Canon 400mm f/5.6L pics don't seem sharp

MikeK · March 23, 2008

I bought this lens new a few weeks back, but haven't gotten too much use yet due to the weather. So far I've taken a few bird shots that looked sharp.

This weekend I shot my daughters soccer game. To keep the shutter up around 1/1000 I had to keep the lens opened all the way up at f/5.6. When I got home and took a look at the pictures, I was very disappointed. They do not seem sharp at all. I was shooting on a tripod with my 40D, and even pictures of people standing still were very soft.

I've read so many reviews of people saying this lens is tack sharp all the way open, this just doesn't seem right. I'm hoping a few poeple might look at a couple shots and tell me if these are normal images or if I need to have Canon take a look at it.

I put some sample shots in the gallary below.
The first shot is at the soccer game.
The next 2 sets of shots are experiments I did at home today. On a tripod, I took the same shot at f/5.6 and f/7.
In each, I think f/5.6 looks very soft and f/7 is quite a bit sharper. On the construction area picture, look at the text on the backhoe and the parking sign.

The bokeh on the soccer shot and the shots of my son are kind of funky as well. Is this typical looking or odd?

http://www.bourbonstreetphotography.com/gallery/4571980_XPUeb#269475234

Thanks for your opinions!
Mike

gtc · March 23, 2008

test
100% crops would be useful for comments on sharpness.I had a look at your website and they look ok,however its hard to say.

You need to conduct a test-newspaper taped flat to a wall and use a tripod ensuring camera is level and straight on-use cable release and test using autofocus and manual focus at various apertures.

ziggy53 · March 23, 2008

Mike,

On the first construction image, the f5.6, it appears to be overexposed. The white characters appear to be blooming, which will reduce apparent sharpness. It is a bit softer than I would expect from that lens. The f7 version has the same shutter speed and does appear to be a better exposure overall.

In the test of your son, you varied the exposure so both seem properly exposed on the jeans, but the shirt looks pretty bright. The prime focus on the f5.6 version appears to be front focused, as the gravel in front looks to be sharp in places. The f7 version is indeed dead on and sharp. I agree that the background bokeh looks odd and I see a "ringing", which I don't think is correct.

I suggest more tests with center dot focus only and careful attention to exposure.

It looks like when the lens hits, it is working pretty well at prime focus.

MikeK · March 24, 2008

Thanks for the feedback. I found the issue with the exposure, I had fat-fingered a setting. I tried some newsprint exposures with the cable release at about 25 feet this morning. f/5.6 and f/8 were indistinquishable. I will try another outdoor longer distance test next with the exposure corrected and using a cable release.

I would think that any lens would be softer when wide open, and if this is the case, then so be it. But I had read enough 400mm owner reviews that claim it is just as sharp at f/5.6, hence my request for opinions if this really is the case, or just boastful/wishful owners.

And again, is the bokeh pattern something someone has seen, or is it just plain weird?

Thanks!
Mike

zacker · March 24, 2008

well I can see the indivigual hairs on the girls head in the first photo so... the lens IS doing its job... whats your Post processing like? what mode were you in? there is a learning curve to these big boys tha i have heard of... maybe go out and practice more with it?

MikeK · March 24, 2008

zacker wrote:

well I can see the indivigual hairs on the girls head in the first photo so... the lens IS doing its job... whats your Post processing like? what mode were you in? there is a learning curve to these big boys tha i have heard of... maybe go out and practice more with it?

True enough, I see hairs. But for shooting a stationary figure at around 1/1000 from a good tripod, I was expecting better. I don't think that's sharp at all, very soft, maybe a bit out of focus.

I was fully manual, focus set to middle point, metering to partial, autofocus.
Postprocessing was done in PS. I adjusted levels and curves slightly, toned down the highlights (most of this to deal with the overexposure I was getting by accident) and finished with a little bit of sharpening with smart-sharpen.

Yes, practice is good! I can't agree more. Not overexposing next time should help a lot.

I'm betting a bump in f-stop will work wonders as well.

rpcrowe · March 24, 2008

My 400mm f/5.6L is sharp as a tack!
One of the things that I love about this lens is the quality of the imagery obtainable when shooting wide open! The fact that I can get tack sharp images at f/5.6 is important since that is a fairly small aperture and if I had to stop down to get good imagery, it would be difficult to use this lens.

