R7 fuzzy images

[Underwood1914]

I purchased the R7 camera as an upgrade to my 7D mark II. My primary use of the camera is bird photography. Using the EF 100-400 mm f4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens on my 7D always produced sharp high quality images in the past.

I was told that with the canon adaptor this lens would be compatible with the R7 and produce sharp images. It did not. After spending an entire week of vacation shooting Warblers and other migratory birds with the R7 with 5 resets back to factory, firmware updates I am still finding all the images to be fuzzy and lack sharpness, and ultimately find this R7 to be a very disappointing camera so far.

is there something that needs to be done to use the 100-400 mm lens with the R7 besides the adapter or are the two truly just not compatible?

[johnrmoyer]

I suggest turning off "auto lighting optimizer" and "peripheral illumination correction" in the camera menus and only do those corrections when editing the raw file. It seemed to me that those add to the image noise.

It appears to me that most of the blur in 7C0A9637.CR3 comes from the noise reduction and it seems to me that "auto lighting optimizer" and "peripheral illumination correction" enabled in the camera menus cause the camera choose a larger ISO number than otherwise. I also suggest increasing the depth of field by using F/7.1 instead of F/5.6. The vine is in slightly better focus than the eye of the bird. The camera is very good at finding the eye of the bird if configured to do so. This might be fixed either by increasing the depth of field or by enabling the eye detection auto focus.

In Canon DPP, when editing 7C0A9637.CR3, reducing the noise reduction from 11.0 to 3.0 causes much of the blur to disappear, but the noise is more visible.

If you had time to think about it before the bird moved, then 1/500 second might have been better than 1/1000 second shutter speed. IBIS removes much of the need for a high shutter speed to counteract camera movement.

If you can afford the storage space, it seems to me that RAW does slightly better than CRAW when it comes to noise. At least it makes the noise look more pleasing.

Since I have EOS R5 instead of EOS R7, some of my settings might not directly map to yours. I hope some of this might be helpful anyway.

I notice you used "[MakerNotes:Camera] AF Area Mode : Spot AF". I used Spot AF on my EOS 80D, but when I went to the EOS R5 that did not work for me and I changed to "[MakerNotes:Camera] Focus Mode : AI Servo AF", "[MakerNotes:Camera] AF Area Mode : Face + Tracking", with the initial focus a small area in the center. I also set:

• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Config Tool : Case 1
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Tracking Sensitivity : 0
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Accel/Decel Tracking : 0
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Point Switching : -1 [MakerNotes:Camera] AI Servo First Image : Equal Priority
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AI Servo Second Image : Equal Priority
• [MakerNotes:Camera] USM Lens Electronic MF : Disable in AF Mode
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Assist Beam : Enable
• [MakerNotes:Camera] One Shot AF Release : Focus Priority
• [MakerNotes:Camera] Auto AF Point Sel EOS iTR AF: Enable [MakerNotes:Camera] Lens Drive When AF Impossible: Continue Focus Search
• [MakerNotes:Camera] Select AF Area Selection Mode: Single-point AF, Auto, Zone AF, AF Point Expansion (4 point), Spot AF, AF Point Expansion (8 point), [6], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Area Selection Method : M-Fn Button
• [MakerNotes:Camera] Orientation Linked AF : Same for Vert/Horiz Points
• [MakerNotes:Camera] Manual AF Point Sel Pattern : Stops at AF Area Edges
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Point Display During Focus: Selected (constant)

Your settings for 7C0A9637.CR3:

• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Area Mode : Spot AF
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Config Tool : Case 11
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Tracking Sensitivity : 127
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Accel/Decel Tracking : 127
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Point Switching : -1
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AI Servo First Image : Equal Priority
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AI Servo Second Image : Equal Priority
• [MakerNotes:Camera] USM Lens Electronic MF : Disable in AF Mode
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Assist Beam : Enable
• [MakerNotes:Camera] One Shot AF Release : Focus Priority
• [MakerNotes:Camera] Auto AF Point Sel EOS iTR AF: Enable
• [MakerNotes:Camera] Lens Drive When AF Impossible: Continue Focus Search
• [MakerNotes:Camera] Select AF Area Selection Mode: Single-point AF, Auto, Zone AF, AF Point Expansion (4 point), Spot AF, AF Point Expansion (8 point), [6], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Area Selection Method : M-Fn Button
• [MakerNotes:Camera] Orientation Linked AF : Same for Vert/Horiz Points
• [MakerNotes:Camera] Manual AF Point Sel Pattern : Stops at AF Area Edges
• [MakerNotes:Camera] AF Point Display During Focus: Selected (constant)

[ctitanic]

Weird, I have the R7 and most of the time the EF100-400 II and I'm extremely happy with now sharp that combination is. 

[ctitanic]

Here is another example.