Reburbished Canon EF-S 15-85 IS USM Lens Question

Here is one that I took that is SOOC other than a resize. It does not seem as nearly sharp as the original so I'm not sure what I did wrong when resizing?

What aperature and shutter speed did you take that pic at?
Also, where is your focus point.

KarlGB77 wrote in post #14737630
What aperature and shutter speed did you take that pic at?
Also, where is your focus point.

f/5.6, 1/250s, 63.0mm - I had it on Macro setting
Focus point was the bottom flower with the top most petal on that flower being center focus?

Doesn't look good to you? I need to go thru some more pictures maybe to find better examples...

What was your ISO set at?

250 is not a lock for a sharp pic.
Take that same pic with a 400 or more ISO which will give you a faster shutter speed.
Use AV so the setting is automatically adjusted.
Bump up the iso and take 3 pics increasing the iso one stop each time amd look again.
Then post the best one here.
Thanks

Also, what body are you using?

Thanks

My 15-85mm copy is tack sharp as well though suffers from lens creep. Very nice lens though.

The OP's first image looks pretty sharp to me. He may consider using, if not already, center point focus in insuring a tack sharp image and precise focus point. It appears to me he is picking up on the leaves in second image, very clean edges, and not the pollen buds(?) in forefront. That may be just making it appear less sharp than truly is.

Good luck

Melsker wrote in post #14726021
Maybe I should revise my current status in the photography world as currently a "casual" photographer. In other words, I shoot mainly jpg and 70-80% of my photos ARE SOOC and the remainder are just cropped and slightly sharpened in PSE or the Canon software. Not sure I should admit that on here especially the shooting jpg bit but hopefully that is not held against me. I fully intend to work my way to the other side of that coin, however. I'm just not sure how much I trust my eye...or my computer for that matter...for making good decisions post-process wise. I use a lot of built-in settings on the camera too...gasp...yeah I know that's bad...but I am learning and I'm hoping this lens will help me get there.

I checked out your site BTW and there are some amazing pictures on there!

Thanks for the compliment.

To give you an idea of how much I love this lens, I recently moved to full-frame. However, I kept my 40D and 15-85mm lens because with the range, sharpness, and fast AF, I couldn't find a comparable lens in the FF lineup. Sure there's the 24-105mm f/4, but it doesn't cover the same range as my 15-85mm and it's $300 more.

I got excited when I read a rumor about a new FF Rebel that allows for "crop mode", which would essentially let me use the 15-85mm lens on that too.

Dear OP (Melsker): how are you feeling about your refurbished 15-85 now? We are probably both at the end of Canon's RMA request period. Are you happy with yours at this point?

In case they might be helpful to you, here are my overall findings at this point.

1. IS on my lens seems fine, though more effective if I let it "settle down" for a couple seconds after half pressing the shutter. An extra second of patience on my part after composing the shot has led to much more consistent performance.

2. For near-field subjects, say closer than 15 feet, my copy totally lives up to its reputation on this forum! Very sharp at all focal lengths across the frame. No corner softness to speak of. Just fantastic. Combined with off-camera flash, I'm getting stellar family photos indoors. Faces come out so sharp that the "skin softening" tools in Aperture/LR are very helpful. So for near field shooting, I couldn't really ask for more and I'm very happy.

3. For far-field subjects, say landscapes, and especially at the longer focal lengths, I can not get consistent sharpness like I do indoors though. My lowly 18-200 and 17-85 continue to provide sharper images for landscapes at anything over ~24 mm. I've done tests handheld, on tripod, MLU with timer, different apertures, IS on and off, live-view contrast detect vs phase detect, etc. The 15-85 will sometimes get infinitely close to these other lenses at these focal lengths, but not consistently, and has yet to surpass them. Landscape IQ is not bad per se, and just fine in isolation, but just not as good as I was expecting. I will continue to explore better technique but I'm at the point of just accepting this is how my particular lens/camera (60D) combination will behave.

4. Nice build quality. No lens creep. Smooth zooming action. Minimal flare. Fast and accurate AF (near field). Beautiful sunstars at small aperture. And personal aesthetic but I think it's a much handsomer lens than the older 17-85.

