies, second one of my son is AI Servo, AF Point Expantion

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crop ISO 320 (auto ISO)

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Try one shot, single point only. Focus on the eye. I also would dial +EC so you get better exposure of the face with bright background. Try +2/3 and go from there.
It's also possible that your lens need some MA dialed in.

^^^ fyi, He doesnt have his image editing turned on.

On a different note, maybe op needs to share more info about his settings and if he processed after the shot. Your version look plenty sharp to me!

I didn't realize that, I didn't mean any harm. I was just trying to help.

EXIF data not showing up. In the first shot the curly hair in the middle of the forehead looks the sharpest. Serious case of front focus? Are both pictures from the same lens?

I second trying SINGLE SHOT auto focus on a stationary subject in good lighting. You want to start with good conditions to minimize any other causes for the bad pictures. If the lens/camera passes the first stage then start moving on to other things.

Take a shot of the front of your house. Have some of foreground showing the walk / drive way. Ensure focus is on the house (window or door, etc). Then review the image and see where the focus is. Try focusing at different distances. I had a lens that was great up close but WAYYYYY off with a working distance of 20-30'. May sure the shutter speed is fast enough to minimize and camera shake on your end.

With the 24-105 also take pictures with the IS turned off. In case that is the issue. If the lens comes with a focus distance limiting switch make sure it is set to the full range. Do you have auto focus on?

Keep the EXIF intact.

Just a bunch of suggestions. Hope you figure it out. I bet it has been a frustrating 4 months.

exif is on for the 2nd post he made:

daughter:
f4, 1/400, ISO 100...aperture priority 55mm...distance to subject 80/100m
son:
f4, 1/800, ISO 320...aperture priority 75mm...distance to subject 226/100m

both shot with the 24-105L...

my first advice is avoid AI focus...i think it stinks personally...also, i'm going to just ask, any filter on the lens?

Hi, thank you to everyone for your responses.

I simply imported into LR 3.6 with no presets, then exported to the required size (under 150k) for this site. jjcharity thank you for your efforts, I appreciate you were just trying to show me how I can edit the images. I do post process my images in LR normally applying around 20 noise reduction and some sharpness, but I find that I have high noise on some shots at 100 ISO, bumping the NR up and also the sharpness tends to lead me to shots with no detail and toning similar to an oil painting which is not what I am after. I feel if I could get a consistent baseline then that would be a good start, but the images I am shooting are far from consistent. I was happy with this, which used a fill flash, it has 20 NR and 20 sharpness in LR.

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