7d AF / IQ problem

pooley

pooley

Suspended / Banned
Messages
6,017
Name
Mike
Edit My Images
Yes
Hi,

I'm hoping someone can shed a bit of light on a problem with my 7d. Personally I think I've got a faulty camera but would like to be sure before I send it for a repair.

I bought it new from HDEW in April this year, and first used it underwater with 60mm macro and tokins 10-17mm lenses. I was fairly happy with the results.

I then shot plenty of kids football with a 70-200mm f4 L lens, and found the AF to be just 'Ok', nothing better.

This week I got a 400mm f5.6 L and a 70-200mm f4 is L lenses - both highly regarded lenses. I've just done 2 days of wildlife shooting, and have had a massive amount of soft shots - way more than could be user error. I then tested the lenses and am happy that the lenses themselves are not soft, but on most shots there is no specific point of the shot which is properly sharp.

I can accept that birds in flight can be tough, but I got loads more keepers on my old 20d - to say I'm unimpressed with my 7d does not even come close to how I really feel about it.

Some examples, all 100% crops, all shot with AI servo, all straight raw to jpeg conversions, done in lightroom 3 with default sharpening setting of '25' -

A Redshank. This should have been a very technically easy shot. Slow moving, good light, high shutter speed, just about all the shots were this bad. 400mm lens. Through the viewfinder the shot looked very sharp.

redshank_test.jpg
[/IMG]

I went back home and took the dogs out for a photo session to do some controlled shots. First the 400mm.

400mm_static.jpg
[/IMG]

Then the 70-200mm f4 is

is_static.jpg
[/IMG]

Also a robin shot from today - 400mm default sharpening setting

Robin_as_shot.jpg
[/IMG]

And the same shot edited in lightroom, sharpened with a little noise reduction

Robin_edited.jpg


Anyone got any thoughts, as most of my shots have similar sharpness to the Redshank shot

thanks in advance

Mike
 
Looks like a lot of noise in them shots, need more info like the exif data to see what's going on.
 
I deliberately upped the iso in order to negate camera shake as being an issue, so the noise is not really what I'm complaining about.

The camera was also supported on a monopod.

All shots are wide open but the results should be much better than the redshank example.

At a guess I'd say over 90% of the shots are similar to the redshank - nothing obvious in focus.
 
Have you tried doing a controlled focus test. You may need to a little bit of micro adjustment to the af
 
As above. You need to get the camera on a tripod and use a high contrast target with, if possible, a stepped DOF. Its not very high tech but I use a few small tins set to give a stepped DOF. If the camera is missing on the focus they give me an indication of which way to go. If youre shooting wide open then DOF can be quite shallow and a bit of MA can make the difference. Centre AF point, decent shutter speed, and see what you come up with. Looking at the dog and the robin they are a bit out but not a million miles away.

Just saw your last post. Are you saying you've tried MA already?
 
Last edited:
Gaz,

I've looked at the MA, and while I agree that a little more fine tuning may be beneficial, shooting deer at 50 yards and not getting any part of the animal pin sharp leads me to believe that this is not the cause. I even shot some stopped down a little with no improvement. I get the odd one reasonably sharp but I don't think static animals are a particularly hard subject for a camera in this class

The vast majority of shots look just like the Redshank - its as if I've got a really bad filter stuck on the lens - which I haven't!
 
Do you know anyone with a 7D that you can borrow for an hour. You could then shoot both bodies side by side. Must be someone on here that lives in your area and could help you out.
 
Mike, try the MA adjustment. Spend a bit of time with it and then test again.

You might be suprised...
 
Mike I am in south Manchester if you need any help. Happy to have you bring your gear round to do a comparison test.
 
One thing to think about... Canon had an issue with the sensor in the 7D not fitting flush and 'could' be throwing the focus out. Looking at the sensor will not show the potential problem if indeed yours suffers from this problem.

My other half had a 7D and it had this issue BIG time so we popped it to H Lehmanns in Stoke who have a VERY special gadget (big silver looking box costing £12k) that checks to see if the sensor is fitted correctly. We were VERY lucky to see this in action!

After some adjustments it was spot on. Chalk n Cheese! If the Camera is under a UK warranty it can be done free but if the camera is not a UK version I believe there's a charge for this service.

They can also calibrate lenses too if they are under warranty.
 
I had similar problems with my first 7D. When I had a 100-400 L on it was very poor but I had a UV filter on all the lenses. I was about to return the camera when I tried one last time without the filters and the difference was amazing. They were good quality filters as well but I ended up taking all the filters off my lenses and never using them since. If you've not got filters on then I'd suggest it takes a trip to a service centre and get it checked over.

I was never really happy with either of the 7D's I had and I part ex'd mine for a 70D recently and couldn't be happier. The 70D is the best crop body I've had and that's including a 1D3.
 
Interesting. I did the Bournemouth air show a couple of weeks ago and used the 7D on 2 of the 4 days. On the first I had just the 400mm f5.6 and the majority of shots were pin sharp ... the ones that were soft were down to me trying to shoot planes hand held at silly low shutter speeds to get prop blur. The second time I used the Sigma 50-500mm OS and I took over 400 pictures ... when I got home to process them every single one was ever so slightly soft, just enough that I had to delete the lot. I was using the same settings as you.

