Not great images with new 6D. Please take a look and give me your thoughts

[Brad]

I'm going on a 2 week trip to Japan in 3 days so I'm hoping to figure this out before I leave.

I got my new 6d with 24-105 L lens kit, and also the 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. It doesn't seem like any of the photos are that sharp without a very high contrast shot in full sunlight. Indoor shots or those with lower contrast (tree bark, leaves, something in the shade, etc.) seem pretty unsharp to me. I'm not sure if the AF just can't get a precise focus, or if the sensor just can't get good detail unless those conditions are met.

This is my first DSLR, although I've had film SLRs for 30+ years before that, and digital point and shoots for the last decade or so. I'm not sure if my expectations were too high or if there's something wrong with the camera, lenses, AF, or IS systems, or if I'm doing something wrong.

Some photos are below. I shot them all above the 1/focal length rule and some 2x or 3x or more above that, so in theory that would eliminate the camera shake issue, and also in theory the IS system should give you 2-3 stops so it doesn't seem to me that camera shake should be the issue. (I've also taken tripod shots and had the same issue so I don't think it's camera shake.)

All are large fine jpegs (20mb) straight from the camera, blown up to 100%.


santa1 Indoors daylight, no interior lights on, 24mm focal length, 1/30, ISO 1000

santa2 Indoors daylight, with interior lights on, 105mm focal length, 1/125, ISO 6400

santa3 Indoors daylight, with interior lights on, 300mm focal length, 1/320, ISO 10000

santa4 Indoors daylight, with interior lights on, 300mm focal length, 1/640, ISO 20000

wall1 outdoors, 105mm focal length, 1/500, ISO 100

wall2 outdoors, 270mm focal length, 1/500, ISO 100

treebark1 outdoors, 70mm focal length, 1/125, ISO 25600

treebark2 outdoors, 300mm focal length, 1/320, ISO 25600

license1 outdoors, 300mm focal length, 1/320, ISO 25600

leaves1 outdoors, 70mm focal length, 1/320, ISO 25600

leaves2 outdoors, 300mm focal length, 1/320, ISO 500

truck, 105mm focal length, 1/250, ISO 100

Other than the truck badge and maybe the wall photos (high contrast, full sunlight), most of them don't seem that sharp to me. What do you guys think? Most people are raving about how good the low light performance is on the 6d but I'm just not seeing it, not even in moderate light.

Here's a link to where someone compares a few different cameras one of them being the 6d. My images are not as sharp as them as far as I can tell.
http://www.etherpilot.com/photo/test/misc/6d_5d3_d600_colfix.jpg

Any thoughts or suggestions you can give are greatly appreciated! Thanks! 

[Scatterbrained]

As of right now Lightroom 4.3 supports the 6D and the D600.

[RoadRunner]

Use the L lens and the camera on P to start if u don't know what to do. Just see how it goes. Don't get hung up on the techie stuff. Try to take shots under what u know should be good cirucumstances. Take your time and enjoy the learning curve. The steeper it is the higher u'll go. Good luck. 

[ScottyP]

How was Japan, by the way?

[Brad]

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@ScottyP wrote:

How was Japan, by the way?

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Hey Scott, It was a really good trip! This was my 4th time there and I like it more each time I go. We took about 2500 photos so I've got a ton to sort through!

Here's a fairly random assortment of photos. Honestly, IQ-wise, they still don't look that great when I look at them on either of my computers. Maybe that's one of the problems I'm having. When I look at them on the camera the colors look so good (but of course tiny so you can't tell sharpness and all that) but they don't look so hot on the computer monitors. I'll invest in a image worthy monitor here soon.

However, I will say that I am very impressed with the camera's low light photos. Most of them look good and saturated. And color of the photos overall seem very good to me.

I was in tourist/snapshot mode so I was not really taking an hour to frame the perfect shot and be all artistic (trying to be somewhat considerate of my wife's time 😉 I figured I could crop as I needed to if I found any potential great ones.

If you've got a minute let me know what you think of the output quality of the photos. They're jpeg straight out of the camera taken at M (fine) 8.9mb. (I shot full size RAW too.) Maybe they'll look better full size on your monitor.

[Brad]

I see my thread was resurected after a year so I figured I should commment...

Now that I've had the 6D for 16 months and have a lot more experience with it, I can say that it's definitely a mixed bag. I love the low light and night shots I can get with the camera even hand held, but other things leave me quite frustrated.

