Canon 17-55 loss of sharpness

[Zora]

Before I arrange to send this lens back to Canon for calibration I'm curious as to whether my expectations are perhaps unrealistic.

I've attached a photo I took at the Chinese New Years parade as an example of all the photos I took that day with this lens. They all seem very soft to me.

This pic was taken at f/4.5, 1/800 and the iso was 500 (pretty cloudy day)

I've packed this (very heavy!) lens around all over Central America this past year so it's seen some action for sure.

Any thoughts etc would be greatly appreciated. I don't really want to attempt a micro asjustment on the camera (Canon 50D).

Roz

[dan marchant]

Not seeing any images.

[Zora]

I'll try this again. Sorry the copy annd paste doesn't seem to be picking up....

[Scott Stephen]

Do I understand this correctly? You have had the camera for a year and it used to work better for you? Was it just recent shots that seem sub-par, or have you always struggled with the image quality?

Was this shot with the single center AF point, and was it definitely on the girl's head and not on one of the flowers?

Also, her head is inside that big mass of pink flowers, so the contrast is not maybe as huge as it could be for the AF and for the image itself. Also, 50D is a bit older, and thus won't handle ISO noise as well as a newer camera would. I really think my T3i has noticably lost detail and resolution even at just ISO 400. Perhaps if you had set a little lower shutter speed the ISO would have been low enough to make a difference?

[GrahamS]

I don't see anything wrong with the sharpness if the focus was on the little girl, but the image could do with a lot more unsharp mask sharpening for posting on the web.

[Geoff F]

The foreground of this image seems quite reasonable to me considering the potential problems with shooting conditions.

The background is soft, as one would expect from that aperture setting.

It is difficult to judge any lens focus issues from actual photos taken under difficult conditions. And even worse when looking at uploaded photos which have had some editing.

I like to shoot on a tripod, with cable release, at some controlled subjects. A piece of printed material which contains both text and pictures can work well; but make sure you are perfectly square with the subject material.

This article and test card may be helpful http://photographylife.com/how-to-qu...tofocus-issues

Incidentally, I had some different focus issues today. Looking through my viewfinder, I was unable to obtain sharp focus with both auto and manual focusing. Eventually, after an embarrassing long time, I realised that the viewfinder eyesight adjustment had become accidentally moved.

So everything was sharp, except to my eyesight!