50mm 1.4 AF

chrismoore

I'm having a really frustrating time with this lens... I've had it for about 14 months so its out of warranty and it worked great for awhile. I've taken about 1000 frames with it. Last weekend I mounted it to take some shots of my little girl and on AF it very severely backfocuses. I thought no big deal, I can calibrate it with my 5D II, but the effect is not consistent varies depending on distance and aperture. It is a major problem about 15 feet or less from the subject with apertures of 1.8-5.6. Any longer distance or smaller aperture the effect is less pronounced to almost not noticeable due to the DOF. For example, at f/4.0 and 15 feet, the lens focused about 6 inches behind the subject. I reproduced this by auto focusing on an inert object like a leaf and sure enough it was totally out of focus. I should have saved some images to show but trashed them in frustration. It didnt take me long on google to find multiple forums with people complaining about this, not only with the 50mm f/1.4, but also with the 1.8 and 1.2L. Even though this is not my most commonly used lens, it definitely has a niche for me. So for now I'm just using manual focus, but that is difficult when chasing around a 1 year old. I could send it in for calibration, at about half the total cost of the lens, but in the other forums people have said that even a fresh calibration from canon doesn't make the autofocus sharp and it loses calibration again after another few months of use. I even thought about biting the bullet and getting the f/1.2L, but it is so expensive and from what I've read has the same problems. I guess I could also keep my fingers crossed that canon comes out with a mark III version of this lens that corrects this problem. Canon has apparently known about this since 2007 and was "looking into it." I'm not sure if I'm looking for advice on what to do, or just vent a little frustration, but the thought of running around using manual focus trying to nail a shot is disheartening. I do have other lenses that would work, but I also hate the thought of having purchased this lens and just having it sit in the bag unused. Thanks for listening, any thoughts or advice appreciated.
C

chris84

chrismoore wrote:

I'm having a really frustrating time with this lens... I've had it for about 14 months so its out of warranty and it worked great for awhile. I've taken about 1000 frames with it. Last weekend I mounted it to take some shots of my little girl and on AF it very severely backfocuses. I thought no big deal, I can calibrate it with my 5D II, but the effect is not consistent varies depending on distance and aperture. It is a major problem about 15 feet or less from the subject with apertures of 1.8-5.6. Any longer distance or smaller aperture the effect is less pronounced to almost not noticeable due to the DOF. For example, at f/4.0 and 15 feet, the lens focused about 6 inches behind the subject. I reproduced this by auto focusing on an inert object like a leaf and sure enough it was totally out of focus. I should have saved some images to show but trashed them in frustration. It didnt take me long on google to find multiple forums with people complaining about this, not only with the 50mm f/1.4, but also with the 1.8 and 1.2L. Even though this is not my most commonly used lens, it definitely has a niche for me. So for now I'm just using manual focus, but that is difficult when chasing around a 1 year old. I could send it in for calibration, at about half the total cost of the lens, but in the other forums people have said that even a fresh calibration from canon doesn't make the autofocus sharp and it loses calibration again after another few months of use. I even thought about biting the bullet and getting the f/1.2L, but it is so expensive and from what I've read has the same problems. I guess I could also keep my fingers crossed that canon comes out with a mark III version of this lens that corrects this problem. Canon has apparently known about this since 2007 and was "looking into it." I'm not sure if I'm looking for advice on what to do, or just vent a little frustration, but the thought of running around using manual focus trying to nail a shot is disheartening. I do have other lenses that would work, but I also hate the thought of having purchased this lens and just having it sit in the bag unused. Thanks for listening, any thoughts or advice appreciated.
C

I was just reading this article on focus shift last night, it might be what you are experiencing.

http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/free/FocusShift/index.html

chrismoore

chris84 wrote:

I was just reading this article on focus shift last night, it might be what you are experiencing.

http://diglloyd.com/diglloyd/free/FocusShift/index.html

Thanks, yes that is pretty much it, though that article almost makes it seem like it is an inherent problem with these lenses and is to be expected. Maybe one should expect problems when spending $80 on a lens, but for $350 and $1600 for the f/1.4 and f/1.2 respectively I guess I would expect more, especially since I didn't have this problem before. The other problem is that the solutions they mention are just not practical...
stop down... people buy fast primes to shoot wide open!
compensate by focusing ahead of the subject... with such a small DOF at wide apertures and inconsistent misfocus that would be near impossible to guess correctly on any consistent basis. Same holds for trying to set up the autofocus compensation.