Since I last posted I got me a nice, new 22" Dell Ultrasharp monitor so I'm more confident that what I'm seeing/not seeing  is real. I feel like at first glance my photos look great, and many people comment on how incredible they look, however there is still a lack of sharpness and sometimes they seem to be slightly out of focus even when I'm looking at the exact spot where the auto-focus focused. These things start to really annoy me if I should decide to crop and blow up an image. (And I do have the sharpness jacked all the way up on the settings.)

Other things that annoy me with the camera...I got a 600ex-rt speedlight and I absolutely hate how the camera will not let me use the shutter speeds that I want to (sync speed limitations.) This seems to plague all canon cameras from what I read, and it has screwed me out of a lot of shots that I would have loved to have gotten.

I find the wifi to be mostly useless. It's really cumbersome to set up and doesn't work all the time. Sometimes I have to go through the setup 2-3 times before it works. This pretty much eliminates the usefulness of the phone app where I should be able to use it as a remote shutter, but I just can't be bothered to take 3-5 minutes to set up the wifi just to use the remote. It's so much easier to just use the time and run and jump in the photo. Yes I could leave wifi on the entire time but that burns both the camera's and cell phone's batteries way too fast to be practical in the field.

Another annoying thing is that sure you can post photos to facebook but it has to go through another annoying and cumbersome canon app to do that, and it doesn't even let you post comments on the photo so you just get a plain photo uploaded to your facebook feed with nothing about it. Maybe some people are OK with that but really when you're being "social" with your photos, saying something about them or tagging your location is part of it. So we just stick to using our cell phones to post photos to facebook.

When I bought this camera I was going back and forth between the 6D and the 5D Mark III. I went with the 6D because I just didn't think the higher specs of the 5D were worth the extra $1500, and the 6D actually has more modern features when you get down to it. However my buddy who has the 5D Mark III doesn't seem to have these lack of sharpness and focus issues that I do.

Maybe I just got a bad camera? Or maybe the 24-105 lens is bad? Not sure what I can do about it now though.

[NFirebaugh]

Hey Brad I don't personally own the 24-105 Just the 17-40, 70-200, 100mm f2.8, and a few others. I had an issue with getting my pics sharp too at first but during vacation this past summer I dropped my 6D into the waves at the beach. It went to CPS where they replaced the focus screen and checked it over for a clean bill of health. When I got it back I was still concerned on sharpness so I started asking some professionals I know how they get their images so sharp. Since then I've switched to all manual focus and when on a tripod I always zoom to 5x to set my focus and then still sharpen the image in post processing too. I have found that this gives me the sharpness I'm after.

[amfoto1]

"Other things that annoy me with the camera...I got a 600ex-rt speedlight and I absolutely hate how the camera will not let me use the shutter speeds that I want to (sync speed limitations.) This seems to plague all canon cameras from what I read, and it has screwed me out of a lot of shots that I would have loved to have gotten."

Get out your camera manual and read about High Speed Sync (HSS). With that, you can use literally any shutter speed your camera offers with your flash... .However,  there's no free lunch. Using HSS limits the reach of your flash. The higher the shutter speed above the true sync speed, the more limited the distance the flash is effective. At really high shutter speeds 1/1000, 1/2000 and above, distances are quite severely limited. This might be less of a concern when using the flash as fill, than when using it "full", as the primary light source.

There isn't a DSLR on the market that doesn't have a max flash sync speed. How high the speed is depends upon the camera format and the shutter specifications. Some crop cameras have 1/250 or even 1/300 flash sync. Most full frame cameras have 1/200 or slower.

If using HSS with a telephoto lens, it might be possible to use a flash extender to help with the flash's reach. I use Better Beamer type extenders with my 550EX and 580EX flashes... I don't know if these will work with 600EX. I haven't used, but see that there's a Harbor Digital extender offered specifically for 600EX.

Also, do you realize that when using the flash as your main light source, the shutter speed doesn't really matter very much? The flash itself will act like a shutter.... about 1/720 with most portable flashes. A flash working as the main light source will go a long way toward stopping subject movement.

Shutter speed is more critical when using the flash as fill, when using it mixed with ambient light.

***********
Alan Myers

San Jose, Calif., USA
"Walk softly and carry a big lens."
GEAR: 5DII, 7D(x2), 50D(x3), some other cameras, various lenses & accessories
FLICKR & PRINTROOM 

[amfoto1]

"Maybe I just got a bad camera? Or maybe the 24-105 lens is bad? Not sure what I can do about it now though."

Some things that might help...

1. Do you have a "protective" filter on your lens? If so, try shooting without it and see if there is a difference. An awful lot of "soft image" issues seem to end up being due to a filter, can easily be mis-interpreted as focus problems... or the filter might actually be causing focus errors.

