Is this actually what I should expect from my Canon 70-200/2.8 IS II?

[xps]

My, in summer 2014 bought 70-200 II had an similar issue. Using the AF ended in unsharp pictures. Even when I used live view the picture got just minimal sharper. Sending the lens 3 times to Canon CPS (and writing an "sharp" letter, that the IQ is not acceptable as it is worser than on my old 70-200L2.8, they exchanged something inside the lens, not only adjusting it).
Now it is worth the money I bought and it is visibly better than my old lens....

 

[Mitch.Conner]

My, in summer 2014 bought 70-200 II had an similar issue. Using the AF ended in unsharp pictures. Even when I used live view the picture got just minimal sharper. Sending the lens 3 times to Canon CPS (and writing an "sharp" letter, that the IQ is not acceptable as it is worser than on my old 70-200L2.8, they exchanged something inside the lens, not only adjusting it).
Now it is worth the money I bought and it is visibly better than my old lens....

Interesting. You had to send it in 3 times. I was thinking that I'd be one of the only people to ever have to do something like that which was why I've been hoping that maybe I'm wrong and the lens is fine.

 

[Mitch.Conner]

Here is the wall again (it's technically a decorative bevel between the ceiling and the regular wall) - not the best example, especially with the lighting being not consistent over the entire image, but it does show the dropoff in IQ as you move away from the center towards the corners.

This post will be 70mm, and the next 2 will be at 102mm and 145mm (which were where the markings on the lens said 102 and 135 - not sure if that's a problem or not - the marking for 135 being off by 10mm).

I just took these.

70mm @ f/2.8

 

[Mitch.Conner]

102mm @ f/2.8

 

[Mitch.Conner]

145mm (the 135mm mark) @ f/2.8

 

[Mitch.Conner]

I'll try to look for the chart photos of 70mm, 100mm, and 135mm, after I get some sleep.

 

[xps]

My, in summer 2014 bought 70-200 II had an similar issue. Using the AF ended in unsharp pictures. Even when I used live view the picture got just minimal sharper. Sending the lens 3 times to Canon CPS (and writing an "sharp" letter, that the IQ is not acceptable as it is worser than on my old 70-200L2.8, they exchanged something inside the lens, not only adjusting it).
Now it is worth the money I bought and it is visibly better than my old lens....

Interesting. You had to send it in 3 times. I was thinking that I'd be one of the only people to ever have to do something like that which was why I've been hoping that maybe I'm wrong and the lens is fine.

My personal opinion: Here in Germany, different companies are offering service for Canon. It ist sometimes varying, how you get satisfied by the company, your lens has been sent to.
The third time I sent it to another company, 500 miles away to Berlin /tipp from marsu) and there they exchanged the not satisfying part inside the lens.
But there they told me, that there is still (varying on the L model) an sometimes big bandwith of quality. And that an customer can not be sure that the lens is on the same quality as the lenses magazines get for testing. Because they are presorted and optimized so that the test gets an good score....

 

[Marsu42]

And that an customer can not be sure that the lens is on the same quality as the lenses magazines get for testing. Because they are presorted and optimized so that the test gets an good score....

Yes, this is really an annoying fact. Unless the site explicitly states that they get their lenses in a shop like the rest of us, they are probably sent "golden samples" by the manufacturer. It's worst with reviews on Youtube, the people get an inexpensive item like a flash for free and write an enthusiastic review about it: "viral marketing".

The only way to get around it is to have a nice brick and mortar shop and test a couple of lenses on site before buying, or simply send back the lens until you get a good one. Problem is that with mail-ordering just one, you have no comparison basis, so in fact you'd have to order at least two lenses and send back one in any case.

I never found my old 70-200mm f2.8 L to match the test charts, so I traded up to a brand new 70-200mm f2.8 II IS, but it's... not that much better. It is better wide open, less "weird," and possessing less character, but it's not in the same category as the Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 for tack-sharpness wide open...

Fortunately in real life, it mostly makes no difference because there are so many other sources of less than optimal iq. The one thing that is really to be avoided is decentering, but as far as sharpness goes the 70-200L is just another mass market item, even if it has a red ring painted on it.

