G7X macro focus an embarrassment - please tell me why

It's the nature of the lens/sensor. My G7Xii does it, too. If you want sharp corners, get a 1/2.3" camera, or one with a full-size lens, not something shrunk down to fit in a pants pocket.

You know what?  I also just checked my HX80.  It's the same way...   Hmmm.

geepondy wrote:

I believe this was discussed some time ago but I can't find the thread. My G7X close wide angle macro focus results is totally unusable. A small center part is in focus but quickly drops off to extremely blurry corners, making the picture totally unusable. It reminds me of those miniaturization filters shots I see. Please explain why. Whatever the reason I know my G15 does a much better job. Not only can I focus much closer but while the corners may be a little blurry, the picture as a whole, is much more usable. The same undesirable effect occurs with the G5X which of course shares the same lens and filter. Recently our much beloved G12 work camera broke and was replaced with a G5X. We take pictures of electronic sub assemblies and at times really need to focus close and expose finite detail such as solder connections, etc. and the G12 was so much better at this.

What is the workaround? If you pull the camera back and zoom in, you can only zoom so close before it will no longer focus. We can't get nearly as close and blow up the desired area of detail as we can with the G12 and G15. We're really bummed especially as these little gems of cameras are hard to come by now.

Here is an example by what I mean. This is with the G7X and unfortunately I don't have my G15 handy to do a comparison shot but trust me, it will do a much better job under the same circumstances. This actually is not the worst example as I backed the camera off a bit from its closest focusing point.

Sounds like you are doing specialised commercial macro work and you need a specialised camera for it. An ILC with a dedicated macro lens seems a better idea than one of these miniature large sensor cameras which will always be a bit of a lens compromise getting it all so small. The days of the 1/1.7" are gone and 1" is always going to be a diminished depth of field. The only macro lens I have is the Olympus 12-50 and this is much better than a compact as you can stand farther back from the subject.  A decent telephoto with macro would I think perform much better than your G's.

1" is very much of a hybrid between compact sensors and the larger ILC sensors and the latter give you no close focus at all with the standard lens.

What about a bridge camera which is one area where 1/2.3" survives as these usually can do macro and can have fast lenses at short focal lengths.

snowrunner wrote:

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong but I've also found it's a pain to focus in macro mode. Most of the time the camera focuses on some point or structure in the background and it takes many attempts to achieve an acceptable result. I don't know, it might help to reduce the AF frame size but I've also noticed this behaviour with larger objects where the size shouldn't be an issue.

The best technique with most kit in my limited experience is to manually focus round about where you want to be and then move the camera slightly near and far to the subject to achieve fine focus.

snowrunner wrote:

Greynerd wrote:

The best technique is to manually focus and then move the camera to achieve fine focus.

Yeah, that's probably the way to do it. I'm not a big fan of the manual focus, though, but I'll give it some more try.

Manual focus by wire is usually tricky but with macro hopefully you will find it is worth the effort as you do not fine tune with a dial but move the camera. The focal point is so critical with the massively shallow depth of field in macro mode that AF is the trickiest option in practice.

Good luck.

embarrassment is a good word for the macro focus on this camera, and yes my G15 is far better for close focus sharp detailed shots. Macro with an ILC is a production, and smaller sensor cameras can and should do a great job. It seems that every time you "upgrade", you get something, but something else is compromised (and you wonder why camera sales are getting soft?). While we're at it, the HDR on the G7X is in a word "laughable". I'm not bashing the camera, I have one and like it for what it does, but I use it for what it is good at, and I'm afraid that's about it.

Rg wrote:

embarrassment is a good word for the macro focus on this camera, and yes my G15 is far better for close focus sharp detailed shots. Macro with an ILC is a production, and smaller sensor cameras can and should do a great job. It seems that every time you "upgrade", you get something, but something else is compromised (and you wonder why camera sales are getting soft?). While we're at it, the HDR on the G7X is in a word "laughable". I'm not bashing the camera, I have one and like it for what it does, but I use it for what it is good at, and I'm afraid that's about it.

If you look at a larger sensor in a camera as an upgrade in all respects then you can only expect to be disappointed as nothing extra comes without some compensating factor.

snowrunner wrote:

Perhaps I'm doing something wrong but I've also found it's a pain to focus in macro mode. Most of the time the camera focuses on some point or structure in the background and it takes many attempts to achieve an acceptable result. I don't know, it might help to reduce the AF frame size but I've also noticed this behaviour with larger objects where the size shouldn't be an issue.

My G7Xii also back-focuses for extreme closeups.  If you put the camera into manual focus, then you can rock back and forth.

Well, your Fuji X70 deserves better handling . It's a dusty poor guy. Btw. how do you compare its IQ to your Canon's?