I am wondering does anybody have a link or pictures of the same subject that are soft and sharp so I can see the difference.
EDIT: None of the above photos show what you ask....
Thanks for you posts, I will try to clear things up.
My next question what could be done to make the picture sharp all over? I understand this needs to happen at the time the photo is taken. I also understand that the lenses has limits, but with a good lens, what makes it take a sharper image, does the aperture need to closed a few stops down?
IMHO
IMHO this thread is moving WAY off track in the wrong direction. This isn't (or shouldn't be) about expensive glass.
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The bottom shot, the one with the "crappy gear", suffers from a number of (intentional) technical flaws.
Only Canon's higher-end cameras have that, it was even dropped from the new 60D so if you need/want it you're looking at a xD. (Or a used 50D.)Just a quick note on how to 'fix' soft lenses, I'm pretty sure all the new cameras offer what's called 'Lens Microadjustment'. This is something everyone needs to take a look at with each lens they own.
Only Canon's higher-end cameras have that, it was even dropped from the new 60D so if you need/want it you're looking at a xD. (Or a used 50D.)
Just a quick note on how to 'fix' soft lenses, I'm pretty sure all the new cameras offer what's called 'Lens Microadjustment'. This is something everyone needs to take a look at with each lens they own.
My 50 1.4 was terribly soft wide open (a problem fast primes are prone to having). When I had the 1.8 I didn't mind shooting wide open, but with this 1.4 I refused to because nothing was sharp.
Then one day while waiting in my car I was shooting my gauges and noticed a lot of fringing on the photos at the stark white/black lines on my speedometer. So I played with the microadjusting and watched the fringe go from green to purple and all places in between. When I got home I made a very contrasty image at the perfect iPhone retina settings and then focused my 50 1.4 on my phone screen and took photos, adjusting the microadjust setting up individual ticks until I found that at +10 my 50 1.4 on my 5D Mark II was about as sharp as I could hope for wide open.
I then tested it at various apertures and found f8 was the sharpest with the least amount of diffraction. YMMV.
SO, I hope that made sense. But give it a try on your camera.
There is no substitute for fine lenses. There you will find the holy grail of sharpness and image quality impossible to reproduce with any other aspect of your gear without that fine glass.
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In my opinion, it doesn't make any sense to pay a fortune for fast aperture lenses only to have to stop them down to get sharp results..
Just a quick note on how to 'fix' soft lenses, I'm pretty sure all the new cameras offer what's called 'Lens Microadjustment'. This is something everyone needs to take a look at with each lens they own.
My 50 1.4 was terribly soft wide open (a problem fast primes are prone to having). When I had the 1.8 I didn't mind shooting wide open, but with this 1.4 I refused to because nothing was sharp.
Then one day while waiting in my car I was shooting my gauges and noticed a lot of fringing on the photos at the stark white/black lines on my speedometer. So I played with the microadjusting and watched the fringe go from green to purple and all places in between. When I got home I made a very contrasty image at the perfect iPhone retina settings and then focused my 50 1.4 on my phone screen and took photos, adjusting the microadjust setting up individual ticks until I found that at +10 my 50 1.4 on my 5D Mark II was about as sharp as I could hope for wide open.
I then tested it at various apertures and found f8 was the sharpest with the least amount of diffraction. YMMV.
SO, I hope that made sense. But give it a try on your camera.