Look at this link concerning the variation of the 24-70L mk1 vs mk2, good samples of the old and crappy version are up on par with mediocre samples of the new dream lens: http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2012/11/canon-24-70-mk-ii-variation

 

[Mitch.Conner]

Couldn't sleep. That's nothing new though - I don't want you all to think it's related to this. I've been an insomniac since I could crawl practically.

Marsu - thanks for posting that. I'd read it before, but the more people are aware of that, the better IMO. Unfortunately, having never owned a 24-70 f/2.8 I, I'll have no idea how the 24-70 f/2.8 II or 24-70 f/2.8 IS (fingers crossed that this eventually happens) stacks up.

I looked through all of my CF cards. I think I must have formatted the card(s) that had the most recent chart shots thinking I'd imported the photos into LR.

I do have some charts from before sending it in to Canon the second time (when they found a "misaligned" element, if I recall the language they used). 90mm @f/2.8 and f/5.6 125mm at the same two f-stops, and 200mm at the same two f-stops. They were the images I sent to Canon on a CD-ROM for the second repair.

I doubt you guys would want to see those though, since they're not current. If you want them though, just ask - I'm happy to post them if they'd help shed light on the situation.

Assuming the more recent chart photos don't pop up somewhere I haven't thought to look yet, I'll just take another set today.

EDIT: I've redone the chart shots. I'll post them once I've gotten a chance to go through them all and can generate jpgs that are under 5MB each.

 

[Mitch.Conner]

70mm @ f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, and f/8

 

[Mitch.Conner]

100mm @ f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, and f/8

 

[Mitch.Conner]

135 mark on the lens (technically it's 125mm here) @ f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, and f/8

 

[Mitch.Conner]

200mm @ f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, and f/8

 

[Marsu42]

Couldn't sleep. That's nothing new though - I don't want you all to think it's related to this.

I understand your predicament, but if you're finished shooting test charts, don't let yourself be detained and get out, shooing something alive ...

... crawling around the frozen scenery during a full moon night, shooting wildlife will help you worry less about pixel sharpness and make you sleep when you return home, you've got my word on that

Note: Sorry to spam the place with horsie shots, it just seemed appropriate here somehow :-o

 

[Mitch.Conner]

Nice shot. Actually, since I couldn't sleep, I took advantage of sunrise sweet light as the sun was just coming up. Not with this lens though - but that was just because I wanted something wider.

 

[Grummbeerbauer]

I had a look at your test shots for 70, 135 and 200mm. What I believe I am seeing is that there is always one corner (or one side) that is definitely softer than the others (lower right mostly, upper right @200mm) but not catastrophically so in each case. This corner then remains visibly worse at f4 and eventually sharpens up at f5.6.
That could indicate some decentering, but could also still be a problem with the test setup. What also made me wonder is the distortion @200mm... the lower border of the test chart shows more pincussion distortion than the other, although the chart seems to be a bit shifted to the top. But then, shouldn't the upper border (being closer to the edge of the frame) show more pincussion distortion?
Point is: your setup isn't perfect (and I doubt it can be with conventional means). Maybe you should check for decentering with a different approach that is less sensitive to test setup, focus issues and shallow DOF: Go outside on a clear day with good light, find far away target (i.e. far away for infinity focus) with good contrast (lone tree in the distance, a tower, tall building, church etc.). Put that into the center of the frame and assure perfect focus (lifeview MF or AF), take test shots at relevant apertures, maybe a few shots for each aperture so that you can rule out camera shake (or better yet, use a tripod ;-)). Now, without changing focus, reframe to put the "test object" in one frame corner, again doing test shots for each aperture. Repeat that for all four corners, making sure that in each shot the test object is roughly the same distance from the image corner.
That should give you five sets of images, one for the center, one for each corner, at each aperture. If you made several shots for each area and aperture, pick the best. Now create a "collage" of the shots of each aperture so that you can visually compare them on one image. The corner shots will likely be darker and a tad less sharp than the center shot, but they should all be roughly equal. If they are not, this is likely decentering.

