Canon 5D (Mark 1) - Acceptable Sharpness

I am fairly disappointed with the quality of the images shot with my Canon 5D (Mark 1) and find myself wondering if am doing something wrong or if there is something wrong with the camera or (please stay with me here!) they are OK and my expectations are too high. In short how sharp should an image appear straight out of the camera and how do you decide if all is OK or that there is something wrong (possibly) with the camera?

As I've said I use a Canon 5D and my main lens is Canon 24-70mm f2.8L but I also use Canon 16-35mm f2.8L and Canon 50mm f1.4 - I find that I get the same quality (pretty much) with all of my lenses and so have discounted the option of it being a problem lens.

I understand the basic rule of the shutter speed being (more or less) at least twice the focal length of the lens and have a basic understanding of depth of field.

I sometimes use a monopod to provide more stability.

I shoot mostly in RAW and understand that this means that the image is untouched and therefore may require some post production sharpening.

However, in spite of all of the above something is niggling away at me and saying that this isn't right - the miss rate seems too high.

I have attached a simple example of a shot where I have focussed on the eyes - the shutter speed was 1/500 and aperture 5.6. Remember this is a RAW shot with absolutely no sharpening at all - can anybody take a look and advise whether this is what i should expect from f5.6 taken at 1/500 on the 24-70mm or whther in your opinion there may be a problem....

Having trawled through the forums I hear people saying how they often do very little post production to their RAW images from the 5D and how impressed they are once they stick on an L Series lens and so on - this just hasn't been my experience.

Any thoughts?

Thanks...James.

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Looks ok, but that's a small sized image.
Can we see some more pics and some crops of 100% too?
That may give better results. Also, after you sharpen, how does it look?

On that shot, looks like the zippers are more in focus than the eyes to me. So if you are seeing this on two lenses, it may be a focus issue with the body.

Nothing a bit of sharpening doesn't fix!

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HI James

The 5d is an excellent camera. There's nothing wrong with your camera.

I have to see the RAW files to tell for certain...But it appears to me that your image is sharp in the center and the focal plane is placed somewhere between the upper right shoulder and chest region of the subject. The image appears pretty sharp to me where the focal plane is placed...So....maybe the problem you're having is that the image is sharp in the wrong spot....and soft in the spot you wanted to be sharp??

Are you trying to get the subject's face and eye's to be sharper? IF so, it's not a matter of post processing or the camera....The face and eyes are soft because the focal plane was placed on the subject's right shoulder instead of the face area. SO this means that the focal plane is behind the subject's face.

Just for reference....A lot of Canon's zoom lenses are hit and miss at wide apertures. They will often be very sharp in the center but slightly soft at the edges at wide apertures. I don't think that this is your problem but it is something to consider when trying to place the focal plane on a part of a subject that is on the edges of the frame...because it might actually be in the soft area of the lens. IT just depends on the lens....You might want to do some testing and see how sharp your lenses are from edge to edge at various apertures. I used to own a 24-70L and used it for many years. IT was a very sharp lens from edge to edge when shooting at about F8-F11...But it was definitely soft on the edges at wide open. That was just my copy....yours might be slightly different. The only way to know is to check and do some tests yourself.

Overall, I don't think you have a camera problem. I think you just need to work on placing the focal plane in the desired spot on the subject and also do some tests on your lenses and see how sharp they are from edge to edge at various apertures. THat way you'll be able to find any aberrations in your particular lens and be able to distinguish a gear problem from operator error.

Personally, I find auto-focus on DSLRs to be almost unusable. I switched to manual focus several years ago in order to have a more consistent control over the focal plane. It might be worth your time to work on manual focus skills a bit before blaming sharpness issues on the gear. Also, it might be necessary to purchased an optimized focusing screen to aid while manually focusing at shallow DOF

HOpe that helps. There is an art and a science to getting an acceptably sharp image. It's easy to talk about...read about online...but it takes some work. I don't think there is anythign wrong with your camera at all...I think your problem can be solved by taking a different approach to the situation. Best of luck to ya

james.spike wrote in post #7813209
...I shoot mostly in RAW and understand that this means that the image is untouched and therefore may require some post production sharpening...

Hi James - Here's your 1st problem. When you shoot raw your images absolutely needs to be sharpened. If your not going to sharpen your raw images IMHO your wasting your time.

If you not going to process your raw images shoot jpeg.

Every discussion about sharpness should START by talking about the placement of the focal plane and the ability of the lens to produce a sharp image with desired DOF at the desired aperture.

Analog comes 1st...digital comes 2nd The analog portion of the capture must be correct before the file can move onto the digital realm. IF the analog portion of the capture process is done correctly....then the digital portion is super easy.

It all starts with the lens and the placement of the focal plane. IF the image is sharp at capture then there is almost no work required in post. Simple standard in-camera sharpness settings or standard sharpness applied to a RAW image is all that is necessary for an image that is sharp at capture. Photographers that are applying lots of digital sharpening and PP tricks are usually covering up for bad focus at capture.

For these sorts of common questions, I suggest breaking things down systematically to find out where the problem really is. The first thing to ask yourself is do you ever get shots that are super-sharp? You're saying "the miss rate seems too high", which implies that you're not always missing. If you are always missing, then see if you can establish what the camera's limits are: start with your camera and subject completely immobile, ISO 100, an aperture around f/8, camera-to-subject distance equal to hyperfocal distance, and an easy to focus on subject (well-lit, local contrasts, non-reflective, non-translucent/transparen​t, relatively flat). Printed text of varying sizes is good for assessing sharpness as the eye is very sensitive to imperfections.

If you can't get a good picture of that with any of your lenses, then your camera needs a service.

If you can, then consider what can have gone wrong with other shots: insufficient depth of field / wrong focal distance; camera or subject motion; unrealistic expectations for higher ISO levels used. Inspect pictures carefully for sharp areas to work out what's encompassed by the DOF. If you don't think this is where the camera should have focused, do some tests: take some photos of a target with a ruler underneath and shallow DOF, and use the marking on the ruler to see if you're missing the focal distance.

Use this site as a reference: http://www.dofmaster.c​om/dofjs.html

Cheers, Tony

I would like to see a response from the OP to what Palladium said, does he expect to avoid PP?

Just to add to the above comments, it looks like you may have missed your focus by a tad (backfocused). The neck area and far side of the face appear more in focus to me.

Chauncey,
Haven't you been down this road?

Yeah, I have...some folks memories are too long.

Was a long road to determine what the problems were. Turned out to be a combination of user error and sloppy canon specs with regard to the AF system.

Anyone else think that anywhere within 1/3 of DOF for "L" lenses is kind of sloppy or that anywhere within the DOF for non "L" is equally as sloppy?
Or that microadjustment thing is generally only applicable to the very distance that it was adjusted to?

Not so much that. More that your trials hit close to home (more than many would probably admit). I think I have been fortunate that all my "issues" have been user based