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Refurbished 80d...blurry out of focus photos.. HELP!

KevinG1
Enthusiast
Im new to photography, started this year with a rebel t6 that I outgrew fast. I seemed to learn pretty quick and have always shot in manual mode. Quality of my t6 photos are great! Clear, crisp, and so on.

decided to upgrade to a 80d, and picked one up through canon refurbished. Well the majority of my shots come out blurry. For example, i do car photography {stills} and lets say the wheels are out of focus, or the lights... cant seem to get consistent clear crisp photos.

Not sure if its me, or the camera. Seems all of my lenses will do it. Mostly shoot with the canon 50mm 1.4 and nothing comes out clear under f2.8. Best around 4.

Ive tried everything. Tripod, high shutter speed, manual focus.. live view, view finder, tried all different focus point methods. The one wierd thing I noticed is when i used live view today, it showed the image on the screen perfectly in focus and crisp. As soon as the shutter went of it became blurry. That was on a tripod, using 2 sec delay.

Hope someone can help me...
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION


@KevinG1 wrote:
Gotcha. Ill just need to shoot more and see what methods work best for me.

Also i did a micro af adjustment and found my canon 50mm 1.4 was off a bit. Definitely wasn't helping me

I suggest that you reset your AFMA back to zero, until you gain more experience with the camera.  Learn how to half press the shutter when using One Shot mode, so that you can evaluate the AF points.

When you have all AF points active, like [A} mode, you may see multiple AF points light up.  Be aware of the fact that the camera is indicating which AF points are capable of achieving a focus lock, but only one AF point will actually be used to focus the shot.  The automatically selected AF point will typically rest on the closest object under an active AF point.

 

It is highly recommended that you configure the camera to always use the center AF point, which is the most sensitive and accurate AF point.  And, always use One Shot focusing mode, until you gain more experience using the camera to focus on the subject that you want.    

 

One final note.  The AF points are actually slightly larger than the red boxes you see in the viewfinder.  Placing an AF point on something may not always focus where you want it to.  The camera will focus on the highest contrast area that it can find within the AF point coverage area.  So aim your camera at vertical and horizontal contrasting lines.

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"The right mouse button is your friend."

View solution in original post

108 REPLIES 108

Yes, I tried several lenses. All had a similar problem. I will shoot in live view until I send the camera in for calibration. Hopefully it can be fixed. I suspect a batch of cameras got through quality control that were not quite up to spec. I was unlucky enough to get one of those cameras. Bummer, I wish Canon would just swap me a new camera for my current one. My current camera is less than 2 months old.

KevinG1
Enthusiast
Ill take some photos with the same settings as you and see if i have the same issue

I printed the focus charts from a link given in this article: https://photographylife.com/how-to-quickly-test-your-dslr-for-autofocus-issues

jrhoffman75
Legend
Legend
Don’t settle. Send the camera back, get it fully adjusted and enjoy it.
John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, LR Classic


@jrhoffman75 wrote:
Don’t settle. Send the camera back, get it fully adjusted and enjoy it.

Listen to John.  Send it back, instead of meddling with it.

Making AFMA adjustments is deceptively complex.  It is real test of your skills as a photographer.  You need to be able to reproduce duplicate results on a consistent basis.  

 

It gets complicated because you need to touch the camera, to enter the camera menus.  Your light source is another, perhaps even more significant, complicating factor.  You will get best results in broad spectrum sunlight, not narrow spectrum artificial lighting.  Speaking of artificial lighting, did you enable flicker mode?

 

Taking one set of photos, and then making adjustments is a mistake.  You need to take a series of shots, perhaps a dozen for starters, and then average the results.  In fact, if your series of shots should show consistent lens performance, meaning the lens seems to always be off by minus five, for example, or in that ball park.  

 

If test shots suggest that the required compensation is all over the map, then you test technique may be flawed.  It is very easy to have flawed technique.  The AFMA adjustments that you are making alter lens performance in very small ways.  Touching the camera between shots can throw everything off, so having a pretty robust tripod and head is a MUST.

Remember, making AFMA adjustements are what test labs are for.  Canon can check your camera, if you ask them to do it.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."


@Waddizzle wrote:


Making AFMA adjustments is deceptively complex.  It is real test of your skills as a photographer.  You need to be able to reproduce duplicate results on a consistent basis.  

 
Remember, making AFMA adjustements are what test labs are for.  Canon can check your camera, if you ask them to do it.


Nonsense, AF Microadjustment is for exactly this issue when the PDAF and LiveView AF don't match.

 

In this thread you went as far as to tell another poster that stated he had successfully adjusted his lens to undo it. Ridiculous advice.

 

Roger Cicala from Lens Rentals has a great article entitled "This lens is soft" and other myths where he explains why AF microadjustment is needed. <link> Below is his addendum to that article.


Addendum I recently saw the greatest real life example of this ever, in an online forum where the poster states ’Canon’s New XX camera sucks’ (I’m eliminating names so the bots don’t pick this up and repeat it.) He goes on to say he had a body for several years, and a hand picked collection of lenses that he knew were perfect because he’d gone through several copies of each to get the sharpest one. Now he bought a new body and all his lenses sucked, and he’d now exchanged bodies twice and they still all sucked. So here is the perfect example of a person starting with a camera at the edge of tolerance, choosing through multiple selection a set of edge-of-tolerance lenses, and now generalizing that all the new bodies suck. The sad part is the new body has microfocus adjustment and he never even tried it. Just sent copy after copy back to the store.