2. The 24-105 is a "parfocal" zoom... It's a "varifocal" design, which means it doesn't maintain focus when you change the focal length by zooming the lens. So you always have to re-focus after zooming. It might help to use AI Servo (and possibly Back Button Focusing) with this type zoom, because AI Servo will correct focus continuously. If using One Shot, after zooming you have to fully release the shutter button (or back button), then reapply it to re-focus.

Many of today's zoom lenses are varifocal designs, by the way. Parfocal lenses are more expensive to build and maintain, and are less necessary with auto focus cameras.

3. Look to your camera settings and/or post-processing. All images require some sharpening, for example. Some can be applied to JPEGs in camera, though it's usually best to apply most sharpening after sizing the image for whatever final use you plan for it. If shooting RAW files and not converting with DPP and letting the software use the "as shot" settings (same results as shooting JPEG in camera), sharpening will not be applied and needs to be handled in the post-processing. Another key setting that can effect image sharpness a lot is noise reduction... if heavy NR is being applied, there's a lot of loss of fine detail that can make images look soft.

4. Avoid extremely small apertures on your lens. With any camera an effect called "diffraction" robs fine detail from images at ultra small apertures. With a full frame, 20+MP camera the effect begins aroung f11 and can be apparent in an 8x10 image with f22. It might be seen in larger display of images shot at f16.  

5. Be realistic when evaluating your images on your computer. If you are viewing your images at 100% on a modern monitor set to its native resolution (96 ppi is typical), with a 6D image that's the same as making a 57 inch wide print and then viewing it from about 18 inches away. Heck, if you get that close to an old master's painting in the Louvré  museum in Paris, all you'll see are brush strokes and the textrure of the canvas. Back off to 50% or less when evaluating image sharpness and focus accuracy.

6. Even better, make a print on smooth matte paper with a photo-quality printer. Even the very best, graphics quality computer monitor is quite limited compared to a print. There's far more sharpness, fine detail and dynamic range in your images, than is possible to display on your computer monitor.   

7. If you haven't already done soe, use the Micro Focus Adjustment feature built into your camera to fine tune the focus of each of your lenses. Follow the instructions in the manual carefully.

Can't help much with the WiFi and Facebook issues. To me those are gimmicky features and not things I worry very much about. 6D, 70D and some other models have WiFi capabilities... but I get the impression it's sort of a "lite" version of networking. The more high-end camera models use one of several different Wireless File Transfer modules that have far greater range (100 to 400 feet, compared to 25 or 30 feet with the built in WiFi, if memory serves),  more robust functionality and networking capabilities. I've only used them lightly, as the WFT modules add considerable cost, replace the vertical grip and reduce battery capacity in some camera models (all the ones I use), and I still find a handful of memory cards along with simple, physical downloads faster, easier and more reliable.  

***********
Alan Myers

San Jose, Calif., USA
"Walk softly and carry a big lens."
GEAR: 5DII, 7D(x2), 50D(x3), some other cameras, various lenses & accessories
FLICKR & PRINTROOM 

[MR]

Wow Brad I m disappointed to hear that. I too was thinking about 5d but when I read
Hype in 6D having so many equal if better features j didn't think it was worth extra $.
I have tried so many combinations of settings & lenses I m thinking it us the auto focus that
Must be the problem ??? Not fast enough? Many times I m shooting in continuous mode &
With multiple shots I m just wondering if it is too slow. The Nikon users did not seem to have
These problems. I have had mine around 4 mo. I wonder if they would replace under warranty.
I see other issues with battery usage on GPS etc. wondering if could get 5 d Mk ii for same $

[adamsnapper]

I bought a 6d last September to replace my ageing 1d Mk IIn. Worst mistake I ever made.

I have exactly the same sort of issues with the focus. Out of say 100 images only 10per cent will have the focus spot on. I use the camera professionally  to shoot indoor ceremonies with flash and have had to resort to manual focus now as the AF is worse than useless. I even bought a new lens (24-105mm f4) as the local Canon repair lab told me it could be my (again ageing) 28-70 f2.8 playing around.

The focus beeps to confirm lock on, I nearly always use single shot AF with the centre spot, then hold and reframe then shoot. I take two shots of each couple, but on checking back through all the images there will be only five or so from the whole session which are razor sharp, most are muzzy and a select  few are almost unusable the focus is that bad.

Honestly I have the same problem across all of my L lenses but the repair lab checked the camera and said they found no fault. The only time I'm ever confident of getting a tack sharp image is with landscapes on a pod, stopped down. I just can't trust it in any other situation.

I'm saving up now for what I should have bought in the first place (1DX) and then I will ditch this pony as fast as I can.