10D focus test 2 (skip this if you're not interested)

A great test scheme:
http://www.hkdotcom.net/Francis%20Photography%20channel/AF_Test/index.htm

I can produce extremely sharp shots with 10D, but there has been problems in that area, too. Last week I managed to see some patterns in where problems occurred and the test mentioned above showed the issue very clearly. Now I know for sure why sometimes the good focus was lost.

Test results were:

My 70-200/2.8L is sharp on 200mm and 140mm, on 100mm it starts to drift towards backfocus and 70mm is way off back. This correlates well with results of last portrait session I did with 70-200.

My 50/1.4 is front focusing. Clearly.

My 35/2 is backfocusing heavily and when you go further back it focuses all over - looks like the old non-USM motor is not so accurate any more with 10D.

Sigma 20mm is very good (!).

Sigma 14mm front focuses. Not a big issue because I use if mostly over 5.6.

Those test files are in http://www.exhibitserver.com/10D/ should you not take my word for it (I use another server of mine so I would not stress this one). I did also another real life outdoor test session and it confirmed the results above.

I really don't care if these problems are 10D's problem or lens problems and I don't take this personally or as "all 10D's are defective". I will take the whole lot to Canon and let them fix it all to specs, that's it. It's not a big deal - maybe costs some but I'll gradly pay for knowing that my equipment works reliably. If the problem is in 10D then it is clearly paid under warranty.

--
Pekka
http://photography-on-the.net

Good thread and test methods Pekka-- it really shows where the issues are...and f2.8 on the 70 -200 would be a key test -- and 70mm is the issue I'm having with my 70 -200 f4L backfocusing.

Mine is likely going back too.

This test before it goes to canon and after it returns has the scientific data we need for peace of mind.

MAC

Pekka Saarinen said:

A great test scheme:
http://www.hkdotcom.net/Francis%20Photography%20channel/AF_Test/index.htm

I can produce extremely sharp shots with 10D, but there has been
problems in that area, too. Last week I managed to see some
patterns in where problems occurred and the test mentioned above
showed the issue very clearly. Now I know for sure why sometimes
the good focus was lost.

Test results were:

My 70-200/2.8L is sharp on 200mm and 140mm, on 100mm it starts to
drift towards backfocus and 70mm is way off back. This correlates
well with results of last portrait session I did with 70-200.

My 50/1.4 is front focusing. Clearly.

My 35/2 is backfocusing heavily and when you go further back it
focuses all over - looks like the old non-USM motor is not so
accurate any more with 10D.

Sigma 20mm is very good (!).

Sigma 14mm front focuses. Not a big issue because I use if mostly
over 5.6.

Those test files are in http://www.exhibitserver.com/10D/ should
you not take my word for it (I use another server of mine so I
would not stress this one). I did also another real life outdoor
test session and it confirmed the results above.

I really don't care if these problems are 10D's problem or lens
problems and I don't take this personally or as "all 10D's are
defective". I will take the whole lot to Canon and let them fix it
all to specs, that's it. It's not a big deal - maybe costs some but
I'll gradly pay for knowing that my equipment works reliably. If
the problem is in 10D then it is clearly paid under warranty.

--
Pekka
http://photography-on-the.net

Click to expand...

--
MAC
http://www.digi-pictures.com

MAC said:

Good thread and test methods Pekka-- it really shows where the
issues are...and f2.8 on the 70 -200 would be a key test -- and
70mm is the issue I'm having with my 70 -200 f4L backfocusing.

Mine is likely going back too.

This test before it goes to canon and after it returns has the
scientific data we need for peace of mind.

Click to expand...

Yep, I'm sure repair is much more fluent with well documented problem description and all lenses delivered, too.

Interesting times - I'm eager to hear what they say in Canon about this.

--
Pekka
http://photography-on-the.net

You'd already posted this same message in the infamous "45 degree ruler" thread which was maxed out and now you start it all up AGAIN?!?

Pekka

Do you have another digital camera? If you do, could you run some comparison shots? Even if you only have some (relatively) cheap p&s camera, it would be very useful.

Pekka Saarinen said:

A great test scheme:
http://www.hkdotcom.net/Francis%20Photography%20channel/AF_Test/index.htm

I can produce extremely sharp shots with 10D, but there has been
problems in that area, too. Last week I managed to see some
patterns in where problems occurred and the test mentioned above
showed the issue very clearly. Now I know for sure why sometimes
the good focus was lost.

