Strange Failings of 550D

I have just viewed holiday pictures of 2 aquaintances; one of them used a Canon 550D with kit lens and an iphone 7.

About 40% of the pictures taken with the 550D were not sharp, visibly not sharp viewed on a 16 inch screen, terrible at 100%. This is not a focus problem, because nothing was sharp. And it is probably not a problem of hand shake, because the pictures were taken in broad daylight at around 1/1000s; also the phone produced better results in many cases.

Any explanations? Peter

eques wrote:

I have just viewed holiday pictures of 2 aquaintances; one of them used a Canon 550D with kit lens and an iphone 7.

About 40% of the pictures taken with the 550D were not sharp, visibly not sharp viewed on a 16 inch screen, terrible at 100%. This is not a focus problem, because nothing was sharp. And it is probably not a problem of hand shake, because the pictures were taken in broad daylight at around 1/1000s; also the phone produced better results in many cases.

Any explanations? Peter

Can’t tell for sure without more info (or better yet some samples w/ EXIF).  Can they forward some?

TIA,

R2

R2D2 wrote:

eques wrote:

I have just viewed holiday pictures of 2 aquaintances; one of them used a Canon 550D with kit lens and an iphone 7.

About 40% of the pictures taken with the 550D were not sharp, visibly not sharp viewed on a 16 inch screen, terrible at 100%. This is not a focus problem, because nothing was sharp. And it is probably not a problem of hand shake, because the pictures were taken in broad daylight at around 1/1000s; also the phone produced better results in many cases.

Any explanations? Peter

Can’t tell for sure without more info (or better yet some samples w/ EXIF). Can they forward some?

+1

The 550D, like all DSLRs, is capable of fabulous results, even the the kit lens. Without seeing any samples or without more details, the usual explanations would be:

• probable user error, including technique and inappropriate image settings, and/or
• unrealistic expectations, especially with respect to depth of field. Phone cameras use tiny lenses and sensors which give near infinite depth of field = everything near to far is going to appear in focus. The larger sensor and physically longer lenses for the DSLR will give much narrower depth of field = sharp focus will only be at/near the focused distance and objects nearer or farther will not be sharp.

IMHO, YMMV

User5567965101 wrote:

I recently experienced something similar at my grandson birthday. I was shooting both stills and video. A lot of the stills were great and so were the videos, but about half the stills were completely out of focus and unusable. I couldn't figure it out until I remembered that when I started shooting video I turned off the auto focus on the lens and focused manually. When I switched back to stills, I forgot to switch the auto focus back on on the lens! Complete operator error! The lens stayed at the last focus of the video shots and looked okay in the small screen on camera, but once I downloaded them onto my laptop it was immediately evident there was a major problem! Not sure if that could be your problem or not?

Sorry I didn't answer that long. I was away and have trouble to get a sample of this problem. The friend with this problem says he didn't switch to MF at all. Also the bad samples and the good ones are mixed.

I'll come back, when I got an example.

Peter