I have since checked the lens and it's fine, I am completely at a loss as to why there was such a difference on the 2 days ... I was fuming though.
 
what Iso are they at?

As you say they lack pretty much all detail and I wouldn't expect them to be that mushy till over 3200iso or more.

this is a crop down to 1161 x 654 @ iso 800 of a Parrot that was mooching around on a fence post.

Albiet not perfect and on a 60D and not a 7D there is not the mush or lack of any detail shown above, ...

 
After plenty of testing and some welcome help from mel (ventonbike) there is some front focusing going on so I'll do more work tomorrow.

Thanks for all the replies so far - not convinced that I'm out of the woods just yet though!
 
I had similar problems with my first 7D. When I had a 100-400 L on it was very poor but I had a UV filter on all the lenses. I was about to return the camera when I tried one last time without the filters and the difference was amazing. They were good quality filters as well but I ended up taking all the filters off my lenses and never using them since. If you've not got filters on then I'd suggest it takes a trip to a service centre and get it checked over.
Click to expand...

I had a similar problem just a week or so back. Doing some macro shots, with 7D + 100mm Macro, of jewelry and couldn't get sharp enough results. Removed Hoya MC UV filter and I too noticed an incredible difference.

Colin
 
Spuriousfish said:
I had a similar problem just a week or so back. Doing some macro shots, with 7D + 100mm Macro, of jewelry and couldn't get sharp enough results. Removed Hoya MC UV filter and I too noticed an incredible difference.

Colin
Click to expand...

I don't use filters, so that problem has been ruled out. I'm going to get the micro adjust sorted out, then if it still doesn't work it'll be going back for a fix.

cheers for the suggestion though
 
It looks very similar to the kind of result I've been getting with a 7d. Not always.....I have some belters but more often than not they're disappointing.

It could be user error - (by me that is). At 400mm on a 1.6x crop camera any minor technical weakness is going to be magnified by about 13 times.

It seems to me that the 7d is intolerant of any technical imperfection.

Most people will be pushing a 7d to the limits of its abilities and beyond - long, heavy lenses, high ASA's, narrow depth of field. What could go wrong?

Just about everything.

It may be - probably is - a good camera in the normal situations that an SLR is used in. But for its intended purpose a 7D just can't quite cope.
 
Not much of a help in your situation but I had exactly the same issues with my 7D and was never happy with it noise everywhere and almost always too soft for my liking. I sold that and bought a Nikon D7000 and never looked back. I never found the 7D to be anywhere near good as it is supposed to be.
The new focus system Canon installed on the 7D was supposed to be revolutionary but, as far as I am aware, was never used again, perhaps that tells you all you need to know.
 
Hopefully I'm going to have a bit of time over the next 2 days to spend some time with the micro af adjustment and see where that takes me. A 'problem' I've got is I can't just get rid of my 7d as I've based my entire underwater setup around it and selling my housing will mean I take a big financial hit - somwthing I'm not prepared to do, especially as it works well underwater, where I can generally keep to low ISO's and fill the frame with my intended subject.

I do have a few quid spare for a second body, which I want for bit of extra flexibility, but change my mind with the wind as to whether I get a 1d3 for the AF, a 5d2 for when I shoot slow moving subjects and don't need the crop factor, or just get a 70d for a bit of both.

Aaaaaargh!
 
jerry12953 said:
The 5d3 looks very similar in that respect.........
Click to expand...


Similar as in supposed to be revolutionary and never used again?? Can you explain that one please as I must be missing something about the AF on the 5D MkIII if thats the case as the 5D3 focus more accurately and consistently with the latest canon lenses than any other camera except the 1DX.
 
Last edited:
pooley said:
Hopefully I'm going to have a bit of time over the next 2 days to spend some time with the micro af adjustment and see where that takes me. A 'problem' I've got is I can't just get rid of my 7d as I've based my entire underwater setup around it and selling my housing will mean I take a big financial hit - somwthing I'm not prepared to do, especially as it works well underwater, where I can generally keep to low ISO's and fill the frame with my intended subject.

I do have a few quid spare for a second body, which I want for bit of extra flexibility, but change my mind with the wind as to whether I get a 1d3 for the AF, a 5d2 for when I shoot slow moving subjects and don't need the crop factor, or just get a 70d for a bit of both.

Aaaaaargh!
Click to expand...


Have a read of the link below and use the test chart suggested. I did three of my most used lenses, yesterday and they were all spot on, Canon 15-85, Canon 55-250 and Sigma 150-500. I know for a fact that my 55-250 and 150- 500 were both front focusing on my 450D by quite a bit, so am confident that my 7D is OK.

http://www.northlight-images.co.uk/article_pages/cameras/1ds3_af_micoadjustment.html
 
I had a 7D and must say it didn't seem to suffer from any of the problems often associated with this camera.
Even though it worked as designed I was never totally satisfied with the results such as excessive noise and overall lack of detail.

