Eos 200d isnt sharp now.

Hey guys, I have been using my canon eos 200d for about 2 years now. Its been good at almost everything I do. But lately its started to give very soft or hazy photos. Lens and sensor are perfectly clean. Settings are perfect but still not the same.

End of the wing and tail feathers appear quite sharp. That's apparently where the camera focused.  Were you using single-point AF?

That 300mm telephoto has very shallow depth of focus. That appears to me to be the problem. You wanted the bird's head sharp but it isn't. The camera focused on the tail feathers/wing end area instead, leaving the head a little outside the plane of sharp focus.

Try shooting a similar subject at a similar distance in bright sun using single-spot focus on the exact part you want in focus. Shoot a burst of three exposures at f/8, then see  if you can get away with f/11 without exhibiting diffraction softness. The smaller lens opening will give you more depth of field, which means more of the subject should be sharp. Using a tripod would help eliminate any possibility of camera shake, especially if you use a remote shutter release device or self timer.

As for the car image, nothing is sharp. Either something's wrong with AF or optical image stabilization was off or not working. It doesn't help that the lighting appears to have been marginal and this is a low-res image to begin with. Could this be a still from a low-res video?

Cheapo Marx wrote:

OK, that 2nd shot is weird. The dramatically blurry wheel spokes next to the fairly clear decal and door sign on a stationary car... beyond my little brain.

Maybe someone at the Photographic Science and Technology forum could opine on "What's making my sensor do this?".

Seems to me, the car is moving a bit. But no-one inside …  

Zubair07 wrote:

I would agree that zoom lenses aren't the best at focusing but this problem is on my 18/55kit and 50mm 1.8 too. I took it to a local shop amd showed it but he couldn't figure out the problem either. The sensor and lenses are cleaan. I'll add a photo

from my 50mm

On the second look, what about this theory:

The car body is sharp enough, so the line in front of the wheel is . Might the wheel disk just having a dirty coating from braking ?

Additionally, look at the left spoke sharp edge and the small disk damage at the down right side of the disk, both in focus.

I wouldn’t blame neither the camera, nor the lens . The focus just is  on the tail and fence.

Without seeing the focusing points (some SW can show) is hard to say if it is backfocus or not aiming at an eye.

You can also check the depth of field on dofmaster.com , if you can estimate the subject distance.

As to the sensor cleanness , is that spot above the head a dust on the sensor or just very blurry distant bird?