"Soft" Focus on Canon 10D

mrsid99

TPF Supporters
Supporting Member
Joined
Mar 8, 2003
Messages
2,964
Reaction score
5
Location
Florida
I've been saving my pennies for a Canon 10D and I'm all but sold on it.
The only complaint I've noticed from many sources is that pictures taken on one are "soft" i.e. slightly out of focus, the prevailing opinion is that it's caused by the anti-aliasing software in the camera.
My question (at last!) is: What do owners think of this?
Is it a big deal?
Please let me know and if anyone has unretouched shots taken with one I'd love to see.
Thanks folks!
 
Well I'm sure the good ole unsharp mask would solve that issue.

There is only one digital camera that does NOT anti-alias and that is the sigma SD9. But I think the Faveon chip is a little too new.
 
Hi Voodoocat,
Yeah I hear that all the time about unsharp mask which I often use now BUT the Nikon D100 (my 2nd choice) supposedly gives sharp pics without having to fudge.
Obviously I'd like to know how bad is the problem and if there's a work around.
Thanks.
 
I have a 10D got it in July (lenses Sigma 29-70mm 2.8f, Canon 70-200mm 2.8f IS and Canon 2X) I have been very happy so far, I thing are very sharp compared to film IMO, I have had prints made by Ofoto and Webshots with better traditional prints for film , IMO printing at home cost more

I took all the photos on these three pages with the 10D, fell free to download any of the photos to make proofs

http://community.webshots.com/album/81081312wzRWoh

http://community.webshots.com/album/83446033BvpfQp

http://community.webshots.com/album/88465419FLgfve
 
Hi Jeff!
Thanks for the input and the samples.
I'm particularly impressed with the baseball shots but have they been "processed" at all?
If they haven't then I've no more concerns with sharpness.
BTW, I'm using a Canon S900 printer to print my pics and I figure it's costing me between $0.80 and $1.00 each for 4x6's and that's without amortizing the printer cost but the convenience is worth it (mostly!) so yeah I agree it's not the cheapest way to go.
Thanks again Jeff.
 
The only editing that I did was cropping, cloning and converting to B&W. I can not recall doing any other editing
 
Hi again Jeff!
Well if that's the case and no unsharp mask was used then I've no more worries about "soft" focus because those baseball shots were as crisp as anything I'd want.
Thanks again for your input Jeff and I'll probably be bugging you again when I get the camera.
That may be a few weeks yet but you never know.
 
hey Sid, the 10D is a great camera and definitely a whole lot sharper than shooting&scanning film. Either way you need to do some Photoshop post-processing. See it as the necessary evil - I like my pics out of the cam with no internal sharpening or contrast and color tweaking, in this way I have FULL control about MY images and not some built-in-camera-autopilot-system... just my 2c :mrgreen:
 
Hi Doxx!
Thanks for your input and if a Pro uses one why should I worry?
BTW, how'd the birthday bash go?
 
Also own a 10d...

noticed with some lenses that the images can be soft... barring in mind aperture and what not... I'd say the 10d is a little soft but some lenses with it seem to be sharper than others.

perhaps on 20% of my images will i head towards the unsharp mask shtuff...

all in all though, the cam is still my favorite in the price range...

lates...
 
when I bought my 10D, the first thing I did was test it's focus and sharpness when I got home.
all I have to say is that it's amazingly sharp!!!

I know that many people have been complaining about it being soft or out of focus in other forums... but take a look at who's complaining! All of the guys who say the 10D is soft/OOF are the ones who know nothing about photography. Guys who post up a photo of their low light bedroom using 1/60 exposure handheld complaining that their images are soft. I've been searching a lot of forums and reading a lot about the focus issue in the past month, and I've yet to see a single knowledgeable 10D user that complained about the focus issue.
I think the only reason the 10D receives so many complaints is because it's so affordably priced that the average joe is buying it thinking the 10D is an upgraded version of the canon S50 or something. It's comparable to rich people who buy ferrari's believing that it'll be a better everyday commuter than a honda accord. Then complaining that the ferrari is a bad car because it's loud and uncomfortable.
 
mrsid99 said:
Hi Voodoocat,
Yeah I hear that all the time about unsharp mask which I often use now BUT the Nikon D100 (my 2nd choice) supposedly gives sharp pics without having to fudge.
Obviously I'd like to know how bad is the problem and if there's a work around.
Thanks.

I don't know where you read that, but from tests another user did the 10D did much better (I don't want to use "blew away the D100" :wink: ) in exposure, color, and sharpness.

Regarding the "soft" issue, like the others have said, unsharp masks makes it almost a non-issue. One thing to note is that the lens will make an impact as well. My brother's L series lens is much sharper than mine (both are Canon lenses).

kafene.
 
I've been using the 10D for a little while now. It does indeed have a softer focus. Using the same lenses (28-75 4.0 USMIII, I think - don't recall off the top of my head) with the same subjects my Elan 7e gives me a sharper image. Some of that is due to film quality on the 7e, digital noise on the 10D, etc. You will need to do some processing in Photoshop to get the results you want, unless you're going for hte soft focus look, of course.

I've had better luck with the CSPro plug-in for the 10D from http://www.fredmiranda.comthan just using plain Unsharp mask. Though it does the same thing, it takes into account some of the compression algorithms used in Canon's .JPG generation. Unsharp mask left me with elements in my image that the Fred Miranda plug-ins didn't. It only works on JPEGs or TIFF/JPEG files converted from RAW. You can't process RAW with it.

Your mileage may vary, of course. I'm only saying that I've preferred this to Unsharp Mask for both the quality of the results I get and the ease of use. 15 bucks is worth several go arounds of fiddling with Unsharp Mask to me.
 

Most reactions

Back
Top