6D gave me really blurry photos?

[Sophós]

Hello everyone.

I'm posting here hoping to find someone who can help me.

I recently got a 6D mark 2 to shoot my videos and it was all fine. Last night I was asked to take some photos during a meeting but I immediatly saw the lack of quality in all of them. I can't explain this absence of details even in the darkest enviroment or with the slowest shutter...

[AndreaW]

The picture below I took with my 6D.  Had I taken that same shot using my 6D Mark II then the hands on the guy on the right would have been very fuzzy.  Again, the issue I am having is that I get heavy "fuzziness" where there is less light.

[TTMartin]

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@AndreaW wrote:

The picture below I took with my 6D.  Had I taken that same shot using my 6D Mark II then the hands on the guy on the right would have been very fuzzy.  Again, the issue I am having is that I get heavy "fuzziness" where there is less light.

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Your subjective evaluation of here's a photo I took with my 6D that wouldn't look good on my 6D Mk II isn't really helpful. Posting images from your 6D Mk II that illustrate your issue is really the only way to do it.

Did you happen to get new lenses or start using different lenses when you got your 6D Mk II?

Going from a lens with a maximum aperture of f/4 like the EF 24-105 f/4L IS to a EF 85mm f/1.8, EF 50mm f/1.8 STM, or EF 24-70 f/2.8L would all reduce your depth of field and produce what you might view as unexpected results. 

[IgnacioSottano]

i am having the exact same problem than AndreaW, i feel you ! Also with the 6d mark II, also have been a canon user for the past 15 years, ive owned 5d mark 0,2 and 3, 6d and now 6d mark II, and this camera has something wrong.

it mostly happens with the area thats out of focus. Of course i know what an out of focus area is due to the fact of using very wide apertures (this shot was taken with the 35 1.4art from sigma), but this is NOT how an out of focus area should look like, ive tested the same lens on my 5d mark 2 and it worked like a charm, so its not the lens either. Look at the hair on the guy on the right, his hair is out of focus, of course, but does that out of focus looks natural to you? i was using a speedlight so movement there wasnt really an issue, and they were all posing for the photo.

[wq9nsc]

Looking at that image, you have far too shallow depth of field for the photo I think that you wanted to take.  The person in the foreground is in sharp focus, none of the other individuals are within the zone of critical focus (either to the right or left of the subject in the foreground).   The transition from sharp focus to blur is on both sides of the photo and you can see the transition with the bearded subject to the side as the sharpness due to further depth from the critical focus point drops from the front of his beard to where his beard nears his ear..

What was your exposure data (lens focal  length and F stop) and how far were you from the individuals?

If your lens is biased towards front focusing that will exacerbate the issue but the combination of focal length, F stop, and distance from the subjects doesn't allow anyone but the very front individual to be clearly focused and that is a setup choice issue.

I purposefully shoot most sports using fast telephoto primes with the aperture set wide open so that the player of interest "pops" in the image but that isn't what you want for a group photo where there is significant depth between the subjects from front to rear. 

The first photo is from a recent basketball game shot with a EOS 1DX III and EF 300MM F2.8 wide open to provide an image of the player waiting to sub into the game in sharp focus with everything else blurred as I wanted it. There is a single focus point selected on the player's face.

The second image from the same game shows too little DoF when one of the cheerleaders I coached in soccer wanted a quick photo while I was also keeping an eye on the game.  This was also shot with a lens wide open, in this case an EF 70-200 F2.8 on an EOS 1DX II but a better choice for that photo would have been to close down the aperture to F5.6 and either let the ISO climb or drop the shutter speed since the fast speed I was using to freeze player action wasn't needed. The focus point is on the group of three cheerleaders.

But that photo was secondary to what I was primarily shooting and I didn't want to take time to change camera settings even though I keep a high DoF setup as a second user programmed choice.  Unfortunately Canon doesn't provide a single button to shift instantly between two setups which is the only thing I think is sorely lacking with the excellent 1DX family of cameras because it would be a very useful feature when covering a fast moving event to capture something like a post-score celebration which requires greater DoF without grabbing the third camera body I often have at athletic events.

And I knew as soon as I grabbed the cheerleader shot that the fourth "musketeer" would be outside critical focus without even looking at the review screen so I motioned her forward to join her friends so that they could all be on roughly the same plane and all in focus which is the third shot using the same exposure parameters and camera distance as the second photo.

Rodger

[IgnacioSottano]

Dear  Rodger

I shot the image with the sigma 35 1.4 art lens for canon EF. I was about one meter or less of distance.

And i know that for a group image you'd want to take a more closed aperture, lets say f4, but that is not the point of this topic.

I showed that image to specifically prove that that specific dof is ODD, way odd.

If i were to take the same image with the 6d or the 5d mark III, the guy on the right would just be out of focus, not out of focus and blurried as hell.

Thats the point of this topic. 

[wq9nsc]

Dear Ignacio,

I am trying to see specifically what you are describing but the individual in the back of the frame looks like about the same level of blur to me.  The subject of interest's hair is probably further softened by your photo processing software because that darker area would have more apparent noise and would lose more detail in the noise reduction process.  If you shot this in RAW, move the noise reduction sliders to zero and see how it changes the look of that part of the image. 

With digital, when you get something out of focus and it is less well lit, then softening is going to become more apparent and that is one thing that will differ some by camera body based upon the default level of noise reduction applied and how much sharpening is reduced as part of the process based upon the software defaults for that camera body.

I have the 50mm version of the Sigma lens you used and I am very impressed with it, it is the only non-Canon lens I regularly use and I will probably pick it up in the 35mm version based upon how well the 50mm works.  The 50mm produces beautifully sharp images with my 5DS R and the Sigma 50MM art spends a lot of time on that camera. 

Hopefully someone else will have more input.

Rodger

[IgnacioSottano]

Rodger, this is straight out of camera jpg, no post proccesing whatsoever.

This sigma is a remarkable lens, its also the only non canon lens ive ever bought, and now my 50 1.4 canon stays in the shelf.

Ive tried this sigma con my 5d mark II and the out of focus is never this odd.

its a matter of the camera, and i hope someone else can also see it. Us 6d mark II user have been treated in this forum like amateur photographers and in my case this is certainly not the case, this is a real problems of this camera, and id love to see someone from canon offer a solutions instead of people trying to convince us we dont know what depth of field is 😕

Thanks alot anyways for trying to provide some input on this.

[wq9nsc]

Dear Ignacio,

OK, your straight out of the camera JPG had default processing applied by the camera itself and that may be where the issue lies in terms of aggressive noise reduction.  I know that you can't retake exactly the same scene but try to set up something similar but shoot it in RAW instead so you can separate out what is being done by the camera default JPG processing parameters.

Default JPG conversion parameters often work well but when faced with a complex image (very shallow DoF coupled with very high dynamic range and significant low light areas) then that is the perfect recipe for processing artifacts to occur.  I still believe that greatly insufficient DoF is the root cause with the dynamic range and dark areas a contributing factor and that was exacerbated by using a default JPG out of the camera.  For some reason, Canon factory setup is for the default output as JPG (even my new 1DX III was set up this way from the factory) but I really think that is a horrible choice.

Direct JPG output is convenient but it throws away too much information and makes too many decisions for the photographer such that I would never trust an important shot to it regardless of manufacturer or camera body.

Rodger

[Waddizzle]

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@IgnacioSottano wrote:

i am having the exact same problem than AndreaW, i feel you ! Also with the 6d mark II, also have been a canon user for the past 15 years, ive owned 5d mark 0,2 and 3, 6d and now 6d mark II, and this camera has something wrong.

it mostly happens with the area thats out of focus.

Of course i know what an out of focus area is due to the fact of using very wide apertures (this shot was taken with the 35 1.4art from sigma), but this is NOT how an out of focus area should look like, ive tested the same lens on my 5d mark 2 and it worked like a charm, so its not the lens either.

Look at the hair on the guy on the right, his hair is out of focus, of course, but does that out of focus looks natural to you? i was using a speedlight so movement there wasnt really an issue, and they were all posing for the photo.

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I have been polite to you.  Your friend has been argumentative and rude.  She demonstrated she does not understand DoF or motion blur.  Her complaints lacked merit.  Curiously, you agreed with her..  How is that even possible when she posted no examples of her issue?

Just what exactly is wrong with thw above photo?  Where and what is this watercolor that later you spoke of?  Nothing that I can see.  Or, were you speaking about another photo?  Can you post a sample of it?

I do not see anything wrong with the photo you just posted, either  Posting "normal" photos does not help resolve whatever issue you are having.  As I have repeatedly noted, words and opinions are totally meaningless.

BTW, that one guy looks like Danny Seraphine with a longer beard than usual. 

[Waddizzle]

Is this the area of the photo that has the issue you are describing?

Those streaks in the hair look like braids or dreadlocks.  The background is a "don't care condition", in my opinion.