Are the Canon 5D Focus Problems Real?
Posted on 23. Dec, 2009 by Thomas in Articles, Blog, Gear, Photography
I was going through my web statistics yesterday and I came across a very interesting query someone had entered into Google. The search request was “Are the Canon 5D focus problems real?” This is one of those subjects that causes much controversy on web forums. On the one hand both the 5D and especially the 5D Mark II (which I’ll just refer to as the 5D from now on) have some very strong and ardent fans. Any talk of problems with this camera are quickly derided as “you’re a crap photographer and you don’t know what you’re doing”. On the other hand some very experienced Photographers do stand up and point out that the 5D does have some major issues and focus is a big one of those. The problem is the signal to noise ratio around the debate on this is very low and it’s often very hard to discern facts from fanboyism. I have owned the 5D Mark II for some months now and its predecessor for several years, so to answer the question: “does it have focus problems?”
Unfortunately, yes it does.
In my opinion there are three major issues regarding autofocus on the 5D. The first is actually getting your shots in focus. Now a lot of the time it works fine depending on the subject. However there are plenty of situations where the camera will either tell you the shot is in focus and it won’t be or it simply won’t lock. These are often not particularly tricky scenes or low contrast situations. For example, I tried to focus on the berries in the centre of frame in this tree shot below. There is a clearly high contrast area and the surrounding branches are well out of the way of the focus point and yet the camera decided it would focus on the branch instead. My nikon D90 on the other hand has no problem with a scene like this and will get it right every time.
Now, fans of the 5D will argue that this is a terrible photograph (I’m only using it to illustrate a point) and no good photographer would ever take a photograph like that and that I just don’t know what I’m doing. But you know what, it’s not rocket science. You put the focus point over the area you want in focus and press the focus button (or the shutter release half way). There’s not really a lot of things you can do wrong. Not every photograph everyone takes at every time is a work of art either, but that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be in focus. Of course this is just one example. There are plenty of times when I’ve tried to focus on someone’s eye and the camera has focussed on their cheek instead despite the lock clearly being on their eye.
Then again there are times when it focuses perfectly. It’s the inconsistency that is a big part of the problem.
The second big issue is the layout of the focus points. The autofocus module is essentially the same as the Canon 20D from many years ago, which was designed for cropped sensor cameras. As such the focus points are all clustered in the centre of the larger full frame view finder.
This pretty much negates focussing on anything outside the middle of the frame without recomposing. Of course, again the fans will tell you that the centre point is all you really need, but this is bull. If you’re an experienced Photographer you know the merits of using all your focus points properly. Unfortunately the layout on the 5d is far from optimal.
The third big issue is that different people have different definitions of what is sharp. Some people will argue that almost sharp is good enough. These same people will complain about “pixel peeping”, where you look at your images at 100% on a computer monitor, because that doesn’t reflect how most people will view the image. Of course many shots will look sharp zoomed out because most software sharpens to compensate for the antialiasing, so you can’t tell if an image is truly sharp unless you zoom in. any pro worth their salt will check image sharpness at 100%. If you want to get tack sharp images on the 5D reasonably reliably you really need to stop down a few stops. If you want to shoot at maximum aperture (f2.8 etc) then you will be better off manually focussing for consistency sake.
I’m not the only one who thinks this either. There have been some high profile Photographers who have defected from Canon precisely because of this problem. Most recently wedding photographer Chenin Boutwell announced that she was switching to Nikon because, as she puts it:
“Let me preface this next part by saying that I am a hard-core stickler for sharp images; “A little soft,” or “a little back-focused” is not ok by me. It’s tack sharp or it get’s the hose. So, as you can imagine, the 5d became quite a handicap for me. But, nonetheless, I figured out that if I only shot on One Shot and kept my aperture up, I could make in-focus photos.
Despite my near-constant frustration with Canon, I held out for the mythical 5d Mark II – a camera that promised even better ISO, an even bigger sensor, an even fancier LCD and (you guessed it), the same crappy focusing system. At that point, Canon had me by the you-know-whats (I don’t actually have you-know-whats… it’s a euphemism, silly) – I had *thousands* invested in lenses (see below). So I shot my 5d Mark II for the entire 2009 wedding season…. on One-Shot…. using a high aperture… constantly cussing under my breath.”
This pretty much mirrors my experience with the 5Ds (both of them).
Here’s a link to what renowned conference photographer James Duncan Davidson said about the 5D’s autofocus last year when it came out (He himself having moved to Nikon at least partially due to focus issues with the Eos 1DS)
This isn’t meant to be an anti-canon post. You can get great images from the 5D if you’re willing to work around its limitations. I’m not trying to say the 5D2 can’t produce sharp images, because it can. It all depends on how you use it. Having said that, despite what some enthusiasts would like you to believe, the Camera does have limitations (and unfortunately autofocus isn’t the only one, but more on that another time). If you are considering buying this camera I strongly recommend that you try it, or even rent it before you buy it, as it may not be for you. Don’t let the promise of 21 megapixels woo you because that won’t really matter much if your images aren’t sharp. If you take landscape shots primarily and generally manual focus then the focussing won’t be a problem and this may well be the camera for you, but if you need a reliable autofocus system then I strongly suggest you look elsewhere.
