80D 45-point automatic selection AF issues

I recently bought a Canon 80D and I'm having issues using the "45-point automatic selection AF" in One Shot mode on a static landscape.

The camera focus on the closest subject (as it is supposed according to the manual), but also highlights AF points all across the frame over subjects that are further away and completely out of the DoF. This viewfinder AF points highlight leads me to believe that those areas will be sharp, when they are clearly not.

AF points:

This is why I don't use automatic anything.

Especially in a busy landscape like this. The camera has no clue what you want it to focus on.

I'm not complaining about it not choosing the spot I wanted to AF, I'm complaining about it telling me that 35 AF points got focus when they didn't... is this normal?

The camera determined that your DOF covered 100m to infinity, so those points were used during focusing and were considered in focus.

You are looking at where you think critical focus ended up, but since you used all AF points, the camera is considering everything in the focal plane.

But if we open the picture link (full size jpg) the DOF clearly does not extends to infinity. It does not even extends to the white building in the middle/bottom of the frame or the highest TV antenna on the center!

Only on the second picture (single point AF) the infinity is focused...

Looking at the two images in the thread above, they both seem about equally sharp at infinity. The camera also has a tolerance for what it displays as being "sharp enough". That's normally not the same as "looks sharp when viewed enlarged by many percent".

@apersson850 I will have to agree with you that seeing both images at 1000px width they look identical. But if you bump it to 1600px you will start noticing the differences.

My issue here is the viewfinder highlighting AF points that are not properly focused, being highlighted would lead me to believe that portion of the image is reasonable sharp...

If I look at the AF points there were highlighted I would say I could crop the bottom left quarter of the image, and it would be reasonably sharp 3000x2000 image. It isn't, its not acceptable to crop that portion and print it, its all blurry!

PS: But bottomline, I'm just trying to understand if something is wrong with my camera or this is just the way it works (even if I think its wrong).

It's blurry where you're looking because you shot at F4 with a 105mm. You didn't have enough depth of field for a distance that vast at that magnification.

Camera's working fine. AF system is working appropriately.

The F4 bit is user error and dictated most of what you're having an issue with. You'd have never even cared what it focused on, if you were at F8 or F11 for a landscape instead of F4 (wide open, softest possible focal-ratio for the lens with the least depth of field for any focal length the lens has as an option).

+++++

Image one, it grabbed foreground contrast lines for focus, but the background is more blurry and less defined because your focal-ratio is F4 (wide open, the softest focal-ratio you could possibly use on this lens) and depth of field is limited. Combine those two things and you get a soft image covering this kind of distance at this focal length.

Image two, it grabbed background, so its what's in focus, and because you are again at F4, the foreground is out of focus because it's out of the depth of field produced from F4 at 105mm.

The camera did everything right.

Very best,

Do you get the same results if you look at the images in DPP?

Warl0rd, (or anyone else who may know the answer to my question)

How are you able to show us in the images where your focus points are with the individual squares in the photos?

I would assume the same would be possible in my 60D?

Thank you

Inspeqtor wrote in post #18325938
Warl0rd, (or anyone else who may know the answer to my question)

How are you able to show us in the images where your focus points are with the individual squares in the photos?

I would assume the same would be possible in my 60D?

Thank you

You can do it in DPP.

Inspeqtor wrote in post #18325938
Warl0rd, (or anyone else who may know the answer to my question)

How are you able to show us in the images where your focus points are with the individual squares in the photos?

I would assume the same would be possible in my 60D?

Thank you

Alt+L in DPP.

Very best,

MalVeauX wrote in post #18325931
It's blurry where you're looking because you shot at F4 with a 105mm. You didn't have enough depth of field for a distance that vast at that magnification.

Camera's working fine. AF system is working appropriately.

The F4 bit is user error and dictated most of what you're having an issue with. You'd have never even cared what it focused on, if you were at F8 or F11 for a landscape instead of F4 (wide open, softest possible focal-ratio for the lens with the least depth of field for any focal length the lens has as an option).

+++++

Image one, it grabbed foreground contrast lines for focus, but the background is more blurry and less defined because your focal-ratio is F4 (wide open, the softest focal-ratio you could possibly use on this lens) and depth of field is limited. Combine those two things and you get a soft image covering this kind of distance at this focal length.

Image two, it grabbed background, so its what's in focus, and because you are again at F4, the foreground is out of focus because it's out of the depth of field produced from F4 at 105mm.

The camera did everything right.

Very best,

I know shooting at f/4 will give a shallow DOF (for a landscape shot I would probably use something around f/8-11 like you said) and also using the lens wide will never give me the sharpest result for the lens, but I did it on purpose to illustrate the issue in a more evident way (if I had 2.8 I would had used it instead).

What doesn't make sense to me is the camera highlighting background AF points that will not appear focused on the final image, if after taking this picture I switch to 1 point AF and place it over the background, the lens will even change values on the distance scale window, so how could it highlight that AF point previously on a different distance value!? I would expect it to highlight only AF points that are over the DoF line for f/4 at the closest subject distance the camera determined, e.g. changing to 1 point AF and refocusing there would return to the same lens distance scale value.

Exaggerating the problem it would be like highlighting an AF point on a background for a portrait taken at f/1.2, because if I close the lens enough eventually the background would also become focused...

What I would expect would be the right column AF points to highlight (over the chimney since it seems to be focused), and no other AF points to show since they are not at the same distance and not on the DoF line for that apperture.

john crossley wrote in post #18325934
Do you get the same results if you look at the images in DPP?

I don't have DPP installed, but on the camera it shows the same AF points highlighted (you can overlay them when you replay the images).


That many highlighted AF points that won't be sharp on the final image takes away any confidence on which one the camera focused and where the DOF will be when I review the image at home. I don't want to spend 1 minute after taking each shot zooming and scrolling thru the image on the LCD to see if its focused or not, making this AF area mode completely useless for landscape.

Inspeqtor wrote in post #18325938
Warl0rd, (or anyone else who may know the answer to my question)

How are you able to show us in the images where your focus points are with the individual squares in the photos?

I would assume the same would be possible in my 60D?

Thank you

I did it on lightroom with this plugin (its free): http://www.lightroomfo​cuspointsplugin.com/

You can do it on DPP as mentioned (also free). On the 80D you can also display them on the LCD when reviewing the images.

What's the difference between a white line around inside of focus point and a black line? I've never seen it before

If you're talking about the squares of the lightroom plugin, you have the legend on the right.