Question for the 80D owners

wsmith96

Advancing Amateur
Aug 17, 2012
961
53
Texas
Normally I’m the odd duck with hardware, but I find that I like the image quality of my 60D better than that of my 80D. I use both to shoot high school volleyball and football and I’m finding that the 80d image quality looks mushy at 3200 iso compared to my 60D. I’m not home right now, but will post some volleyball examples when I get home. I’m using the 35 f/2 or the 85f/1.8 for most shots, but also use the 70-200.

Anyone else out there not liking the photo results of the 80D, or is it just me.
-W
 

Joules

doom
CR Pro
Jul 16, 2017
1,801
2,247
Hamburg, Germany
I have the 80D and 600D, which uses the same sensor as the 60D. So I would be able to make a comparison. But I don't use ISO beyond 1600 except for Astro Photography (Where I like the 80D images a lot more).

What kind of quality are we even talking about, in camera JPEG? SoC RAWs? Edited RAWs? What adjustments are applied? Without such details, comments can only be vague.

For example, so far I prefered the 80D images against my 600D ones every time.
 
Upvote 0

Don Haines

Beware of cats with laser eyes!
Jun 4, 2012
8,246
1,939
Canada
It could also be that t he lens youre using is not focussing 100% accurately.
Does the 80D have MAFA (auto focus adjustment)? If so, it would be worth spending a few minutes to check on it.

A lens can focus perfectly on one camera and not another.

If your camera is set to English, look for AFMA in the menus....

There are several methods to do AFMA, the “dot-tune” method is popular, and the gold standard is Reiken Focal
 
Upvote 0
May 4, 2011
1,175
251
An additional aspect that I don’t hear many talk about is that it has been my observation that the newest generation of Canon cameras, at least in RAW mode/DPP, seem to apply a greater amount of noise reduction at the default setting than older cameras. This may be a possible contributor to that “mushy” effect you’re seeing with 80D files vs. the older 60D images. I noticed this going from the 5D3 to the 5D4 and wondering why images with the latter were, although cleaner, considerably less detailed. I find I often have to turn NR down at least a point or so with 5D4 images to get acceptable detail, which I never had to do with the 5D3.

Check and compare the NR settings between your cameras just to make sure. Otherwise, it could also be an AF error as other posters have pointed out, etc.

Also, I theorize (cannot verify) that the low-pass filter effect has been strengthened somewhat in the newer models, leading to slightly less detailed images in certain scenarios compared with some older models...
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0