Test results were:

My 70-200/2.8L is sharp on 200mm and 140mm, on 100mm it starts to
drift towards backfocus and 70mm is way off back. This correlates
well with results of last portrait session I did with 70-200.

My 50/1.4 is front focusing. Clearly.

My 35/2 is backfocusing heavily and when you go further back it
focuses all over - looks like the old non-USM motor is not so
accurate any more with 10D.

Sigma 20mm is very good (!).

Sigma 14mm front focuses. Not a big issue because I use if mostly
over 5.6.

Those test files are in http://www.exhibitserver.com/10D/ should
you not take my word for it (I use another server of mine so I
would not stress this one). I did also another real life outdoor
test session and it confirmed the results above.

I really don't care if these problems are 10D's problem or lens
problems and I don't take this personally or as "all 10D's are
defective". I will take the whole lot to Canon and let them fix it
all to specs, that's it. It's not a big deal - maybe costs some but
I'll gradly pay for knowing that my equipment works reliably. If
the problem is in 10D then it is clearly paid under warranty.

--
Pekka
http://photography-on-the.net

Click to expand...

PearlRider said:

You'd already posted this same message in the infamous "45 degree
ruler" thread which was maxed out and now you start it all up
AGAIN?!?

Click to expand...

It's just a discussion, no-one has to read it, or take part in it It even says please ignore if you are not interested

Frankly, it's handy to have somewhere to at least ascertain if what we are seeing is a real problem, or just a perceived problem, and at least to try and establish a common methodology of testing such that we can have a degree of confidence in what we are seeing. Are you perhaps upset that we believe that there may be an issue, and are trying to see if it is us, or our methods, our expectations or something else? I haven't read all your messages, so perhaps someone has been rude to you elsewhere?

Simon

work_permit said:

Pekka

Do you have another digital camera? If you do, could you run some
comparison shots? Even if you only have some (relatively) cheap
p&s camera, it would be very useful.

Click to expand...

Pekka is well known in Canon circles (see his galleries http://photography-on-the.net/gallery/ and Canon forums http://photography-on-the.net/forum/ ) so I do pay attention to his posts. I don't have the 10D but this is still of interest to me since one never knows if it will become important to me in choosing a second Canon body. I suspect he has another Canon somewhere around smile .

Diane
--
Diane B
http://www.pbase.com/picnic/galleries
B/W lover, but color is seducing me

PearlRider said:

You'd already posted this same message in the infamous "45 degree
ruler" thread which was maxed out and now you start it all up
AGAIN?!?

Click to expand...

--
Joe B.
http://www.pbase.com/joebar

Pekka Saarinen said:

I really don't care if these problems are 10D's problem or lens
problems and I don't take this personally or as "all 10D's are
defective". I will take the whole lot to Canon and let them fix it
all to specs, that's it. It's not a big deal - maybe costs some but
I'll gradly pay for knowing that my equipment works reliably. If
the problem is in 10D then it is clearly paid under warranty.

Click to expand...

I'm waiting to see this test again when it's all back in your hands, Pekka. If you have a good result, perhaps I'll do the same. Not sure if Canon will adjust to my Sigma and Tamron lenses, though. Do you plan to send them in, too?

Pekka, yours is the first and possibly only "test" I'll trust, next to Phil doing it himself. I'm assuming you'll be reporting back, right?

--
BryanS

I'm obviously new to the canon forum, and the whole focus "debate". My request is genuine, as is my respect for pekka's test. To run a true "scientific" test, we should compare the 10D shots to other cameras.

Diane B said:

work_permit said:

Pekka

Do you have another digital camera? If you do, could you run some
comparison shots? Even if you only have some (relatively) cheap
p&s camera, it would be very useful.

Click to expand...

Pekka is well known in Canon circles (see his galleries
http://photography-on-the.net/gallery/ and Canon forums
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/ ) so I do pay attention to
his posts. I don't have the 10D but this is still of interest to
me since one never knows if it will become important to me in
choosing a second Canon body. I suspect he has another Canon
somewhere around smile .

Diane
--
Diane B
http://www.pbase.com/picnic/galleries
B/W lover, but color is seducing me

Click to expand...

