Canon 7D Soft Focus

[Nekrose]

I was just wondering if anybody was having soft focusing issues with the Canon 7D. I have too many photo's that have been soft, and I am hoping that somebody has an answer to this problem.

Here is a photo that I have which shows the problem. The focus was supposed to be on her face:

[RolandAA]

I noticed that the ISO was 3200 and a shutter speed of 1/4000. The camera applies a pretty heavy noise reduction to higher ISOs which softens the image. You could have had a sharper image by using using 400 ISO and 1/1000 or 200 ISO and 1/500.

I went from a 10MP XTi to a 15MP 50D a few weeks ago and when looking at 100% view also thought my images were softer than with my old camera. By zooming out to a 66% view which matches the image size of the Xti I realized that the images are as sharp or sharper. When pixel peeping all those extra pixels make anything not absolutely perfect much more apparent. The other thing I needed to do was use the AF micro adjustment to correct some back focusing.

Hope that helps!

[OsmosisStudios]

Yup, that's heavy noise reduction from being at 3200ISO. You're on the beach at mid-day, you'll be fine. Just as an indicator, here are equivalent exposures (with the aperture remaining the same).

ISO          TV          AV
100          125         f/5.6
200          250         f/5.6
400          500         f/5.6
800          1000        f/5.6
1600         2000        f/5.6
3200         4000        f/5.6

So since you're at ISO3200, 1/4000s and f/5.6, you can drop your ISO all the way to 100 and keep youre aperture the same while still maintaining a 1/125 shutter speed.

If you had a faster lens (say an f/2.8 zoom or f/1.4 prime) you could drop things down another 2 and 4 stops (respectively). Of course, you cant get the ISO any lower, so your shutter speed would go up.

[Nekrose]

I definitely agree, that may have been a bad example, sorry.

I know that there was some major noise, and that by softening it I lost a lot of detail, but on most of the other shots, the ISO was strictly set to 100. This was sort of an impromptu shot after I was shooting in the jungle and turned the camera off.

But on the other images, the ones with ISO set at 100, even using a 50mm and flash, the shot's are very soft.

[OsmosisStudios]

Then let's see the other examples/