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I'm struggling with this lens since quite a bit, and I'm not able to understand if the lens have problems or I'm expecting too much.

Surely it has a problem: it's never consistent. I've got shots that are sharp as a knife, and many (too much, for my tastes) that are really missing detail, up to few shots where it looks like they have been painted with a big brush. But what I'm really trying to understand now is if the extreme softness is something to expect in certain situations, or this is a defective lens:

100% crop. ISO 200, F4.5, 1/2000, RAW, sharpened a bit in post 100% crop. ISO 200, F4.5, 1/2000, RAW, sharpened a bit in post

It's a crop, the area is from bottom left corner of the image. 3/4 of the height, 3/4 of the width (just to make it stay under 2mb limit without lowering jpg quality under 95%)

Camera has focus point set in the middle, that in the full image is on the far mountain, a bit above the point where the farther and the nearer mountain begin to overlap

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Is this the complete picture, or is the area we're looking at from the center of the image? Because it looks sharper on the left and blurry on the right. \$\endgroup\$
    – Thomas Tempelmann
    Aug 19, 2016 at 20:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ It's a crop, the area is from bottom left corner of the image. 3/4 of the height, 3/4 of the width (just to make it stay under 2mb limit without lowering jpg quality under 95%) \$\endgroup\$
    – motoDrizzt
    Aug 19, 2016 at 21:04
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    \$\begingroup\$ Does that mean that the center is blurry while it's sharper towards the edge? Is the sharpness distributed evenly on all side? I ask because mine had a tilted focus, i.e. one side was sharp the other was not. I sent it in for replacement, which was no problem. \$\endgroup\$
    – Thomas Tempelmann
    Aug 19, 2016 at 21:57
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    \$\begingroup\$ This image looks really over-processed with particularly aggressive noise reduction, and not at all like an image SOOC shot at iso 200. What kind of processing have you done to the image? Did you shoot JPEG or RAW? Do you have noise reduction turned on in the camera? What camera body are you using? \$\endgroup\$
    – inkista
    Aug 20, 2016 at 1:32
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Inkista: reading the question would help, I suppose. The camera is a K50 \$\endgroup\$
    – motoDrizzt
    Aug 20, 2016 at 9:08

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Most lenses are at least a little softer wide open, and you should expect some variation across the zoom range as well. Try looking through your archive and comparing different shots taken at specific apertures to see how consistent the issue is. Are all the shots at f/4.5 similar in sharpness, or do they vary a lot? How about f/8? If you can keep the focal length constant as well, that'll give you even better information.

Consider buying a focus target for a few bucks and using it to get better data. You'll know for sure that the lens has a problem if you can get it to produce varying results under the same circumstances, so it's useful to be able to measure the degree of softness as you hold other variables (aperture, distance, focal length) constant.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Took a look at many other shots. No, most of my photo at 3.5 and 4 (with the same lens, obviously) are much more sharp than this. As I wrote in the comment to Thomas, anyway, I finally noticed that the problem could be the focus to infinity. I have another shot where I focus on the same mountain, and by chance there is a wall near me, on the right, and that wall is nearly perfectly in focus while everything else is not. But, again: center point focus on the mountain... \$\endgroup\$
    – motoDrizzt
    Aug 20, 2016 at 9:16
  • \$\begingroup\$ I'had got a focus target, printed on hard paper from an image I found online, and I used it to check for front/back focus issues, and the lens was perfect. But...hell, the one in your link looks much more interesting, I'm going to buy. Thx! \$\endgroup\$
    – motoDrizzt
    Aug 20, 2016 at 9:19
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    \$\begingroup\$ There's a lot of haze in the distance -- could that be what you're interpreting as out of focus? \$\endgroup\$
    – Caleb
    Aug 20, 2016 at 13:15

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