help me with this problem, lens,camera, or operator

Zansho wrote in post #5765579
1/160th of a second on a 70-200 lens? I'd have gone at least 1/200th or 1/250th. Does this lens have IS? Were your autofocus points appropriately selected?

One thing about the 40D - it DOES require a little bit of sharpening post production on the computer.

Yeah - what's up with that?! My 30D was sharper straight out of camera.

Photography is LIGHT - you cant take pics in poor light without knowing what u are doing and get good results.

figmented wrote in post #5770908
Photography is LIGHT - you cant take pics in poor light without knowing what u are doing and get good results.

thanks for the tip but i dont know what that has to do with this topic, it was in broad daylight, very sunny, low light wasnt an issue.

Bill,

I took a look at your gallery. I think you have a good grip on photography.

dcsmith40D wrote in post #5772271
Bill,

I took a look at your gallery. I think you have a good grip on photography.

thank you very much, i appreciate that.

Bill,

I just checked the EXIF on a couple of your photos and you are using the Adobe RGB colour space. This is giving them a flat look that lacks punch/contrast and makes them appear less sharp than they are, at least in a non colour-managed browser like IE. I'm not saying that they aren't a bit soft but they could certainly look better if saved in the sRGB colour space.

Out of interest, what is your shooting and post processing workflow, at least for these images? Ra? Jpeg? What sharpening parameters?

I downloaded one of your photos and gave it the smallest of sharpening tweaks (25 out of 500 in DPP) and then saved it in the sRGB colour space. It looks a lot better to me. I then bumped the sharpening to 75/500 and saved again, which looks a little over sharpened, but it is hard to work on a small jpeg rather than the original file. Colours still seem a little depressed, like you shot these with neutral picture style and zero sharpening and then didn't post process at all, which is why I'm curious about your workflow.

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tim,

i shot these in raw and no pp was done to the images at all, just jpeg conversion and resized for web thats it, i just anted to get opinions on why it might be happening on the no edit version that way people could see the file for what it was, i normally do proceessing, and sharpen, thanks for the tip on srgb, ill change it all the way around, thanks again. your help is appreciated.

OK, but if you shoot raw then the image will be completely unsharpened unless your software makes some sharpening assumptions by default and does it for you. Lightroom, for example, applies a light dose of sharpening by default. The 40D is reputed to have a very strong AA filter covering the sensor, which will soften the image. It is standard operating procedure to have to apply some sharpening to raw files in order for them to look good.

I can not tell what software you used to convert the raws to jpeg. I can only assume that whatever you used did not apply any sharpening at all. So the samples you are posting are not representative of an image processed "correctly".

You will note that in my advice regarding shooting test shots I suggested using DPP as your raw processor and setting sharpening to 3. That should give you an image that has had a moderate degree of sharpening in order to combat the AA filter and tighten it up generally. I also suggested using Standard picture style, in order to pep up the tone curve.

I think that in asking people to judge these images it is important to make known just how you processed them. If, as you now say, you converted with no sharpening at all you should expect them to look soft. Run them through DPP, with a Standard picture style and sharpening set to 3 and see how they look. I would be interested to see the results.

Here is one of my photos, shot with my 100-400 lens at 400mm. The first example is with Neutral picture style and sharpening = 0 - just as it came out of the camera. The second version is with Standard picture style and sharpening = 3, which is my normal tweak, before making any other adjustments.

I think you'll agree that the first one looks sort of dull and gloomy and lacking life, and rather soft too, while the second one is a bit more peppy and crisp, without looking over-processed. Even so, resizing and compressing the photos to fit the forum means the subtle differences are largely obscured. Look at the differences between the 100% crops in the next post.

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Here are 100% crops of the before/after versions. Quality is down a bit as I had to use quality = 6 on the conversion to fit the file size limits.

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cool i defiantly see what you are talking about, and in my normal process i do get simular results, what i was looking at on my computer though was blur, not softness for my images, and i think it was because the shutter speed wasnt high enough, but i certainly understand what you mean but your examples here.

i use lightroom for downloaded and CS3 for processing,

thanks for all the help again.

Here's what Lightroom made of this photo, based on default import settings. It's a little better than the original, unsharpened version from DPP, but clearly there is room for improvement.

I've also included a version from Lightroom with a bit more hand tweaking to the sharpening. I had to tighten the crop a fraction, to get under the file size limit, without changing quality settings. To my eye I think the DPP sharpened version is the best version in terms of sharpness and smoothness. The lightroom sharpening looks a bit granular and rough by comparison.

Anyway, the point is, I think any unsharpened raw file will look a bit soft. But as there are countless ways to sharpen and otherwise convert a raw file it is very hard to make absolute judgements about lens quality without knowing exactly what is going on with the image before it is presented.

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Hi all,

you state: "...i took my time, framed the subject, sometimes even used something to prop on, and still most came out blurry, some came out spot on,..."

Using something to prop on while using IS is a good way to get blur, even if all else is good. Maybe that is part of the reason for the wild variance in results...

On the subject of testing your gear for back- or front-focus, please allow me to add to the excellent explanation by tdodd the possibility of using a ruler, placed on the plane of the test object to be photographed, but placed at a 45 or 60 degree angle to the vertical. If you place the ruler so that a known marking, for instance, 10 cm or 5 inches) is exactly in the plane that is focused on the viewfinder, you can then analyze on the resulting picture if the plane that was really focused is spot-on (hopefully it will), or if it is focusing farther or nearer the camera, and by how much.

DF

dfrois, you have to be careful when shooting an angled object, because the focus point is not really a point, but an area, and that area is larger than the marked square in the viewfinder. If you place the ruler at an angle then only one distance can be absolutely perfectly focused, but where will that point be, within the AF area?

You may find this explanation of how AF works, and one approach to testing, interesting. Note that although the paper itself is angled, the focus target is just a single black line. A ruler would give you lots of graduated marks and the camera could AF on any one of them.....

http://www.focustestch​art.com/focus21.pdf

Another similar test here....

http://photo.net/learn​/focustest/

There is another test floating around, which can't lay my hands on right now, which again has the paper angled at 45 degrees but requires you to cut out a flap in the centre to fold up at 45 degrees itself, so that the flap - the focus target - is flat on to the camera, and not angled at all.

This isn't the one I was thinking of but you can just see the 45 degree "flanges" on the focus target at the bottom of the page. The idea is to make the target stand proud from the paper to face head on (perpendicular) to the camera, and not at an angle. That way you know the exact plane the camera should be focusing on.....

http://www.hkdotnet.co​m …otographyChanne​l/AF_Test/

tdodd, you`re right, of course. My explanation of how to position the ruler was very succint, and probably misleading for someone reading it. For that, I apologize. My idea (which is not really mine, I read about it on the Web, and used it successfully) is that one of the larger lines on the ruler should be placed perpendicular to the sensor or film plane, horizontal, and at exactly the same distance from the camera as the nearby object that is used as target for the test. This is the kind of thing that is much easier to explain with a drawing or picture than with just words. The fact that English is not my native language also doesn`t help. Your link details a similar, more elaborate, procedure, with a more sophisticated target, but is basically the same that I was trying to suggest. Also, most rulers that I have seen have the main units marked with longer and/or thicker lines, and that`s why I suggested the 10cm or 5 inches marking: to use a single, more visible (to the AF system) line than those immediately close by.
Anyway, thanks for that link and, especially, for your explanation on the matter.

DF

I'll join the 1/160th is not fast enough for moving subjects. Remember IS is only for camera movement. You will still need IMHO 1/250th in a pinch 1/200th will work

Jack