Many photographers post that they can get sharp imagery hand-held using this lens, but I generally cannot. I use it in conjunction with a Giottos carbon fiber 8180 tripod which is a very solid platform and the head I use is the Manfrotto 3421 Gimbal. That is a great combination and I can get sharp imagery even when following fast moving subjects. I normally shoot action subjects at ISO 400 to get the fastest shutter speed while still maintaining good quality imagery. Please see my hydroplane album on smugmug: http://rpcrowe.smugmug.com/gallery/4054984_tAZrN#236168016

There is one problem intrinsic with using a long lens like any 400mm at a fairly wide aperture such as f/5.6 (IMO f/5.6 is a wide aperture at 400mm): the depth of field is very-very shallow.
In fact, as an example here are the depths of field for 400mm at f/5.6 using a 1.6x crop camera at varying distances as per http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html:

20 feet = .15 feet (1.8 inches)
30 feet = .25 feet (4.2 inches)
40 feet = .63 feet (7.56 inches)
50 feet = 1.0 feet
100 feet = 4.04 feet
200 feet = 16.3 feet

So you can see, when you are working at distances of say, 40 feet or less and shooting at f/5.6; your depth of field will be so shallow that it might be difficult to obtain a sharp overall image of a subject that has any depth to it.

MikeK · March 24, 2008

Excellent point about the depth of field. That is not helping my cause either.

I have taken some good handheld shots with the lens, but it is tough and you can't keep it up for long. I use a Gitzo carbon fiber tripod with Wimberly sidekick when I'm shooting for any length of time (sports or watching birds). Big difference for some reason from my buddies 70-200 2.8L that I can handhold for an hour at a time.

Your hydroplane pictures are excellent, I'd love to watch and shoot some of that. Unfortunately I can only catch it on TV.

I'm figuring out a lot, much with help from you guys, so next weekends soccer game should have much improved results.

Thanks!
Mike

sirsloop · March 25, 2008

It looks like a combination of slight focus and overexposure issues in most of them. It's probably a good idea to do a focus test on the lens cause it seems like its forward focusing... then again IDK if you were using center point or had all of the AF points enabled. When shooting, I tend to use just center dot so I can control the focus. Last thing you need is some object thats in side of the frame grabbing focus off a great shot.

MikeK · March 26, 2008

sirsloop wrote:

It looks like a combination of slight focus and overexposure issues in most of them. It's probably a good idea to do a focus test on the lens cause it seems like its forward focusing... then again IDK if you were using center point or had all of the AF points enabled. When shooting, I tend to use just center dot so I can control the focus. Last thing you need is some object thats in side of the frame grabbing focus off a great shot.

I was using center point focus on all those shots. In the short time I've had the lens, it seems like shorter distance shots are pretty good, but farther away may be slightly out of focus. I will do some more controlled experiments to verify.

rpcrowe · March 26, 2008

Canon Service Centers
I have had good luck with Canon Service Center of Irvine, CA tweaking my lenses to get the best performance out of them. Your images from the 400mm f/5.6L (given a steady hold or a tripod mount) shoud be so sharp that you need to be careful not to cut yourself when opening them.

You should not expect that you will lose the service of your lens for a very long time. I received my lenses back at my home within a week from the time they arrived at Irvine. Since your lens is new, the work will be at no cost.

I would assume that other Canon Service Centers are equally competent but I have only dealt with Irvine. Here is the Canon Irvine address.

Canon USA, Inc
Factory Service Center

15955 Alton Parkway
Irvine, CA 92618
USA
949-753-4200

MikeK · March 30, 2008

OK, I did another test today with the 400mm lens. It is a modifued version of the "ruler" test I've seen to see if your focus is OK, front, rear, etc.

I have found that objects/text about 30 feet away is pretty sharp and well focused. But farther out it gets fuzzy. I first noticed this when I shoot soccer games where the players need to be about 75' to 100' out to fit the image size. At that distance all images are very soft and fuzzy/blurry.

I made an 8.5"x11" test sheet with text of different font sizes and taped them on (5) boxes. I set these boxes up all facing forward, side by side, but staggered diagonally about 4 feet behind each other, to simulate a giant ruler at an angle. In each shot I focused somewhere else, then focused on the middle box. My goal is too see if any of the boxes are in focus, and if so is the middle one or the ones in fronty/back of it.

The camera (Canon 40D) was set to 100iso, aperture priority, center spot focus and metering. I used a tripod and cable release. There was minimal wind. I got a lock on the center red dot quickly each time.

The link below is to a gallery of 4 pictures, the first 2 are at f/5.6 and the next 2 at f/8. You can see that the image quality at f/5.6 stinks, very fuzzy. f/8 is better, but still not great. The images also seem to show some front focusing. But it looks to me beside maybe front focusing a bit, it is just not close to sharp anywhere.

http://bourbonstreet.smugmug.com/gallery/4617668_Vtv88#272396859

I welcome thoughts and comments. I think this is evidence enough to talk with Canon and get the lens serviced.

Thanks!

