Canon 75-300mm III Lens not sharp

[scapilot]

I've had this lens for many years and tried everything from diffrent bodies (eos Rebel and t5) and still all of my shots (Near or Far) are not clear. I have to photoshop everyone of them to get them clear. Is it the lens or something else?

[scapilot]

[ebiggs1]

Nice! 

[Tronhard]

Right.. so, I went for a walk in the fall sunshine this morning, visiting a local graveyard that has some lovely walks and the Pacifica graves are amazingly colourful and unique, so I thought they might prove interesting subjects.  I have tried to take a selection of images covering focal length, distance, aperture etc.   All images were brought into Photoshop to make them small enough to be able to post here, but I did very little apart from that - one image I cropped quite a bit to make a point.

Canon EOS 80D, EF-70-300 IS USM 4-5.6 MkII, 278mm, f/5.6, 1/250sec, ISO-100

Canon EOS 80D, EF-70-300 IS USM 4-5.6 MkII, 79mm, f/5, 1/40sec, ISO-100

Canon EOS 80D, EF-70-300 IS USM 4-5.6 MkII, 113mm, f/5, 1/500 sec, ISO-100

Canon EOS 80D, EF-70-300 IS USM 4-5.6 MkII, 300mm, f/5.6, 1/320 sec, ISO-100

Canon EOS 80D, EF-70-300 IS USM 4-5.6 MkII,135mm, f/18, 1/40 sec, ISO-100

Canon EOS 80D, EF-70-300 IS USM 4-5.6 MkII, 300mm, f/11, 1/320 sec, ISO-200

Canon EOS 80D, EF-70-300 IS USM 4-5.6 MkII, 300mm, f/11, 1/320 sec, ISO-200

(Previous Image Cropped)

Canon EOS 80D, EF-70-300 IS USM 4-5.6 MkII, 238mm, f/8, 1/25 sec, ISO-100

[ebiggs1]

"I have to photoshop everyone of them to get them clear."

It is tough to impossible to make a soft picture sharp with PS.   I am curious to exactly what you do to make a soft photo have better IQ.  Can you post with steps you use?  BTW, adding clarity doesn't sharpen a photo. It simply defines edges.

[scapilot]

Sorry it took so long getting back.

Using Corel After Shot Pro. I select the sharpening option and slide the amount to desired sharping.

[ebiggs1]

OK, that doesn't actually sharpen or improve the IQ of a lens.  It finds edges and increases contrast between them.  This gives an appearance of a sharper photo.  If used judiciously it can help. I hope it does the job for you. Most post editors have a function like that. And, a lot of people over use, abuse, it.

[scapilot]

Thank you!

[wq9nsc]

Nice photo scapilot! 

Quite often, a lack of contrast is as big of an issue as sharpness with IQ and this often makes the use of teleconverers (especially the 2X) far less desirable.  I have found glass and glass/teleconverter combinations that don't perform well in some lighting situations are decent when the lighting results in good scene contrast.

And depending upon you aperture and shooting distance, focus calibration (and also any lens aberrations such as astigmatism) become extremely critical.  I shot these this morning while checking AF calibration of a 5DS R and EF 800 f5.6 lens and at this shooting distance, ~30 feet, with wide open aperture the depth of field is under 2 inches leaving almost no margin for error.  Pushing a lens like this either when desiring shallow DoF or because of lighting constraints will push a lens to its capabilities and choosing a little friendlier shooting setup is often helpful.

The little bird building its nest was a bonus, I set the camera and tripod up in a comfortable location and thought the twigs in the old hand pump would make a good calibration target and as I was doing the initial setup the little bird landed and continued her construction work 🙂  I don't think the EF 800 is quite as sharp as its incredible 400, 300, and 200 brothers but with decent lighting its extra reach works very nicely.

Rodger