Thanks for the article... good read.

rwells

I had issues with my 50 f/1.4, but strangely, only on my 5DMkII.

I've shot many basketball & volleyball images with this lens and a 30D without issue. Matter of fact, the images were very sharp.

(As always, when I get a new lens, I run it though my testing to make sure I'm satisfied with it.)

Got my 5D2 & was testing the lens on this body. OOF. I set the micro-adjustment for this lens, but what consistently happened, was that at closer subject distance (3') & the micro-adjust set correctly, if I took a shot at 15', the focus was off. Every time. It was quite predictable, but not correctable.

I sold the lens to a friend and noted the issue. He was using it on 1.6 crop (40D) and had no issues on that body.


Life's too short to chase a screwy lens around.

jmphotocraft

I had a 50/1.8 and then a 50/1.4 and I sold them both because the AF was just too unreliable in low light, which is where I wanted to be able use them. I expected the 1.4 AF to be much better than the 1.8 for the price. It was better, but not enough.

My 24-70/2.8L and 17-55/2.8IS are both so much more reliable and consistent in any light that I'll tolerate their relative "slowness" and bump up ISO when I need to.

(17-55 soon to be for sale because I've moved to a 5D2)

chrismoore

My copy of the lens has never really shown reliable AF in lower light, but now I'm referring to sunlight. Interesting when I did my research before purchasing the lens, I seem to remember such glowing reviews of how wonderful and sharp it is. Now that I have problems I have found countless reviews of others having similar issues, and so far from this thread it does seem to be a problem. I guess I should have looked more. I have to say that when the image is in focus it is quite sharp, though. You're right, life is too short to be chasing around good focus, and more frustrating than that is having a good comp that ends up being a throw away because it is OOF. I have the 85mm f/1.8 which is spot on, but sometimes I need something a little wider and I hate having a useful lens sit in my bag. As I said I would consider springing for the 50 1.2 at some point, but there seem to be many people who have done the same thing and have ended up disappointed with its AF (and broke!).

ziggy53

I have not had serious problems with my copy of the EF 50mm, f1.4 USM on either the XT/350D or 1D MKII bodies. Much less experience with the 5D MKII although I think I saw someone saying they had better luck with that lens on the 5D MKII when they used multi-point focus instead of single-point focus. I don't know why that might be true but I also saw a review claiming faster AF using multi-pont focus.

I still recommend using flash and a smaller aperture with fast moving toddlers. If you want a sleeping shot using ambient light then I recommend live view and manual focus.

chrismoore

ziggy53 wrote:

I have not had serious problems with my copy of the EF 50mm, f1.4 USM on either the XT/350D or 1D MKII bodies. Much less experience with the 5D MKII although I think I saw someone saying they had better luck with that lens on the 5D MKII when they used multi-point focus instead of single-point focus. I don't know why that might be true but I also saw a review claiming faster AF using multi-pont focus.

I still recommend using flash and a smaller aperture with fast moving toddlers. If you want a sleeping shot using ambient light then I recommend live view and manual focus.
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I tried mounting it on the 5D (non Mark II) just to see and same problem. Even when it was working I found that it was a little soft wide open and so typically smaller than f/2.0. I was thinking last night about perhaps the 24-70 f/2.8L as a replacement? It's not as fast, but is cheaper than the 50mm 1.2L and I've not heard of any similar problems. Of course it is not a prime, which is one of the points of using the 50mm. Would be interested to hear from anyone who uses the 24-70 as a portrait lens and if there is any comparison with the performance of the 50mm primes?
Thanks

jmphotocraft

chrismoore wrote:

I tried mounting it on the 5D (non Mark II) just to see and same problem. Even when it was working I found that it was a little soft wide open and so typically smaller than f/2.0. I was thinking last night about perhaps the 24-70 f/2.8L as a replacement? It's not as fast, but is cheaper than the 50mm 1.2L and I've not heard of any similar problems. Of course it is not a prime, which is one of the points of using the 50mm. Would be interested to hear from anyone who uses the 24-70 as a portrait lens and if there is any comparison with the performance of the 50mm primes?
Thanks

Like I said, I prefer my 24-70L to the 50/1.4 I had. It's razor sharp and has great color and contrast and bokeh. Nothing about the IQ makes me jealous of any prime. Only reason I can see to get a prime in that range would be for weight/size savings.

24-70L + 1D2N: