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...
I wasn't being harsh. It sounded as though you were responding to someone else's issue.
If you look as the image below you will see that the bassist's hands are fuzzy. Yes, this photo was taken in low light, however, with the Canon 6D I would not have had this happen. With the Canon 6D Mark II this "fuzziness" appears in many of my photos, especially around the edges where there is less light. (And yes, I know all about the importance of light as you will see in my photos: www.AndreaWattsPhotography.com )
@AndreaW wrote:
I think you made a mistake and meant to respond to someone else because your response did not address my issue. My issue has nothing to do with depth of field.
A-
No mistake. The comment was directed at you.
I'm reading your responses to people who are trying to be helpful, but you're rejecting any ideas that indicate that there is the remotest possibility that the problem is due to the photographer's error.
In the words of Ansel Adams "The most important part of the camera is the 12 inches behind it."
I also tried to explain that if you *really* insist on thinking that the problem must be the camera, then you've got to isolate all other possibilities by taking a test shot using proper testing techniques so that the things like camera movement, photographer movement, subject movement, focus position, shutter speed, etc. can't possibly be the reason for a blurred shot. But this means using proper test targets and tripods.
Your shot doesn't have any EXIF data attached. But the issue with the musician's hands is caused by motion blur. There's no mistake here ... that is motion blur. If you think otherwise, then you're still not familiar with it.
I use motion blur on purpose. Here's an example:
To freeze motion ... shutter speeds of around 1/250th *might* freeze motion if it isn't moving very fast (and close inspection will usually reveal some blur). For fast-moving subjects you can need shutter speeds of 1/1000th sec or faster. THIS shot was taken at just 1/125th (I've taken motion blur at much slower speeds). The image is tack-sharp. You can count the whiskers on his face. You can see the fine detail in his face, hands, and torso. But his legs and shoes are blurred (they are moving relative to his body) and while the bike frame is tack-sharp, the wheels and spokes are blurred. The background is blurred due to the effects of motion because the camera lens was swinging from left to right "following" the rider. The whole effect is done on purpose to create a sense of high-speed motion in a "still" photograph.
The musician's hands in your photo are blurred due to the effects of motion (I have many such examples myself).
Here's one:
That was shot using my 5D II (I no longer own that camera body) using a Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM lens ... at f/2. So depth of field is shallow. It was also shot at ISO 6400 & 1/60th sec. There's a bit of noise (I've de-noised it a bit via Lightroom but used masking to protect the "edges") but 1/60th isn't fast enough to freeze the motion blur of his hands.
The background here is blurred (notice the drum-set in the lower right), not due to motion blur, camera defects, or lens defects ... but because this was shot at f/2 ... so the blur you see in the background is due to being well-outside the depth-of-field.
You can send your camera to Canon if you wish. They'll send it back with a report that they were unable to find defects and the camera is performing to spec.
You may want to pick up a good read such as Bryan Peterson's book "Understanding Exposure".
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.
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.
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