I may be wrong, but it seemed to me that the low pass filter was too strong which meant a lot of post processing work needed to be done. Pixel peeping is not my thing, but when viewing at 100% for sharpening purposes the images compared unfavourably with other cameras I have owned

Also feel that this camera is probably over complicated for many users needs and the numerous AF modes cause confusion as does meddling with the MA function (again I must have been lucky that my lenses were fine in that respect)

Sold mine and went back to using the 5D which although getting on a bit produces to my eye more satisfactory results. Admittedly I do not very often take action type photos, but nor do I suspect many other 7D owners and could be they don't need such an advanced camera
 
Gaz J said:
Similar as in supposed to be revolutionary and never used again?? Can you explain that one please as I must be missing something about the AF on the 5D MkIII if thats the case as the 5D3 focus more accurately and consistently with the latest canon lenses than any other camera except the 1DX.
Click to expand...

I only said "looks like...." :)

I have no specialist technical knowledge and have only had the 5d3 for about a week. But the various AF modes on it appear superficially to be similar to those on a 7d; perhaps explained a bit better though......

If I'm wrong maybe someone could put me right?
 
I honestly think that the only camera canon make that has a better AF than the 5D3 is the 1DX. I will pick my 5D3 up before my 1D MkIV 8 times out of ten. It's only when I need the frame rate that I use the Mk IV. I've spent a fair bit of time reading everything I can on the AF system and trying various combinations and have every confidence in the camera.
 
Just for point of reference, here are two versions of the same image taken on my 7D, one at 100% and a 1:1 crop. This is a screengrab of a RAW unedited image straight out of the 7D. Shot at f/1.8 with ISO 160. Focus was around the reptiles eye, though can't be certain.





The 7D has extremely sensitive AF and it has taken me an age to get it to a stage where I am able to shoot a series of images and not discard them! By all means have your camera tested/calibrated, but bear in mind that this is a professional tool that requires a great deal of knowledge skill to operate! Let me know if you'd like some RAW files to scrutinise yourself.
 
Last edited:
Sorry to revive an old thread but I'm interested if you resolved this?, I had a very similar experience to you when using the 7d with telephotos (that's all I had so no experience with close up performance) , really mushy images almost every time, I tried MA, using focus target, ruler et al thought I'd fixed it but saw no improvement in the field... Sadly the majority feedback from this forum (unlike your experience I have to say) was 'user error'.. I sent it for repair and was told, like someone raised already here, the internals (sensor, mounts, etc) were misaligned (it was a brand new body)...

After 6 months of being told it was my fault and to learn the camera, repeated testing, then a costly repair bill (which my importer did pay for +1 digitalrev :) ) not to mention the dodgy noisy IQ, I completely lost faith in the 7D and never felt comfortable with it even post repair (IQ was much better than before) as it was always nagging in the back of my head that build quality was crap and couldn't be relied on. I sold it and now just use my 5D3 which I have to say is the only thing that kept me from moving to Nikon after this experience, absolutely epic camera in every regard.

It did teach me a few things though, there is definitely an element of 'fanboyism' in photography that clouds a lot of advice that's given, particularly for this camera (warranted or not). Definitely listen to opinions of others, but it's best to rely on your own intuition if you think something's wrong, trust your gut. I received some quite elitist responses, from people who assume you are moron just because you are asking questions (I did receive quite a few genuinely helpful suggestions though). you seem to have had quite productive comments but as a warning to others who may have similar issues seeing this, They are not always right regardless of how 'experienced' they are :)
 
just sold mine ,i could not GEL with it at all ,mike (pooley) kindly lent me his 1d3 for a couple of weeks while he was on holiday ,and i was hooked .so now sold the 7d and got a 1Dmkiii of my own ,in fact i will go so far as to add i also have a 60d which i have kept and the i/q from that is better than i was getting from the 7d
 
Jonathan, I can only speak from personal experience, and it might be my ability or the camera or a combination of both.

I've found the focussing poor on the 7d, way to inconsistent considering it's supposed to be a major feature on the model. Sometimes it will be bang on, but I find it seems to jump around, and often miss the point where the af point states it should be.

While I was on holiday I shot several shots close up of a lizard - static subject, a very good lens (70-200mm f4 L IS) with IS switched on, and still the focus missed on a few shots.

Last week I did a hard reset of all the functions, and somehow this meant that when I reviewed the images on the rear screen the focus point showed up as a little red square (it didn't do this before - possibly one of my settings). After the reset I did get a higher percentage of hits, but still a lot of shots where the focus was not on the af point.

These were not easy shots - small birds flitting around at close to minimum focus distance on a 400mm lens, so maybe I'm expecting too much, but once I changed back to my 1d3 the hit rate was much better.

I'm learning that a lot of the noise issues can be controlled in PP - possibly not the way it should be, but it can be controlled, and looks better in print than on screen.

Maybe I have a bad model, but now I accept that I will get a lower than expected hit rate af wise, but when it gets it right, the results are very good. Still reach for my 1d3 first though!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top