Soft & Bland 40D - Profile Tweaking

I usually shoot with a 40D as my primary body with 24-70L, and 20D with a 'swap' for my second body & lens; I swap between 70-200L IS and 16-35 as needed.

I'm not happy with my 40D, images are consistently soft and bland (relatively speaking) whereas my 20D is always tack-sharp with great contrast etc under all shooting conditions (95% is Performance though lighting varies with venue & size of stage/production, or band playing). My 20D with 70-200L IS is a deadly combination and images have never disappointed. Any lens I use with the 20D gives great results as I'd expect from L glass.

What's your take, what's your setup, do you have any advice or tips (other than 'yeah just play with it' - thanks like) on tweaking a 40D to get the most out of it? I shoot RAW and process in LR2.2.

So far I've just used the default settings on the Standard colour profile. Last night I was shooting a panto (oh yes I was!) and swapped my primary & secondary bodies, i.e. put the 70-200L IS on the 40D and went to play experimenting on the fly adjusting sharpness & other stuff. Marginal improvements but still a bit frustrating, especially when flicking between C1 and C2 (1600 and 800 ISO) as it seems that the colour profile is also set on a custom setting.

It might be a long road to tweak & find the right setup and compare it to the 20D - which has always delivered without any fuss at all, calibration was perfect out the box - so any input would be appreciated.

Posting up now as I may not be able to reply for a bit - flying out for a family Xmas later today. Thanks all.

Reset the 40D to the stock settings (not sure how, but look in the manual). You should be able to get excellent photos from all stock settings (added to mild PP). Could have come with modified settings (stranger things have happened before..like the brand new iphones coming with pictures of factory workers on them or new microsoft zunes loaded with porn).

Hmm..
My images are always soft out of the camera. I usually do all my sharpening in PS. How much post-processing do you do?

I use a 40D quite happily without any issues. I did setup a custom hi ISO program in C1, but the rest is all default. Is your 40D needing calibrated or serviced? You my have a duff one!!

Hi everyone, back from the Xmas meanderings and back to my bag of tricks

Thanks for your responses and suggestions. After many hours of testing & trying a couple of nights ago, though not in a live environment (i.e. shooting a performance) I've come to the conclusion that the 'Standard' Picture Style setting out of the box is pure pants. I changed my C1, 2 and 3 settings to use Faithful instead, with a couple of tweaks including more sharpening. I hope next week I'll have a chance to try them out 'off duty' at a show so that I'm not pressured for results and can absorb myself in more testing on the fly, see how they compare given that I shoot RAW.

I hope this does the trick!

I didn't reset the camera to factory settings [a simple menu navigation], I had some reservations over doing this (for example resetting the continuous frame count, and the issue wasn't grave enough for me to take the plunge!) plus I am pretty sure that the body I bought new was clean and has provided consistent results over the months that I've had it, if only for this issue that started to nark me a bit.

I thought about calibration but the images in themselves are properly focused, just soft - whereas the same lens on the 20D is crisp. And in this there is a tangible difference between Standard, Neutral and Faithful (the three I tried) - Standard does come out softer than the other two, which in themselves appear OK (subjectively speaking!) - but this wasn't tested in a real world scenario.

I know that RAW is inherently soft and necessitates some degree of pp, which I apply as much or as little as needed and learning about improving my technique all the while. The problem is (was, I hope) that out of camera, whilst correctly focused, they lack the kick of critical focus - which my 20D handles no bother also out of box with the pre-defined Parameter 2 setting. This softness cannot be fixed to great satisfaction.

I did read on another forum though that images from the 30D and 40D are not as crisp as 20D, so maybe there is something in it. I'm not overly enthused by the 40D IQ generally speaking and prefer my 20D over it, hands down. But I want that in my 40D!

We'll see!