Another image from the Archives. Taken in Kilorglin, Kerry a few years ago. Eos 5D, Straight out of the Camera.

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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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More to come later as I go through them!

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