Feedback: EF 85 mm f/1.8 USM sharpness for handheld shots

bigd3030 wrote:

I am using a 85 1.8 USM with a T5I and I'm getting what I think is out of focus images pretty regular. I used center point focus straight to the face. I'm not sure what to do. I'm pretty frustrated with the lens and camera. Both of these were purchased directly from canon as refurbished. Does the metering have anything to do with this? It was set on evaluating metering. Does the lens need MFA? I called canon and spoke to them and there is a big hefty charge for adjusting. Not sure if this would be covered under warranty. Out of about 10 shots only two were just O.K. Please help anyone.

Alastair Norcross wrote:

I have had the 85 F1.8 for about nine years, and used it on the 20D, 50D, 7D, and 7DII, all crop cameras. It's a very sharp lens, and great for portraits. I find I need to use at least 1/125 to have a good chance of avoiding camera shake, and preferably 1/200 or faster. Outdoors, that's easy. Indoors, without flash, you might need to crank up the ISO a bit, but the 70D has good low light performance, so that shouldn't be a problem. As someone else said, if you shoot fairly wide open (F1.8-F2.2), you'll have a very narrow depth of field, which is really the point of a lens like this, but it also takes good focusing technique. In particular, try to place the chosen focus point over the closer eye, and don't use focus and recompose, which can shift the plane of focus.

As for the purple fringing, which can be annoying on high contrast edges at wide open apertures, that's fairy easy to correct in a program like Lightroom, if you shoot RAW.

Unfortunately these lenses often need in camera MFA. Paying the hefty fee to canon to adjust the lens doesnt always fix the problem (I found that out from painful experience).

Its worth reading the 70d review on this site. They show examples of AF with lens and the need to MFA in camera.

Im stuck with the same problem with my 100mm f2. The only real way to  fix is buy a camera with MFA.

Maybe you can push Canon to replace you lens and hopefully get a more accurate copy.