Help: Is there a problem

I have 3 samples from my latest 7D shoot. I am not sure what the issue is. The pictures do not have the sharpness and details that typically my 5D3 gives. These samples are not PPed. They are just cropped and converted from RAW.
Is it lens MFA, exposure, distance or lighting that is robbing away all the punch? (BTW I have MFAed the lens using lens align at MFD + 1 feet)
Please help. My 7D has behaved like this since beginning. I kept on convincing myself that I may be at fault. But after I started seeing what 5D3 produces, I started to rethink.
So please help. Does the 7D need a trip to Canon?

For full size please go here

Looks fine to me.

The 7d has a strong AA filter that tends to make the shots out of the camera look soft.
Try pping them and see how they come out.

What lens?

I'm not sure why you think you can get the same punch from a crop camera than you can from a newer full-frame camera. Of course the full frame is going to look better. The airplane samples look fine to me. The bird shot does look somewhat soft but I can't tell if it was because he was turning his head while you took the picture or what.

how do out of camera jpgs. look?

The SW airliner and bird are shot wide open at f/5.6, the United at f/6.3. Try stopping down more... maybe f/8... you've got room to boost the ISO from 320 without worrying too much about noise.

They don't look bad to me, considering no sharpening has been applied.

LV Moose wrote in post #15800146
The SW airliner and bird are shot wide open at f/5.6, the United at f/6.3. Try stopping down more... maybe f/8... you've got room to boost the ISO from 320 without worrying too much about noise.

They don't look bad to me, considering no sharpening has been applied.

Thank you everyone..

I was using 400mm f/5.6..

So stopping down would be the key?

I'd try micro adjust, and stop down, and faster shutter speeds.

The osprey does look middling to me. 400mm f/5.6 is a great lens wide open usually. Shutter speed is stated at 1/1600 which should do most of the work for you. I would not be happy, but I would want a lot more info before I started assuming it was the body.

try micro adjust, and see if it's off?

rndman wrote in post #15800178
Thank you everyone..

I was using 400mm f/5.6..

So stopping down would be the key?

Sharpening in post is the key.

I would also repeat MFA at a more typical distance. MFD + one ft. is rather short.

I agree with everything so far...

There are a whole host of things that can lead to image softness. It can be any of the following, or a combination of factors.

Try stopping down a little since it's broad daylight, f8 should work fine.

Watch your shutter speed, especially since that's not a stabilized lens. Besides the lens, the 7D (and other 18MP crop cameras) have very densely crowded sensors, which seem to be more sensitive to camera movement than less crowded sensors (your 5DIII has lesss than half the pixel sites per square mm).

So for a couple reasons you might want to keep to faster shutter speeds and shouldn't be afraid to use a higher ISO if necessary to accomplish that. In real life, with 7D ISO 800 is as clean as any lower ISO, a little noise shows in 1600, a bit more in 3200, but it can be cleaned up pretty effectively with noise reduction software. With that lens and the camera's sensitivity to movement, I'd suggest you try for 1/800 or 1/1000 at least... the faster the better.

Micro adjust? Sure, why not. Canon recommends your target for MA be 50X the focal length, which would be about 65 feet with a 400mm lens! FoCal suggests with long telephotos that you can successfully MA with half that distance, but it's still 32 feet in this case. Setting MA with a target near the minimum focus distance is more likely to cause problems than solve them, with a telephoto lens that's used with more distanct subjects.

If you have a "protection" filter on the lens, remove it. You might be surprised.

And, yes, 7D images absolutely need a lot more sharpening than earlier, lower resolution cameras. All the other 18MP cameras, it seems like Canon didn't install as strong an anti-alias filter. But the 7D was the first of the 18MP and they kinda got carried away.

Use a monopod or a tripod (with a gimbal mount for moving subjects).

You will never see quite as sharp or finely detailed images with 7D or any crop camera, though, as you will with a full frame camera. That's just the nature of the beast. It's why people buy full frame cameras, after all. Your sample 7D images don't look bad, tho, probably will be just fine after some add'l sharpening and attention paid to other factors.

It looks to me like the lens is frontfocusing slightly.

The shot of the United airliner gives a clue to this. The left wingtip appears to be in sharper focus than the right wingtip does, and the former is closer to you than the latter.

Looks to me like you need to perform the microfocus adjustment procedure with this lens on your camera. If that doesn't do it, then I'd say you probably have a defective lens.

What other lenses do you have?

amfoto1 wrote in post #15800252
I agree with everything so far...

There are a whole host of things that can lead to image softness. It can be any of the following, or a combination of factors.

Try stopping down a little since it's broad daylight, f8 should work fine.

To get the low ISO and high shutter speed, I was keeping it wide (considering the distance). But next time I will try f7.1 or f8.

Shutter speed for these shots was 1/1600

I see arguments and counter arguments for this distance. I took the side where it said "at 50X distance it is pretty much infinity and a minor difference will go unnoticed. But if it is close to MFD it is unforgiving and will show up the difference". May be I was wrong and need to re-do MFA at 50x or 25x. The only problem there is the target becomes so tiny to even notice any difference..

I am from the school of "No filters for protection, use your hood". So no filter on this lens and all other I own.

I guess that is where first impression does not come out good.

That's kinda awkward setup I need to get used to..

Thanks. I think that is where I need to learn to differentiate.

Did PP on the images in LR. Please see below.

rndman wrote in post #15800406
Did PP on the images in LR. Please see below.

Nice. You can't **** about how they came out now.

I am not at all a fan of this number myself.

I try to set the target distance in the range of what distance I tend to use the particular lens the most.

Sure, for shooting airliners, you might want to be out at 65 feet to infinity,. but if my subject is that far off (ie: a small bird) I don't have much of a shot.