135mm L - Help, is this lens soft?

I just picked up a used 135mm L. I didn't have a lot of time for some test shots, but it seemed a little soft and the colors were a little flat. I picked a few of sharpest shots I got.

I do shoot with a 30mm 1.4 and 50mm 1.4 so I am familiar with narrow depth of field, but not at the 135mm focal length. I also shoot hand held with my 70-200 2.8 often.

I'm a bit disappointed but I'm not sure if I'm being realistic. I need a little input. Thanks in advanced.

#1 - ISO400, f2, 1/400sec
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100% crops?

I only check for sharpness with duck photo's.

Seriously tho, it does look a bit soft to my untrained eye. I'm sure if you play around a bit more and get used to using the lens, it'll be a stunner!

here's the crops
#1

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Dose look soft to me...mine is wicked sharp. It looks like you missed focus tho. Did you focus and recompose?

I did not focus and recompose, but it I did occur to me that focus could be the problem.

it dose look like focus is the problem. With 2.0 at 135 the DOF is very thin, just a little movement with either the subject or camera can cause you to miss focus

I think it's just a focus thing. The clothing looks more sharp than the faces in the last few photos, I'd check out those parts of the image at 100%. As mxracer said f2 is pretty shallow.

The focus looks like it was behind the face in each picture. If you look at the clothes, you can see the threads in the fabric in certain areas. Seems to be pretty sharp in my opinion.

The ISO400 and noise reduction, if turned on, would definitely hurt the sharpness. The 1/640 may not have been fast enough also.

I would test at ISO100 and higher shutter speeds before making any further conclusions.

Just to make sure, you were shooting in servo on the kids right? Cuz the water one looks sharp to me even on the crop.

are you using a filter?

Your 100% crop on the last pic dose not match the "focus" point in the actual photo which seems to be the letters of the shirt itself. Either you didn't focus on the face, or there is a focus issue here.

Time to pull out the tripod, and get testing.

Definitely a focusing issue.

Last one really shows it.

binlerne wrote in post #8908743
Just to make sure, you were shooting in servo on the kids right? Cuz the water one looks sharp to me even on the crop.

+1. Moving kids and shallow DOF are not a good combination.

Looks like a BF to me...