Focus Issues on Canon 5d

[THaNaToZ]

I upgraded to full-frame last month and have been having some wonky focus issues with my new camera.
the pics I've attached were all taken with the 24-70L.

The indoor pic was f4 with the L facial tracking option but as you can see, it gets more blurry to the left as only the person closest to the camera is sharp.

The two outdoor ones, the close up was f4 and the other was f11. I used the other standard focusing method on this and still ran into similar issues. The two girls, the farthest is not as sharp. And with the 3 boys, I would think f11 they would be in focus.

I didn't have any sorts of these issues with my 70d crop sensor with any lens either kit or sigma 17-55

**UPDATED per Dan***
pic of 4: indoor, shot in manual, L+tracking AF method, f4, 1/100, iso 100, 50mm, bounce flash
pic of 2: FlexizoneAF, shot in AP, f4, 1/320, iso 100, 70mm
pic of 3: FlexizoneAF, shot in AP, f11, 1/50, iso 100, 70mm

I cropped all of these to just focus on my question of the lack of clarity on the further faces.

[DanK]

Ankit,

To get good answers, it would be helpful if you would add focal length and distance to the subjects, and larger photos.It would be just guessing without that information/

The one thing I can tell you is that format is only relevant in one way: depth of field is a little narrower on a full frame camera.

Dan

[THaNaToZ]

Ankit,

To get good answers, it would be helpful if you would add focal length and distance to the subjects, and larger photos.It would be just guessing without that information/

The one thing I can tell you is that format is only relevant in one way: depth of field is a little narrower on a full frame camera.

Dan

original post updated. thanks

[Manfred M]

Ankit - these all seem to have depth of field (DoF) issues. You lose about 1 stop of DoF on a full-frame camera versus a crop frame camera. An aperture of f/4 is quite shallow, so no surprises here with some of the subjects being out of focus; it would be roughly the same as shooting f/2,8 on a 1.5x crop factor camera.

In the third image, the distance between the three people in the shot looks quite significant, so again, likely a depth of field issue. You might want to look at a hyperfocal distance chart to see how deep the depth of field for the focal length is.

http://www.dofmaster.com/ is one I have used in the past.

In general for these types of images, I will use a spot focus point using a technique known as "focus and recompose" for portraiture, where I focus on the eye closest to the camera, hold the shutter release half way down and then frame the shot. I find that the fancy automated focus modes miss focus more often than not.

[DanK]

I agree with Manfred.

My 5D doesn't have some of the settings you mention (flexizone, L+tracking, AP mode), so I can't comment on those. However, I always shoot photos like this using a single focus point and single-shot focus. I want to choose where the camera focuses, rather than rolling the dice and seeing later what the camera's computer code has guessed. Now that I have a camera with lots of focus points, I less often focus and recompose because I can easily move the AF point where I want it in shots of one person. However, with multiple people who are different distances from the sensor, it's more complex. Then you have to (1) decide whether you want everyone fully in focus, (2) if so, choose an aperture small enough to give you enough DOF, and (3) Pick a focus point that will get everyone in that range, often 1/3 to half of the way between the nearest and farthest, then recompose.

[THaNaToZ]

I should have typed Av. I meant Aperture priority.

Using the calculator, it makes a little bit more sense since I was using the long end of the lens instead of the wider end.
However, for the two close shots, especially the one of 4 people, I'm not sure why that's off.
I might have been fractionally off to the right but that shouldn't have reduced the sharpness on the left.

I'm also not getting the focus boxes using the maximum focus points. If I had group pics with my 70d, it would mostly be able to pick up the faces or objects and create the boxes. I don't seem to get that with this camera. I end up with one or two at the closest object.