Sharpness Issues with D800

[Chasing The Wind]

I have had my Nikon D800 for 7 years now and have been really dissatisfied with the level of sharpness I've been able to achieve over the past few years. I thought maybe I was just becoming more aware of sharpness in general and thus things were looking worse to my eyes, but I recently flipped back to some images from 4 or 5 years ago and the sharpness is out-of-this-world better. As I am relatively new to the photography world and have not experienced a lot of equipment issues, I was wondering what possible things could be wrong with my camera. The problem seems to be consistent with my lenses so that tells me the problem probably lies with my camera. I calibrated the focus and noted that I needed to use the highest possible setting to fix the back-focus I am getting. That did make the problem better, but I still am not seeing that beautiful sharpness that I'm looking for. Anyone know what might be up? I shoot full manual and am well aware of how to properly select shutter speeds and aperture for correct focus and sharpness.

 

[Brazo]

Put the camera on a tripod and using live view and the self timer shoot some pics.

Examine them, are they incredibly sharp? If so then repeat using the camera pdaf focusing system.

As you say it could well be a a lens af issue if your confident of all other factors and if your already at the limits of this then the camera may need to be sent in for repair/adjustment.

 

[Pound Coin]

you've not accidentally changed the resolution of the output files?

I once wrecked a shoot by not noticing I had changed the size of output files...

 

[toohuge]

I had the same issue with the D810....

Try the live view method first to determine whether it's possible to achieve sharp images on the camera itself. Then see if the pdaf works... My camera went back to Nikon and had a load of work done, new lens mount etc. it came back and still wasn't right and it's been at Nikon now for months.... still not entirely sure what/why it was performing so poorly.