Since I plan to mostly use this lens for general use and travel, and since it excels at indoor family shots, I'm happy with my copy overall and plan to keep it. It is not the "all-rounder" I was expecting, but I'm really happy with the areas in which it excels.

I hope you are happy with yours as well. Please give us an update if you feel like it.

David

To the OP and others interested, I think I have identified the the reason for my sharpness problems while testing a refurb 15-85 with with landscapes: diffraction!

Found it almost by accident. Happened to notice that an f/5.6 shot where I was testing something else was sharper than an equivalent shot at f/11. Hmmm. I had a flashback to seeing threads about diffraction limits for the 7D and 60D sensor. This morning I shot a whole new series of landscape tests, this time changing only aperture (from tripod, MLU, etc.). Findings: shots at f/6.3 and f/7.1 were sharper than shots at f/9 and f/11.

At f/6.3 and f/7.1, the 15-85 was now consistently sharper than the 17-85. Consistently. Especially in the corners where the 17-85 behaves poorly at wider apertures. At f/8 the 17-85 is very close to the 15-85, though the latter just nudges it. At f/9 and smaller, the 17-85 takes a lead in the center, if not always in the corners. Final conclusion: sharpest image obtained from 15-85 (@ f/6.3) is sharper than sharpest image obtained from 17-85 (@ f/9).

I had been doing my landscape tests using f/9 and f/11 since this was a landscape sweet spot on my old 20D/17-85 comobo (lens corner performance vs diffraction vs DOF). Well, 10 million more pixels and better optics make a difference! And this explains why my indoors family photos were coming out so much sharper: all were shot nearly wide open.

With this in mind, I have even greater respect for the Canon engineers who designed this lens to have such great performance wide open. A common observation from the major testing sites is that the 15-85's performance is so good wide open it does not dramatically improve by stopping down (unlike so many other lenses like the 17-85 which was famous for this). I now appreciate more that this lens was introduced with the 7D to mate well with the characteristics of the 18MP APS-C sensor. Well done Canon!

To the OP: I'm now satisfied that my refurb 15-85 is sharper than my other lenses for all subject types when optimized. Combine this with all the other areas it excels over these other lenses, and I'm now fully convinced that the 15-85 is a top-tier lens. I'd be happy with this lens at its going price when new, but to think we got our refurbs for just over $500 (mine was $530 incl tax and shipping), I'm stoked. And I will be happy to purchase more refurb lenses from Canon in the future.

David

Oh, a final note. My concern over minor sharpness differences illustrates pixel peeping at its worst! I was obsessing to make sure I had gotten a "good copy" since it was my first time buying a refurbished lens. Now that I'm convinced, I can go back to taking photos where the subject matter itself is more important that the sharpness of a tree or rock 300 meters away. Happy shooting.

David

I find diffraction to be a low issue with this lens. I shoot a lot of landscape/sunset shots at f/22 on my 60D, and they're very sharp(and almost never shoot these shots wider than f/11). Now..close it up to f/25, and it definitely starts to fall apart.

1Tanker wrote in post #14753008
I find diffraction to be a low issue with this lens. I shoot a lot of landscape/sunset shots at f/22 on my 60D, and they're very sharp(and almost never shoot these shots wider than f/11). Now..close it up to f/25, and it definitely starts to fall apart.

While I almost never use such small apertures, I regularly shoot landscapes at around f8 to f14 and never noticed any softness issues as a result of diffraction.

mwsilver wrote in post #14753142
While I almost never use such small apertures, I regularly shoot landscapes at around f8 to f14 and never noticed any softness issues as a result of diffraction.

Yeah, i shoot a lot of shots with water, and like to get longer shutter-speeds(with ND/CPL too), cloud movement, and i love sunstars.. so i like my sunsets(before it drops below the horizon) at f/22. The only thing i hate, is sensor dust spots showing up in the sky, at f/22.

I bought a 15-85 refurb in December from Canon's website. At first, I was skeptical about buying a refurb until I read a lot of positive feedback from other members here. I must say it is probably my sharpest lens I own. No issues with IQ, a minor amount of lens creep compared to my old 28-135 (lens would fully extend/collapse) and other then the white box it looked immaculate. That being said, I would definitely consider purchasing another refurbished lens from Canon! *Crosses fingers for 35L to be back in stock *