got my replacement SL1...

davebreal wrote:

patticake wrote:

last month, i decided to go back to DSLR for now from mirrorless, and i need very light weight gear. i sold my a6000 and lenses and bought an SL1 plus STM kit lens and the 55-250 STM, followed by a yongnuo 50mm 1.8. i'd rented an SL1 and 55-250 STM in 2014, and was satisfied with the pics i took overall.

so the new camera shows up and we take a photo trip to marina del rey. unfortunately while my BIF pics turned out pretty well and the camera and lens focused like magic for most of the action shots, all the pics of stuff like flowers, architectural pieces, still lifes, etc, all came out not exactly out of focus, but more degraded, so that viewing them at 60% or 75% looked like they were enlarged to 150% to 200%. oddly that wasn't the case with the motion pics so much.

at first i wanted it to be my fault, which would mean i could fix it. canon took a guess it was the lens, which i almost sent back, but my husband suggested i try the other two lenses, and both gave the same result, although it was better on a tripod than handheld. so i sent back the camera and kit lens with a heavy heart - while almost all the pics looked worse than my phone pics from 2 phones ago, the quick focus for BIF was the best i've experienced.

my replacement camera arrived 11 days after i sent the first one back, and yesterday i got to put it through its paces. i'm happy to report that with the same 55-250 STM, the pics came out much better. what a relief! and a local squirrel decided i wasn't a threat and posed for me for around 20 minutes

my old user profile
http://www.dpreview.com/members/1742491492/overview

I would be curious to know what focus method (manual, servo, one shot) was used on the degraded images, what shutter speed aperture and iso, and was there a filter over the lens. Other major factor in outdoor photography is sun flare from shooting into the sun.

mostly single shot autofocus, shutter speed everything imaginable from 1/10th or slower to 1/4000th.  mostly my normal shutter speeds between 1/500th and 1/1200th.  ISOs also vary, but for the most part i let the camera decide, and in broad freaking daylight with no clouds it usually chose between ISO 250 and ISO 800.  the new camera seems to do the same.  there was no flare, and since the replacement camera and the SL1 i rented in 2014 both didn't have this problem in daylight or indoor pics even once out of over 1000 images, i figure the issue was, indeed, the camera i replaced.