Is it maybe my lens?

After an evening of shooting yesterday, I looked at all the pictures I had taken, and they're all quite soft. Even photos that were set to autofocus in good light seem to be in quite poor focus. The lens I was using last night is one that I really don't use too often, but as it is the widest of my lenses, I thought it was a good choice at the time. It's by no means a high-end lens (I think I paid like $200 for it) but you'd think that it would still be able to take a clear photo when focused, right? I'm a little frustrated, as I was quite pleased with the composition of a couple of the shots, but the lack of sharpness really makes them mediocre at best. Any ideas?

Did you have any filters on the lens? I found I had one polarizer that actually was very soft. I tested my lens with and without the filter and there was a huge difference. I replaced the polarizer with a high end one that is tack.

Also the obvious question - were you using a tripod and cable release? I have found that even tripod mounted cameras can get significant shake if you use your finger to depress the shutter rather than a cable release.

And lastly were these shot at f22 or f32? If so be aware that although these apertures even though they give great depth-of-field are really crappy in terms of oprical resolution.

Retest your lens, this time shoot a flat object at f8 in good light and using a cable realease and tripod and no filters at all. If that combo doesn't give you sharp photos then you have a crappy lens. Darwin

I wasn't using any filters, and both a tripod and cable release were used. To the best of my recollection i was shooting at in the mid-teen f-stops.

What lens were you using?

It's a Canon 22-55 USM.

Sometimes Canon's have rear focus problems (the image does not focus on the sensor correctly but the image looks sharp in the viewfinder) are all your other lenses on that camera body sharp? Have you also tried manual focus? Sounds like some testing is in order. Darwin

Also sometimes a lens will not really focus to infinity but will be fine with closer objects. Also do a test with the lens focused on a far object and then with the lens focused on a near and see if there is any difference. d

Sounds like a focusing issue - however, when you used the lens at the wide end stopped down to f13 or f16, you should have really a lot of DOF, which should "hide" everything except for colossal focussing errors. I think...

Basil

That's what I was thinking too...That's one of the things that makes me look at my lens.

Do you have ANY sharp photo from this lens? Any aperture, manual focus, auto focus, near object, distant object, whatever... if not, the lens may simply be bad. Check it under controlled conditions at f/8 or f/11...

I'm not familiar with the Canon system, but I've just read a "forum review" by somebody who said that it was worse than the 18-55 kit lens. Which is itself not stellar, right?

Basil

I haven't used this lens in a while, so I don't recall the image quality I've gotten in the past. I'll take some controlled shots with it tonight. Also I may post a picture from last night, because like i said, even though it's kinda soft, I still like the scene. It all depends on what i can do with it in PS tonight after work.