7d bad focus in ai servo and high speed shooting, help please!

So i just got my 7d last month. Overall i'm pretty happy w/it, excellent camera especially stepping up from a rebel xt. Well I tried shooting my sons basketball game and had horrible shots in ai servo w/high speed. Shots were out of focus and looks like theres two of him or smeared. So i checked it out again today w/my daughter jumping around on her bed and i got the horrible shots that i posted below. I just wanna know if anyone had problems just like this. What they did to get it fixed? Do i have a defected camera? etc.

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I don't know if your focus system is working well or not, but the problem with the pics you posted is the shutter speed. I don't know why you chose f/9 as an aperture but that caused you to use a shutter speed of 1/3 second so of course you have a lot of motion blur.

ETA: At 27mm you should be able to get the lens to about f/4 which means you could have gotten the shutter speed up to 1/20 which would have been okay but not great. Maybe wide open and bump the ISO up another stop. Or just use your flash.

According to the camera data, you're shooting WAY to slow. What you have is a shutter speed issue, not a focus issue. You were shooting at f/9 indoors, which doesn't work without a flash. You shutter was at and below 1/3rd of a second. Even if she was perfectly still, it'd still blur from your own hands.

The first shot has this data on it:

AV Mode
f/9
TV 1/3rd Sec
ISO 1600

Here is how you get that shutter speed up:

ISO 6400 -This gets us up to 1/10th of a sec, still to slow

Aperture to f3.5 (This is the max of your lens, which is not good at all for indoor shots) -This gets us to about 1/40th, which is usable with IS only IF your subject is not moving. In this case, it would not have worked because she is jumping.


How to fix this:

Cheapest option: Use your pop-up flash in Program (P) mode.

Best option:

Option 1 - Buy a better lens. Something great to start with that is a million times sharper than you 18-55 is the Tamron 17-50 2.8. Even faster would be the 50mm 1.8, but it's a prime, meaning you'd have to think hard about where you are standing in your shots. It's not as easy as a zoom.

Option 2 - Buy an external flash like the 430ex. It will let you bounce a high power flash off the ceilings or walls around you to get much nicer lighting that doesn't look like a crappy pop-up flash 'deer in headlights' kinda thing.

krb wrote in post #9552427
I don't know if your focus system is working well or not, but the problem with the pics you posted is the shutter speed. I don't know why you chose f/9 as an aperture but that caused you to use a shutter speed of 1/3 second so of course you have a lot of motion blur.

Even if i made the aperture bigger it still does the same thing. I was just testing it out and thats how they came out

krb wrote in post #9552427
I don't know if your focus system is working well or not, but the problem with the pics you posted is the shutter speed. I don't know why you chose f/9 as an aperture but that caused you to use a shutter speed of 1/3 second so of course you have a lot of motion blur.

ETA: At 27mm you should be able to get the lens to about f/4 which means you could have gotten the shutter speed up to 1/20 which would have been okay but not great. Maybe wide open and bump the ISO up another stop. Or just use your flash.

+1 Exactly.

Your lenses will limit you for indoor basketball shots....the only one I can see doing ok would be the 50mm f1.8.

JoePhotoOnline wrote in post #9552439
According to the camera data, you're shooting WAY to slow. What you have is a shutter speed issue, not a focus issue. You were shooting at f/9 indoors, which doesn't work without a flash. You shutter was at and below 1/3rd of a second. Even if she was perfectly still, it'd still blur from your own hands.

The first shot has this data on it:

AV Mode
f/9
TV 1/3rd Sec
ISO 1600

Here is how you get that shutter speed up:

ISO 6400 -This gets us up to 1/10th of a sec, still to slow

Aperture to f3.5 (This is the max of your lens, which is not good at all for indoor shots) -This gets us to about 1/40th, which is usable with IS only IF your subject is not moving. In this case, it would not have worked because she is jumping.


How to fix this:

Cheapest option: Use your pop-up flash in Program (P) mode.

Best option:

Option 1 - Buy a better lens. Something great to start with that is a million times sharper than you 18-55 is the Tamron 17-50 2.8. Even faster would be the 50mm 1.8, but it's a prime, meaning you'd have to think hard about where you are standing in your shots. It's not as easy as a zoom.

Option 2 - Buy an external flash like the 430ex. It will let you bounce a high power flash off the ceilings or walls around you to get much nicer lighting that doesn't look like a crappy pop-up flash 'deer in headlights' kinda thing.

thanks for the tips, i do have a nifty fifty and a 430 ex ii, ima try it out.

Examples of a bounced on-camera flash (580EX)

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Basketball's a whole other story... Basically, you're not going to get anything fantastic until you get strobes, which is what SI and the NBA use. Here is what I've been able to do with two 600 watt strobes:

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Here's another bounced-flash shot. This was a night, and the flashed was bounced off a wall to my left side. This with also with that Nifty Fifity at f/2

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Hey thanks Joe, ima definetly do what you told me too. Buy another lens for shooting sports. Any recommendations?

A good sports lens for the budget is the 85mm f1.8

I'm not Joe, but indoor sports (depending on lighting) you have several options. 85 1.8 or in better lighting you can use a 2.8 lens, the 85 1.8 is probably your best option,because it will focus better and give you some range

Just to add...if you can step up your budget just a bit, you can get in to an L series 200mm/2.8, right around 500 bucks for a good used copy, add 2 bills for a new one. Get a strobe and shoot the opposite baseline or from side court.

Another great basketball workhorse is the 70-200/2.8. If you use it on a monopod, you don't need the IS...if you shoot handheld...I find that I need IS but ymmv.

Of course, there are plenty of others but the price goes up exponentially for the high speed/2.8 long tele lenses.

Also, a great book and easy read (in a day/over a weekend) is Brian Peterson's "Understanding Exposure." You may or may not have a good grasp of your camera's settings...I'm assuming nothing, other than your original questions... but with a complex camera like the 7d, it's always a good idea to brush up on the fundamentals AND read the manual thoroughly to get the most out of your new kit. It's an excellent book and I still pick it up once a year for a quick gander.

Have fun!

Before you invest in buying your next lens, I suggest a good book on basic photography. You apparently do not understand the direct relationship between Aperature and Shutter speed as well as use of flashes. I would recommend John Hedgecoe The New Manual of Photography.