Is my Canon 70-200f/2.8 L copy sharp ?

Onrey

Hey folks, I just recieved my 70-200 f/2.8 L today, Right now its my best lense, It appears to me to be a very sharp copy but Im not as experienced as soome of you so could you please let me know what you think. This is a photo taken of my daughter today just for a refrence, No editing what so ever except the crop, otherwise straight from the camera. I will try to post the 100% crop then the original croped to 5x7. If this isnt a sharp copy to many of you then I only have a few days to get it back to B&H. Thank you.

pathfinder

I do not see a picture. The URLs seem to be keyed correctly. Do you have external links turned on in your control panel at your smuggy account??

Onrey

You may have to take into account perhaps my less than perfect skills

Original of the above, thanks again

Andy

Onrey, you have to have external links allowed for the gallery you are linking from, otherwise we won't see the picture.

More info on this by clicking the link in my signature, getting the most out of dgrin.

Onrey

Path, you were correct, the galllery I haad these in wasnt enabled, can you see them now ?

Andy

Exif?

Onrey

Sorry, heres the Exif

Shot Manual
ISO 200
1/200 @f/2.8
Flash @ -1

Did I miss anything ?

Thanks for your patience guys

pathfinder

Handheld?? Really now....:): 1/200th at a focal length of 200mm is just barely adequate for handholding. Fortuantely, IS helps a lot. Was it turned on?



Evaluating lens sharpness by looking at images shot with a hand held camera is fraught with some significant problems..

If you really want to evaluate a zoom lens, you will need to evaluate each of several f stops and focal lengths, as well as near and far distances. Some folks prefer shooting a newspaper taped on a vertical wall or a more formal type of lens resolution target to evaluate both the center and corner resolution, with the camera firmly mounted on a good tripod and the mirror locked up and triggered by a remote release. Andy does this routinely I am sure Myself, I just kind of wing it, unless I see a reason not too. Most of the poor images I see are technique failures, not usually equipment limitations.

Then again, you may just be wanting reassurance that your lens isn't an obvious lemon. Shooting 20 or 30 images and looking at them at 100% or 200% on your computer screen in Photoshop is a pretty good way to check for significant chromatic aberration or poor resolution.

She is a pretty young lady. I don't see obvious defects with the image altho it is only a small crop from near the center and not at the edges. The whole crop submitted is not completely in focus, but focal depth is very shallow at f2.8 with that lens - That is one of it's great qualities - lovely bokeh.

Onrey

Path, I did not hand hold this, I used a monopod.

Shot in Manual Mode
Focal Lenth was about 93mm
And this is the Non IS Lense,

Your correct above, I basicly want to know if this is a lemon or not, I suspect its a great copy, from all the photos ive taken today, most are great but a few are a bit soft/out of focus (my fault, shakey hands).

Thanks, We like to think shes a beauty, she just competed in her High School Beauty walk last night, but she didnt place ( Wish I had got theis lense yesterday, I tried but missed B&H's cut off of Noon by 36 min

Andy

In order to test for sharpness, you need to put this lens on a tripod, and shoot center focus on an object -- like a tree, or sign, etc. For handheld shots, to eliminate camera shake as a possible source of unsharpness, you really should be at 1/500th or even 1/1000th.

Hope this helps

Onrey

Thanks Pathfinder and Andy,

I'll try to take some more tommorrow and post them If I have time. I appreciate the time you take to help others.

pathfinder

Like Andy said. See I told ya he tests each lens meticulously!! Tripod, MLU, etc etc.


When shooting at f2.8 at 93mm focal length, another problem develops that you may be familiar with. IF you use the center AF point only ( and a lot of us who grew up with split image reticles used to do that ) and focus and then recompose, the image WILL be out of focus due to the errors inherent in using the Focus- recompose method. This will especally be true for images shot at less than 12 feet ( like a head and shoulders with a 90mm focal length)

It is much more accurate to use the appropriate off axis AF point accurately, than to use the center point and then recompose. Geometry rules!! You can read about it here http://www.visual-vacations.com/Photography/focus-recompose_sucks.htm

Shooting at f2.8 or wider requires meticulous care with focusing for really sharp results. If you want to see how good you CAN be - check out "The Art of Wedding Photography" by Bambi Cantrell and Skip Cohen. She has shot after shot after shot all done with the 85mm f1.2 lens shot wide open at f1.2 with moving candid subjects.

If you already know that focus - compose sucks, my mistake. But to really evaluate lens resolution, ALL the ducks have to be in a nice, neat row including very accurate focusing.

Blurmore

This really just anecdotal but if she wears contacts I'd say this lens is sharp, considering this was not on a tripod at only 1/200 of a sec. Does anyone else see the slight edge of the contact lens??? This is yet another reason I went for the 70-200 f4 L, that whole focus recompose thing is hard to break, and it bites me in the butt with my 85 f1.8 all the time, the f4 has sufficent dof to not break my old habits.

Onrey

Yes she wears contacts, thanks for sharing. I don't believe I have anything to worry with this lense but the fact I spent so much money on it I wanted to be sure its was as sharp as possible.

pathfinder

Blurmore wrote:

This really just anecdotal but if she wears contacts I'd say this lens is sharp, considering this was not on a tripod at only 1/200 of a sec. Does anyone else see the slight edge of the contact lens??? This is yet another reason I went for the 70-200 f4 L, that whole focus recompose thing is hard to break, and it bites me in the butt with my 85 f1.8 all the time, the f4 has sufficent dof to not break my old habits.

Good pickup about seeing the contact lens edge. I reexamined the image and I see the light reflex outside the lateral limbus of her eye, but I'm not sure I could be convinced that it was due to a contact lens from this image. But it turns out that you were correct. Right ON!!