I couldn't find a good site explaining the procedure in English, but I found this page in German... I think the pictures are pretty self-explantory:
http://www.gletscherbruch.de/foto/test/dezentrierung/dezentrierung.html

 

[Mitch.Conner]

I had a look at your test shots for 70, 135 and 200mm. What I believe I am seeing is that there is always one corner (or one side) that is definitely softer than the others (lower right mostly, upper right @200mm) but not catastrophically so in each case. This corner then remains visibly worse at f4 and eventually sharpens up at f5.6.
That could indicate some decentering, but could also still be a problem with the test setup. What also made me wonder is the distortion @200mm... the lower border of the test chart shows more pincussion distortion than the other, although the chart seems to be a bit shifted to the top. But then, shouldn't the upper border (being closer to the edge of the frame) show more pincussion distortion?
Point is: your setup isn't perfect (and I doubt it can be with conventional means). Maybe you should check for decentering with a different approach that is less sensitive to test setup, focus issues and shallow DOF: Go outside on a clear day with good light, find far away target (i.e. far away for infinity focus) with good contrast (lone tree in the distance, a tower, tall building, church etc.). Put that into the center of the frame and assure perfect focus (lifeview MF or AF), take test shots at relevant apertures, maybe a few shots for each aperture so that you can rule out camera shake (or better yet, use a tripod ;-)). Now, without changing focus, reframe to put the "test object" in one frame corner, again doing test shots for each aperture. Repeat that for all four corners, making sure that in each shot the test object is roughly the same distance from the image corner.
That should give you five sets of images, one for the center, one for each corner, at each aperture. If you made several shots for each area and aperture, pick the best. Now create a "collage" of the shots of each aperture so that you can visually compare them on one image. The corner shots will likely be darker and a tad less sharp than the center shot, but they should all be roughly equal. If they are not, this is likely decentering.

I couldn't find a good site explaining the procedure in English, but I found this page in German... I think the pictures are pretty self-explantory:
http://www.gletscherbruch.de/foto/test/dezentrierung/dezentrierung.html

I'll try that. In the meantime, here is the other 200mm chart I posted (@f/2.8), this one with all four borders to show distortion. This was set up days before separately. It would be strange if two different set ups showed the same issue due to set up issues.

From: http://www.canonrumors.com/forum/index.php?topic=24063.msg472003#msg472003

Do you see the same issue? It's helpful to have somebody else look at these shots with a fresh perspective and fresh eyes.

Btw- the corners were why I sent it in the last time and they did find a "misaligned" element. I should probably make some f/2.8 shot corner crops and put them together so that it's easier to compare them. I'm having trouble seeing which corner is the softest at the moment. Clearly though, not a single corner is as sharp as the corner shots at 70mm and 200mm by The Digital Picture on page one of this thread (and I linked to the page where you can see other focal lengths and apertures). I'm not sure if they sharpened their images (I didn't), or if their lens was better performing than mine.

 

[Mitch.Conner]

I took a series of photos late yesterday afternoon which turned out to not have optimal lighting for seeing the difference between corners. I tried again a few minutes ago, but the subject wasn't optimal.

It appears this needs to be done around noon with a subject that has the sky as its background, just like the photos on that website.

I'll have to hunt a bit around for a good subject.

 

[Mitch.Conner]

Here is 70mm @ f/2.8 and 200mm @ f/2.8 at ISO 100 (with the shutter speed kept constant for all 5 images) - using the proposed alternative test method. The subject was a water tower which had wording on it "Visit Hollywood Florida". The background is mostly the sky.

Some interesting behavior exhibited itself during this test. I only focused once for both of these collages - on the center image. I then placed the tower in the four corners, and used a remote to trigger the shutter. For these two collages, I did not alter anything after focusing - yet somehow after moving the lens around the four corners and triggering the shutter for each, when I returned to the center in the end, it was completely out of focus. I used a tripod, so the camera came back to the same spot it was in to begin with at the end - yet it was out of focus? I don't understand that. Could an element be loose? I did not touch the focus ring at any time, nor did I touch the AF-On button after initially focusing (and I verified focus with 10x magnification in LiveView). Focus was at infinity. I noticed that the focus ring can be turned a bit more after infinity focus is reached. I don't know why or if that's normal. It's something I never paid attention to before, so it could just be hyper-vigilance.

 

[Ryan85]

Couldn't sleep. That's nothing new though - I don't want you all to think it's related to this.

I understand your predicament, but if you're finished shooting test charts, don't let yourself be detained and get out, shooing something alive ...

... crawling around the frozen scenery during a full moon night, shooting wildlife will help you worry less about pixel sharpness and make you sleep when you return home, you've got my word on that

Note: Sorry to spam the place with horsie shots, it just seemed appropriate here somehow :-o

+1