BetterPhoto Q&A
Category: New Answers

Kristi Eckberg

Canon digital rebel focusing problems

I'am having problems with my digital rebel taking sharp pictures. I snaped some at a friends wedding (I was not the photographer hired) but alot of them came out a bit blurry. I'am keeping an eye on the focusing points which alot of times don't seem to want to focus on the subject. But I'am switching the focus points to where I want them and the focus confirmation circle in the viewfinder is not blinking which indicates in focus. Never had that problem with my film camera. Anyhow I remember reading about others having the same problem but cannot find the post. I believe someone even sent theirs back to canon. I used a tripod on some of the shots and they still came out blurry. Shutter speed was equiv. to the lens I was using so I don't understand what's going on. I need to be able to take candid shots without worrying but now I'am not sure I feel confident in this camera. I don't believe it's me that is the problem as I have been using canon SLR's for awhile now. Any advice or anyone else experiencing this problem with your digital rebel?????

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July 08, 2005

Christopher A. Vedros

Have you had the same problem with more than one lens? At least that would help to confirm if it is a lens problem or a camera problem.

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July 08, 2005

Kristi Eckberg

I'll try to pay more attention to each lens but I think it's more with the one that came with the camera. the 18-55mm. The fact that I also got blurry ones when it was on the tripod worries me as well. I will have to search for the discussion I saw awhile ago about people having the same problems with that camera.
I have also been getting an "error 02" message witch has to do with the cf card according to the manual but why would there be a problem with a new card and fairly new camera already?

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July 08, 2005

Joe Jarosz

Hi Kristi,
a few things. When you say blurry, do you mean out of focus, or just soft focus. Can you post a few picture examples? What is the sharpness set for in the camera settings? Its possible to bump that up a little to sharpen up the image some, but the rebel does tend to put out a softer image which can be cleaned up in photoshop nicely using the unsharp mask. You can even go to Canon's web page and go the the Rebel page, support, and go through the image sharpness problem and it will walk you through a few things. Its possible its the lens as well, if thats the $100 lens that comes with the base rebel, its an ok lens, but not the best quality. If you have another lens of higher quality, it would be a good comparison.

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July 09, 2005

Kristi Eckberg

They are just not sharp. Either way I'am not happy with some of the results I got. When I view them on the LCD screen and zoom in they are not sharp. Also when I view them in PS at actual pixels they are blurry. So if someone wanted one enlarged it would not look good. I've tried unsharp mask on some and they are to blurry to correct. I've did a couple shoots last week of babies and those turned out beautiful and very sharp. I'am shooting in jpg large fine setting. Ok I took a break and looked at my camera and which settings I used on the shots. I see alot of my shutter speeds are pretty close to my focal length. Not lower but close to. Are digitals a little more touchy when it comes to camera shake? WIth my film camera I have shot with a shutter speed under my focal length and no camera shake.
Let me know if this is a digital thing! Thanks again everyone for all your help.

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July 09, 2005

Barbara Handy

hi kristi,

i'm having exactly the same problem with my digital rebel. I love the picture quality of the photos that do come out, but a lot of the time the camera is useless for snapshots (which is what I mainly use it for) . I got rid of the multi-point focussing (just using the 1 pont in the center), I always make sure the focus indicator is solid, but sometimes i'm lucky if I have one perfectly focused shot per batch. I have read that for other people who got digital slrs (not necessarily the canon) the percentage of focused shots goes down, but for me the extent of this is ridiculous considering the camera cost $1000 when I bought it. I shoot jpegs in large/fine as well.

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July 17, 2005

Joe Jarosz

Can one of you post an example picture? I had the rebel, then moved to the 20D. While the rebel sometimes put out soft pictures, if you don't want to play with that in photoshop, you can change the in camera sharpness. But really the pictures were not out of focus unless I used the wrong focus point for example. Can you also tell us what your exposure settings are?

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July 17, 2005

Sharon Barberee

I Too have the Rebel with the same problem. I am going to attempt to post a photo I took this weekend. Hopefully it will work, last time I tried it did not.