Canon 20d disapointed/ now I am lost!!!

[Paradisecreations]

I have shot sports photograhpy with my minolta max5d for years and have always had excellent results no complaints, but I also sew and sell clothing apperal and with film I always had a hard time getting good color reproduction, but always sharp pictures. I choose to go digital for the color, it was needed. I decided to go with Canon (brand name) 20d although I had no lenses and bought the sigma 28-70m f2.8 and a Canon 50m f/1.4 expecting to get awesome pictures. Welll I have yet to see them, always soft pictures, focusing issues big time and tired of working my butt off to get maybe 10 good pictures out of 60. I have used it a couple of times for the outdoor sports and have gotten some pretty darn good pics, but its not what I bought it for. I am ready to sell the 20d and now totally lost as to what to buy. I have a ton of minolta lenses and considered buying the minolta 5d or the new sony A100, but afraid I will once again be wasting my money. Does anyone have any suggestions, I know lightening is everything when it comes to product photograhpy and believe me I several pieces of equipment. I just want good sharp/realistic pictures, I love shooting in raw so that I can adj. the color if needed and using the dslr. So any honest advice will be greatly appreciated!

[ktixx]

There is a possibility that you have a bad camera, but most likely (Sorry to say), it may just be the photographer. Myself and thousands of other photographers have had excellent results with the 20d. It has been and still is one of the world’s most popular and best received mid-level digital SLR cameras. If you were having poor results with a lesser name, or a lesser camera it would be understandable, but you are talking about one of the most popular SLR's out. I find it hard to believe that you will get the results you want with any camera...
I mean just look at Jeff's reviews - the 20d is one of his favorites and he has seen hundreds of camera's:
"Trying to find fault with the EOS-20D is a difficult task"
"I'll be blunt: the Canon EOS-20D is the best reasonably priced digital SLR that I've tested. And by reasonably priced I meant under $2000. There's so much to like about the 20D, I don't know where to start. Photo quality is excellent, with photos having an ultra smooth look to them. Color and exposure were both accurate. Personally I'd crank the sharpness up another notch, but that's just me. Noise levels are very low, even at ISO 1600 -- try that with your fixed-lens camera!"
This really isn't meant to be mean, but someone please tell me if they disagree...
Ken

[Paradisecreations]

HI, No offense Thats is why I choose the 20d because of everything you said and because all of the excellent reviews. The problem that I am having is that I can have all the focus lights lit and have half of the picture in focus and the other half not? I have framed the outfit, shot it from a distance and no matter what I have can not get it to focus on the entire subject, I really have to watch what it focuses on and sometimes the spot where it shows that it is suppose to be focused, it is not. I have used all the focus points randomly to check the problem. I have even stopped down, moved out away from the subject, used depth of field and focused on the furthest point and I still have the same problem of half being infocus the other not and the pictures are just not sharp, always soft

Oh and by the way I do know how to take picture I am not totally novice. http://www.paradisecrea.com/GOKARTING.html



this is the quality of picture that I need to have, its so realistic and pictures sell
http://i23.ebayimg.com/03/i/07/db/ae/a9_12.JPG

instead this is what I get the left shoulder/arm, bottom is not in focus,soft, slight blur, center isnt even sharp! this was shot from 7 feet away using a tripod at f/8 / 1/125 sec.( i think on this one) with the sigma lense I cropped the picture.
http://paradisecrea.com/images/SAND10.jpg

This one is not even sharp and really falls off on the sides it to is a cropped picture.
http://www.paradisecrea.com/images/mint16.jpg

Like I said I take anywhere from 50-60pictures to get maybe 10-15 descent ones.

[timmciglobal]

The sigma just isn't that sharp? What kind of crop is this? Does this have unsharp mask? A 100% sample would be far more helpfull. If the focus is in upper left arm then the bottom right looks shifted back maybe a few inches, you might be outside DOF since the AF system can stop "anywhere" within 1 dof (IE: either at the begning or end or middle of the dof, if your dof is 12 inches your lens can stop at 1" inside focus or 6" inside focus area of 12" inside focus area)

Try the 501.4 @ F8 and see if it does this.

Tim

[cdifoto]

A quick play in Photoshop, keeping in mind I don't have the original files, or even know what the actual garments look like in real life.

If you tweak your saturation, vibrance, contrast, sharpness, etc you'll get better results. This is due to have a dSLR that, by nature, backs off of these levels to give you more control.

[cdifoto]

The other one.

[cdifoto]

As far as the light falloff, that's just uneven lighting. Easily corrected with the addition of some strobes/ubrellas or simply more careful placement of whatever you already have.

Your Sigma may be having focusing issues. It's typical with Canon bodies. Use your 50mm f/1.4 stopped down. You might be happier with the results...HOWEVER you will still need to sharpen the pics and mess with the settings I described above to get optimal results. 'Tis the nature of the dSLR.

Nice Karting pics btw. Love the closeup. Nice attire too. I'm not into horses but I had an ex gf whose family was huge into it. I got suckered into a lot of stall mucking. Oye. :)

[Paradisecreations]

Thanks, so much! I do have photoshop Elements and you did a great job with the second picture!!