Simon Watkins said:

It's just a discussion, no-one has to read it, or take part in it
It even says please ignore if you are not interested

Frankly, it's handy to have somewhere to at least ascertain if what
we are seeing is a real problem, or just a perceived problem, and
at least to try and establish a common methodology of testing such
that we can have a degree of confidence in what we are seeing. Are
you perhaps upset that we believe that there may be an issue, and
are trying to see if it is us, or our methods, our expectations or
something else? I haven't read all your messages, so perhaps
someone has been rude to you elsewhere?

Simon

Click to expand...

The last thread didn't accomplish much in the way of discussion so what makes you think this one will fare better? All MAc did was point to anything Pekka said and completely ignored anyone with a dissenting view... well, he would actually respond to them with a comment and THEN link them to whatever Pekka had said. REAL discussion, isn't it? And to answer your question, Yes, someone has been rude to me when I disagreed with them but I'm used to it.

PearlRider said:

The last thread didn't accomplish much in the way of discussion so
what makes you think this one will fare better? All MAc did was
point to anything Pekka said and completely ignored anyone with a
dissenting view... well, he would actually respond to them with a
comment and THEN link them to whatever Pekka had said. REAL
discussion, isn't it? And to answer your question, Yes, someone has
been rude to me when I disagreed with them but I'm used to it.

Click to expand...

Don't you get tired of whining? You object to the subject but have brought nothing other than arguments to it. Two negatives do not a positive make.

Olga

PearlRider said:

The last thread didn't accomplish much in the way of discussion so
what makes you think this one will fare better? All MAc did was
point to anything Pekka said and completely ignored anyone with a
dissenting view... well, he would actually respond to them with a
comment and THEN link them to whatever Pekka had said. REAL
discussion, isn't it? And to answer your question, Yes, someone has
been rude to me when I disagreed with them but I'm used to it.

Click to expand...

I think you might have been reading a different thread - I think there has been a fair bit of progress - a reasonable testing method has been found, ruler testing has been discounted, and there has been some good discussion about sensor size, dof, coc and tolerances. I gathered from the tone of your posts that you were rejecting testing - that's fine. If you don't have a problem, you don't have a problem. I'm just surprised to see your involvement if you don't believe in what is being done, and aren't interested in testing yourself?

Simon

work_permit said:

I'm obviously new to the canon forum, and the whole focus "debate".
My request is genuine, as is my respect for pekka's test. To run a
true "scientific" test, we should compare the 10D shots to other
cameras.

Click to expand...

If so, it would probably need to be a camera similar like a D60/30 with the same lens and crop factor, don't you think?

Diane B
http://www.pbase.com/picnic/galleries
B/W lover, but color is seducing me

If I can land some time off, that is exactly what I plan to do. I still have my D60 and am planning to compare the two under identical situations with the same lenses.

Diane B said:

work_permit said:

I'm obviously new to the canon forum, and the whole focus "debate".
My request is genuine, as is my respect for pekka's test. To run a
true "scientific" test, we should compare the 10D shots to other
cameras.

Click to expand...

If so, it would probably need to be a camera similar like a D60/30
with the same lens and crop factor, don't you think?

Diane B
http://www.pbase.com/picnic/galleries
B/W lover, but color is seducing me

Click to expand...

A D60 or D30 would be ideal. But any camera with reasonably wide aperture would provide useful comparison. Nikon DSLR has different crop factor, but picture can be manually cropped for comparison. You would use same real (not effective) focal length for comparison. Even a P&S could be used for comparison. DOF of course would be different, but you could still judge where the "center" of focus would be.

I'm relatively new to digital photography ( I own a couple of minolta and canon P&S), but I've been into film photography for over 20 years. The pictures pekka has posted seem pretty bad to my eye, reminds me of first generation AF systems in slr's. But I will admit that I have very little experience in photographing rulers at 45 degree angle.

Diane B said:

work_permit said:

I'm obviously new to the canon forum, and the whole focus "debate".
My request is genuine, as is my respect for pekka's test. To run a
true "scientific" test, we should compare the 10D shots to other
cameras.

Click to expand...

If so, it would probably need to be a camera similar like a D60/30
with the same lens and crop factor, don't you think?

Diane B
http://www.pbase.com/picnic/galleries
B/W lover, but color is seducing me

Click to expand...

Would be very useful

Adam2 said:

Diane B said:

work_permit said:

I'm obviously new to the canon forum, and the whole focus "debate".
My request is genuine, as is my respect for pekka's test. To run a
true "scientific" test, we should compare the 10D shots to other
cameras.