 

edit: keep in mind your camera might be 'in spec' and your lenses 'in spec', but, still require AF microadjustment. In which case sending you camera in to Canon will do nothing, they'll inspect it and send it back saying it is 'in spec'. You can send your lenses and camera into Canon together to get them calibrated together, but, I believe that is beyond what would be covered by warranty, and you may have to pay to have that done. 


@TTMartin wrote:

@Waddizzle wrote:


Making AFMA adjustments is deceptively complex.  It is real test of your skills as a photographer.  You need to be able to reproduce duplicate results on a consistent basis.  

 
Remember, making AFMA adjustements are what test labs are for.  Canon can check your camera, if you ask them to do it.


Nonsense, AF Microadjustment is for exactly this issue when the PDAF and LiveView AF don't match.

 

In this thread you went as far as to tell another poster that stated he had successfully adjusted his lens to undo it. Ridiculous advice.

 

Roger Cicala from Lens Rentals has a great article entitled "This lens is soft" and other myths where he explains why AF microadjustment is needed. <link> Below is his addendum to that article.


Addendum I recently saw the greatest real life example of this ever, in an online forum where the poster states ’Canon’s New XX camera sucks’ (I’m eliminating names so the bots don’t pick this up and repeat it.) He goes on to say he had a body for several years, and a hand picked collection of lenses that he knew were perfect because he’d gone through several copies of each to get the sharpest one. Now he bought a new body and all his lenses sucked, and he’d now exchanged bodies twice and they still all sucked. So here is the perfect example of a person starting with a camera at the edge of tolerance, choosing through multiple selection a set of edge-of-tolerance lenses, and now generalizing that all the new bodies suck. The sad part is the new body has microfocus adjustment and he never even tried it. Just sent copy after copy back to the store.

 

edit: keep in mind your camera might be 'in spec' and your lenses 'in spec', but, still require AF microadjustment. In which case sending you camera in to Canon will do nothing, they'll inspect it and send it back saying it is 'in spec'. You can send your lenses and camera into Canon together to get them calibrated together, but, I believe that is beyond what would be covered by warranty, and you may have to pay to have that done. 


I have to agree with Tom. AFMA can be tedious, but it doesn't have to be difficult. All you need is a scene with objects at different distances and the ability to tell whether each of them is in focus or not. If the object on which the autofocus point is placed isn't the one that's most in focus, you change the AFMA setting until it is. The process goes faster if you take several pictures (using different AFMA values) at a time before going in and looking at them on a computer. That's pretty much all there is to it.

 

BTW. I've yet to encounter an "L" lens that needed significant adjustment on any of my camera bodies.

Bob
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA


@RobertTheFat wrote:

@TTMartin wrote:

@Waddizzle wrote:


Making AFMA adjustments is deceptively complex.  It is real test of your skills as a photographer.  You need to be able to reproduce duplicate results on a consistent basis.  

 
Remember, making AFMA adjustements are what test labs are for.  Canon can check your camera, if you ask them to do it.


Nonsense, AF Microadjustment is for exactly this issue when the PDAF and LiveView AF don't match.

 

In this thread you went as far as to tell another poster that stated he had successfully adjusted his lens to undo it. Ridiculous advice.

 

I have to agree with Tom. AFMA can be tedious, but it doesn't have to be difficult. 

 

BTW. I've yet to encounter an "L" lens that needed significant adjustment on any of my camera bodies.


My whole point was that it is a tedious process.  It is not a bang-bang procedure.

Tom, I stand by what i wrote.  The OP did not perform a successful AFMA.  The camera seems bad.

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."

KevinG1
Enthusiast
The only lens thats giving me a problem is my canon 50mm 1.4.i bought this the same time I bought my 80d. Its a good potrait lens, or good for shooting anything up close.

Im having a hard time shooting anything under f2.8 without having the whole image blurry. After searching, it seems that's pretty common with that lens.

So it seems that i waa having multiple issues, one lens, one 45pt AF.

I talked to someone on a different forum, and she said that all of her lenses needed MF adjustments when she got a 80d...even the kit lens.


@KevinG1 wrote:
The only lens thats giving me a problem is my canon 50mm 1.4.i bought this the same time I bought my 80d. Its a good potrait lens, or good for shooting anything up close.

Im having a hard time shooting anything under f2.8 without having the whole image blurry. After searching, it seems that's pretty common with that lens.

So it seems that i waa having multiple issues, one lens, one 45pt AF.

I talked to someone on a different forum, and she said that all of her lenses needed MF adjustments when she got a 80d...even the kit lens.

I have bought two 80D bodies from the refurbished store, and they were both fine, even with the kit lens.  

Be aware that consumer lenses do not have the ability to accurately repeat focus like a professional grade “L” lens.  

 

Despite crude comments to the contrary, this is why I stressed that you need to take numerous test shots, and take an average.  Making AFMA adjustments is not as straightforward and simple as it might first appear.  

--------------------------------------------------------
"The right mouse button is your friend."
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