I was told the sigma is not the greatest lense, but I need something smaller than the 50mm and the canon lenses are so expensive and I have many pro minolta lenses. The room I shoot in is only a 8x8 room, lots of windows for natural light, but the whole room is paneled, so its still so dark in there. I do use the daylight bulbs (2x 100w maybe not enough lighting) and I only cropped about 25% of the picture off in photoshop, I never use the camera to do this, because then it only focuses in the center of the garment and the edges will really drop off the focus. I always shoot these garments from about 5-7 feet away.

Should I up the sharpness on the camera? I havent used the unsharp mask in photoshop very much, maybe I should use that more?

I did have a little sony mavica that really gave me awesome pictures and never had this problem with getting everything in focus, but again it could never get the colors right and I didnt think a dslr was going to be this much work, LOL!!

Thanks for compliments on the go karting pics, its what my husband and son do and I got roped in to doing the pics about 7 years ago and still doing it and I really enjoy it!

My thing was showing horses, I made custom outfits to pay my bills, dont have any horses now, but still doing the clothes as a business now.

I will work with the photoshop, which I havent mastered yet, so many things to learn with it.
Appreciate the help very much!
Terri

[cdifoto]

Thanks, so much! I do have photoshop Elements and you did a great job with the second picture!!

I was told the sigma is not the greatest lense, but I need something smaller than the 50mm and the canon lenses are so expensive and I have many pro minolta lenses. The room I shoot in is only a 8x8 room, lots of windows for natural light, but the whole room is paneled, so its still so dark in there. I do use the daylight bulbs (2x 100w maybe not enough lighting) and I only cropped about 25% of the picture off in photoshop, I never use the camera to do this, because then it only focuses in the center of the garment and the edges will really drop off the focus. I always shoot these garments from about 5-7 feet away.

Should I up the sharpness on the camera? I havent used the unsharp mask in photoshop very much, maybe I should use that more?

I did have a little sony mavica that really gave me awesome pictures and never had this problem with getting everything in focus, but again it could never get the colors right and I didnt think a dslr was going to be this much work, LOL!!

Thanks for compliments on the go karting pics, its what my husband and son do and I got roped in to doing the pics about 7 years ago and still doing it and I really enjoy it!

My thing was showing horses, I made custom outfits to pay my bills, dont have any horses now, but still doing the clothes as a business now.

I will work with the photoshop, which I havent mastered yet, so many things to learn with it.
Appreciate the help very much!
Terri


Sharpening in Photoshop is a lot nicer than sharpening in camera. And it should be your very last step, AFTER resizing down for the web. Downsizing always reduces sharpness so not only is it already conservatively done in camera, even more is lost when you reduce them in size for web use.

Basically all I did with these is Unsharp Mask 20/50/0 to remove the "haze", then play with the brightness and contrast a little. If you shoot in RAW you can do a lot of the tweaking before you convert to JPEG, usually with better results, and then use Photoshop for just final sharpening. The last thing I did was sharpen 100/.3/0 which is the type of sharpening you're familiar with, to reduce softness.

dSLRs are a lot more work but they can produce much better results in most cases.


What you can do about your paneled walls to help lighten the room up is get a bunch of 20x30 inch white foamcores from Wal-Mart for around a buck and a half each, and line your room with them to bounce some of that window light back onto your garments. You could also put some crinkled aluminum foil on 'em to reflect even more light. Careful positioning of just 2 or 3 could work wonders. You might have 10 bucks wrapped up in it all, depending how many you make/use but it'd be worth it.

[Paradisecreations]

Thank Youuuuu! I will take you up on your suggestions and appreciate the note on working with sharpness. Photoshop is such and extensive program and a person can get lost in it, but its an amazing one and does work miracles! Simple is how I like things, because I am always on short of time.

You taking the time to assist me is great, I have been to other photo forums in the past and its hard to get someone to explain things or really help where it is needed, big applauds for you!!!
Have a great weekend and I will run off to Wally World!
Ter

[BonjiB]

It looks like you just need a little more practice with your post processing. Here is a website i stumbled upon with articles on it that i have found improved my photography GREATLY. Especially read the ones about sharpening and raw format. I too have a 20d and my initial impression when i first got it was that it was soft (even with lenses i knew were sharp) but after i mastered (at least to the extent that i have) my raw workflow i found it definately wasn't the camera but how i was processing the images. Once you get a flow that you like when working with raw it really doesn't take more than a minute or two per picture to get really oustanding results. The nature of a raw file is that the camera has done NOTHING with the data from the sensor. It's all up to you in post procesing which is why so many of us love raw because everything is a choice to be made by the editor rather than the camera. The digital sensor doesn't render edges like the human eye sees edges and almost all photographs require some level of sharpening in post even if it's something as simple as unsharp mask (usm.) These articles not only explains each procedure but why and how each procedure enhances the photos.

http://ronbigelow.com/articles/articles.htm

Hope these help you as much as they have me.