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I too have been pulling my hair out with this problem! Thank God I have found your blog because sometimes I think I am going crazy!
I own 2 5d’s and all the L series lenses and both bodies have this problem. Post production of my jobs end up taking me hours as I zoom into each image making sure it is in focus as I’d hate to hand over a bunch of out of focus shots… hours and hours of wasted time! I even had my eyes tested and all my lenses calibrated with bodies and still no joy! I now photograph with a tripod most of the time on F8 which is not my style….I just can’t stand the hit and miss photography I am producing… everything else is perfect – models, lighting and composition…and all I want are the eyes in focus or what ever I’m actually focussing on… is that really too much to ask?!
I completely agree. It’s a pain in the Ass. The scary thing is that some people (mostly amateurs) are such fans of this camera that they will set upon anyone who dares point out that it’s not perfect. And people are coming up with some crazy reasoning to justify things too. I rad the craziest thing the other day though that I nearly fell off my seat. It was on a well known 5D fan site. A person was arguing against those complaining about lack of sharpness from the 5D2 and stated that your Images are supposed to look a little fuzzy at 100%. It’s shocking, because there are people coming into photography now who are reading things like that and they’re being thought to accept soft Images as the norm, all just because some vocal fans can’t accept that the 5D is not perfect in every way.
God that’s a terrible shame!
So what can I do now… do I have to invest in Nikon gear and sell some poor bastard my gear?! I have to make some sort of decision this year as this cannot go on! I’ll go insane and also doubting my ability for so long isn’t healthy. Are you still using your 5DII? Do you have plans of ditching it?
I don’t really have an answer right now. I still use the 5D II occasionally, but I mostly use it for video. I fond that my D90 ironically gives me much more reliable results. My biggest issue with the 5DII though isn’t focus though, it’s the banding and noise in blacks, especially at low iso. As I do a lot of landscapes and urban stuff I often shoot high contrast situations and bring the extremes back into range by processing the RAW file. IUt’s not a particularly uncommon thing to do. However, you can’t recover anything from the blacks on the 5DII because it’s just noise and banding. It’s even visible without any pushing some times. As I don’t shoot people much I can get away with manually focussing, but the blacks issue is a show stopper for me. I’m working on a post that goes into this in more detail.
As for the future, I’m torn. On the one hand I don’t want to sell all my canon gear because it’s a hefty investment. I’m kind of hoping they’ll come out with something better sooner rather than later although I’m not that optimistic. I have been following the rumors that Nikon are slated to replace the D700 this year so depending on how that turns out I might consider a whole sale switch.
Seriously tempting! I’ll be watch your blog for any updates! Cheers for the chat and advise… thank you for making me realise I’m not going crazy!
This problem has been a nightmare for me. I took what was a big leap for me, investing in the 5D to start a business with the expectation that it would be a great camera and do all I needed it to do. For awhile it was spectacular… and then the auto focus problems started. I had it in the Canon Service Center in October ’09, again in January, and it needs to go again already. Completely undependable at this point. Almost in focus doesn’t begin to cut it.
I am using a 1DmkIII currently and I have experienced AF issues on all the models and most L lenses for last 9 years (of using digital). Exceptions were my 28-80f2.8-4.0 and 80-200f2.8 (1st generation L lenses that are more than 12 years old). My conclusion is that it is mostly quality control and tolerance is too low for big aperture shooting.
My only consistent solution is to send in ALL the equipment for calibrating regularly : P
Works well for me in general as I shoot the 135mm at f2.0 very often. But not perfect . Use the Ec-S or Ec-B focusing screens for manual focussing.
Nikon is quite a bit better but I find their AF mechanisms less robust than Canon AF. Decentering occurs fairly frequently. Decentering fortunately is not obvious for a lot of subjects (corners unsharp).
A recent shoot needed critical depth of sharpness, it was live view all the way….. it worked great but sigh! I feel more like a mechanic than a photographer.
When I need to shoot fast and at large apertures I use Leica’s M8 rangefinder but it has a broad range of limitations. Within those limits its a joy to use.
Phew, I’m glad I’m not the only one who has experienced this issue. I started having autofocus problems a little while back with my 5D and it’s a real pain in the ass. At first I thought it was some other issue like shutter speed or the lens but no matter what I do to compensate the problems kept on reoccurring. Sucks to hear that the issue is the camera itself and that getting a 5D Mark II won’t solve it. Yet another reason to switch over to Nikon…
I suppose the only good news is that this issue isn’t due to us being incompetent, not that our clients would give a crap.
I am so glad i found this blog. I have been fighting this problem with my portraits for a couple months now. i know i had the focus dead on the kids eyes, and the lips are in focus? I kept thinking i was doing something wrong, but i keep testing it and it sucks!! I have the 5D, i do this for my business, i always take 5 shots of one image in case this happens, but man it makes me mad.
Does the Mark Models (besides the 5d mark) have this problem? I need to upgrade and after reading all this i am torn
thanks for the info by the way!