MikeK · March 31, 2008

Well I just had a great chat with Canon and I will be sending the 400mm lens and the 40D body in for them to take a look at. Very cool, I can't wait to see the images this thing shoots when everything is as it should be.

ziggy53 · March 31, 2008

MikeK wrote:

Well I just had a great chat with Canon and I will be sending the 400mm lens and the 40D body in for them to take a look at. ...

That sounds like the best thing to do. Good luck.

MikeK · April 8, 2008

OK, I got my camera and lens back from Canon (NJ) today. Pretty snappy service! I would have had it yesterday but FedEx actually sat it in the warehouse for an extra day to make sure it was a '2 day' delivery.

I redid my long distance text test at roughly the same distance (about 75-100 feet) and added a couple pictures to the existing gallery. The first few shots are still the old test. Next is a street sign at slightly longer distance than the text test (shot today), and then finally there are 2 fresh shots of the text, one at f/5.6 and one at f/8.

http://bourbonstreet.smugmug.com/gallery/4617668_Vtv88#272396859

The image quality is unquestionably much better. The sun was quite low, so that didn't help things either. The final test will be a couple soccer games this weekend.

Cheers,
Mike

ziggy53 · April 8, 2008

Mike,

That sounds encouraging.

Thanks for keeping us posted.

Jekyll & Hyde · April 9, 2008

This lens should always be putting a big smile on your face.

MikeK wrote:

The image quality is unquestionably much better. The sun was quite low, so that didn't help things either. The final test will be a couple soccer games this weekend.

J: Good luck Mike.

H: This lens should be putting a big smile on your face if it's working correctly! Hold it to that. If it doesn't , then better exchange it. Those first shots you posted show something was indeed very wrong (misalignment would be my guess).

J: And you heard right, images shot wide open should be as sharp as the ones at f8. I shoot wide open fully 100% of the time.

H: Keep in mind too that proper tripod technique is important, as it's quite possible to introduce even more blur from vibrations. At higher shutter speeds, high frequency vibrations that normally go unnoticed can be killer.

J: Here's an image at 100% that might be helpful for comparison...

http://www.pbase.com/jekyll_and_hyde/image/92470392/original

H: Hope your smiles are ear to ear this weekend!

J&H

MikeK · April 16, 2008

Nice shot of that duck coming in! It must have been right on top of you!
Marvelous...

Here are a couple shots from a soccer game last weekend. They are jpg's as they came out of the camera. I am noticing that subjects that fill the frame look really good. As you get further away they soften up.

For instance, the first picture is about 30' away. I think the image quality is pretty good. The next picture is about 1/2 the length of the field away. It is softer but still good. The final shot is the length of a regulation field. This one is a lot softer.

Is this normal for any lens? I don't have enough experience with a variety of lenses to know if a subject that far away should be just as sharp, but smaller, or does sharpness fall off with distance.

So how do these 3 (unmodified) pictures look? Is this a solid performance for this lens?

http://bourbonstreet.smugmug.com/gallery/4736161_MZxvK#280522974_YCLCY

Thanks!
Mike

Jekyll & Hyde · April 16, 2008

MikeK wrote:

Nice shot of that duck coming in! It must have been right on top of you!
Marvelous...

J: Thanks Mike. The 400/5.6 is unbeatable for BIF.

MikeK wrote:

I am noticing that subjects that fill the frame look really good.

H: "Exactamundo"

- Wesley Snipes.

MikeK wrote:

As you get further away they soften up.

J: Yup, best to put as many pixels on the subject as possible. No getting around that fact.

MikeK wrote:

The next picture is about 1/2 the length of the field away. It is softer but still good. The final shot is the length of a regulation field. This one is a lot softer.

H: In the 2nd pic, I think that she may have run through the DOF a bit. Check the grass (it'll always tell the story). Her left shoe flap is nicely in-focus.

J: In the last pic, the camera focused on the netting just behind the posts (again, check the grass). Focusing becomes much more difficult the further away you are (the actual AF area is somewhat larger than what the AF frames indicate).

H: Anticipating and prefocusing can sometimes win the day. I almost always use the * button for focusing.

MikeK wrote:

Is this normal for any lens? I don't have enough experience with a variety of lenses to know if a subject that far away should be just as sharp, but smaller, or does sharpness fall off with distance.

J: These look much better than the first images you posted. Keep in mind that you are looking at them at 100%.

MikeK wrote:

Is this a solid performance for this lens?

H: Definitely is now. Now just go out and have fun. No worries.

J&H

MikeK · April 16, 2008

Thanks J (or am I talking to H at the moment?), you've been a great help.
I am definitely having fun, no question about that.

Just want to make sure my equipment is holding up its end of the bargain.
Then I can work on perfecting the bigger issue, that guy behind the camera.

Cheers!
Mike

Canon 400mm f/5.6L pics don't seem sharp

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