Click to expand...

If so, it would probably need to be a camera similar like a D60/30
with the same lens and crop factor, don't you think?

Diane B
http://www.pbase.com/picnic/galleries
B/W lover, but color is seducing me

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

OlgaJ said:

Don't you get tired of whining? You object to the subject but have
brought nothing other than arguments to it. Two negatives do not a
positive make.

Olga

Click to expand...

...I think the actual whiners are the particpants of these "ruler test" threads. And since I'm not a whiner, I'll just go out and USE my camera.

I was very skeptical about all the focusing issues until Pekka gave me a "repeatable" experiment to try and I tried it. Fortunately I had the same lens and had printed out the same target. I had tried some random experiments with 4 different lenses before and could find nothing wrong (and I think those experiment were run in AI-SERVO, more on that later).

PLEASE seem my comment at the end about AI SERVO mode WORKING MUCH BETTTER than One-shot.

I repeated Pekka's experiment with my 70-200F2.8L. I shot at 200mmF2.8, 135mmF2.8, 100mmF2.8, and 70mm F2.8 using the test chart set up per hkdotcom.

My goodness. At about 1.6meters I found that at 200mm it was pretty dead on. At 135mm the focus was difting backwards. At 100mm it drifted back so far that the 0 was out of focus. At 70mm it was even worse, with the center of focus over 30 mm behind the center. Frankly I would have expected the opposite with the at least the "0" on the chart being in focus due to the greater DoF.

I tried moving back to about 3 meters which increases the DoF considerably, but at 135mm (at 70mm the chart was too small to tell anything) the 0/center was was not in focus as the center of focus have move further back (and the 0 was in focus closer up). This is pretty scary. Thus even with a much wider DoF the point I was focusing at was out of focus.

BUT THEN I TRIED AI-SERVO both with center only and 7-Point AF and strangely enough, the AF seemed to WORK even at 70mm where it have failed in One-Shot mode. Note even in 7-Point the AF starts with the center point.

I DON'T know what this means yet as I just discovered it. I would appreciate somebody who has the problem in One Shot AF mode to Try again in AI-Servo mode and see what happens (I would like to know if this is repeatable by somebody else).

I have not "reset" my camera yet, but I will give that a try, but I suspect that Pekka has already done this. I would really like to have Pekka try the AI Servo.

Pekka Saarinen said:

A great test scheme:
http://www.hkdotcom.net/Francis%20Photography%20channel/AF_Test/index.htm

I can produce extremely sharp shots with 10D, but there has been
problems in that area, too. Last week I managed to see some
patterns in where problems occurred and the test mentioned above
showed the issue very clearly. Now I know for sure why sometimes
the good focus was lost.

Test results were:

My 70-200/2.8L is sharp on 200mm and 140mm, on 100mm it starts to
drift towards backfocus and 70mm is way off back. This correlates
well with results of last portrait session I did with 70-200.

My 50/1.4 is front focusing. Clearly.

My 35/2 is backfocusing heavily and when you go further back it
focuses all over - looks like the old non-USM motor is not so
accurate any more with 10D.

Sigma 20mm is very good (!).

Sigma 14mm front focuses. Not a big issue because I use if mostly
over 5.6.

Those test files are in http://www.exhibitserver.com/10D/ should
you not take my word for it (I use another server of mine so I
would not stress this one). I did also another real life outdoor
test session and it confirmed the results above.

I really don't care if these problems are 10D's problem or lens
problems and I don't take this personally or as "all 10D's are
defective". I will take the whole lot to Canon and let them fix it
all to specs, that's it. It's not a big deal - maybe costs some but
I'll gradly pay for knowing that my equipment works reliably. If
the problem is in 10D then it is clearly paid under warranty.

--
Pekka
http://photography-on-the.net

Click to expand...

Great! Please go use your camera and leave this thread alone.

If we want to 'whine', then please let us do so in peace. There is no reason for your involvement in this thread at this point.

Duncan

PearlRider said:

OlgaJ said:

Don't you get tired of whining? You object to the subject but have
brought nothing other than arguments to it. Two negatives do not a
positive make.

Olga

Click to expand...

...I think the actual whiners are the particpants of these "ruler
test" threads. And since I'm not a whiner, I'll just go out and USE
my camera.

Click to expand...