Softness

Hi there !

I just bought a Canon 30D and a fellow photographer lend me his EF17-40 f/4L. First thing I noticed was the dirty viewfinder and sensor. I can live with the viewfinder, but the sensor definately needs cleaning (the dirt is very well visible at higher F numbers). Also the LCD has one dead pixel. But I'm more worried about the soft photos I get, even in well lit situations with propper exposure. Also tried to change the in-camera sharpening, with minimal success. So my question is, could it be my, the cameras or the lenses fault ? Or are all 30D's so soft ? Btw. my previous camera was a Sony-F717...

Check out some test shots:



It was shot in jpg (raw shows even more softness, because there is no in-camera sharpening), 1/512 sec, f/4, iso 100, focal length 40mm, sRGB, in-camera sharpening set to 5.

More test shots (with intact EXIF) here:
http://cannedenvironments.org/tmp/index.php?gallery=./softness

I looked at your samples and the appear a little soft have you tried a USM setting around 200-250,.7,0 that should take care of it...
--
Cal

Put a Canon to your head, You deserve it....

http://funshots.smugmug.com/

I copied this image to my desktop and viewed it in the plain vanilla MS Picture and FAX Viewer and it looks fine. When viewed at a respectable size, there is absolutely no evidence of softness anywhere in the photo. You have posted a 100% crop, or something close to it. It's not going to look good at that size.

If you think you'd like it to be sharper, then throw a little USM on it. Personally, I would leave it alone.

--
Adrian Roy
http://www.coldspringhead.ca/gallery

My first DSLR was a Canon 300D. The first time I viewed images taken with the camera I was not happy with the softness. A little internet research indicated both Nikon and Canon engineer their cameras so the image is a touch soft. They expect the user to have image edit software so the user can sharpen to personal taste. Unsharp Mask (USM) works much better than the regular sharpen tool. USM works better (if shooting JPEGs) than the sharpening parameters found in the camera.

Sensor cleaning: http://www.lenspen.com .

This website sells a tool called Sensorklear. It works very well for cleaning sensors. http://www.cleaningdigitalcameras.com is worth a visit.
--
thezero

and say that those pics do not look normal to me. The one with the skateboarder looks like severe motion blur in the background while the kid in the foreground looks pretty good - very strange. The first one in your gallery of the building shows extensive chromatic abberation. I think you are justified in your concerns. But I'd start by cleaning the sensor. I don't use the 17-40 so I don't know what is normal, but that's the type of quality I expect from a $150 lens, not an L lens.

Few more thoughts.

The pic of the girl looks pretty good aside from the sensor spots

The first pic of the guys rowing looks like it's backfocused as the grass behind them appears to be in slightly better focus than the guys in the boat are - that could be your error or the lens or camera - hard to say.

Most of those pics where there is a detailed background the bokeh looks very unnatural, and in more than one case it looks like motion blur - which is pretty much impossible in the last picture.

Thanks everyone for your thoughts ! It looks like it was the lenses fault, as I tried a kit lens (EF-S 17-55) and got much better results, almost no softness at all. The EF 17-40 f/4 was probably dropped or had lens fungus or something like that. Glad that it isn't my lens