7D sharpness varying with subject colour

[crum]

Had my 7D and 70-200 f4 at the track a couple of times now and noticed that pretty much every shot of a black or dark coloured car turns out absolutely spot on and sharp as a tack but the lighter colours such as greens, yellows, whites, etc just don't seem to be anywhere near as good and consistant. I still get good shots but no where near the amount of keepers as I'd like. Is there something in the camera I can try changing?

Heres a couple of examples

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5100/5406259651_8d84af2c73_b.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5089/5359700533_c84f3739ac_b.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5042/5358350991_883d11d08d_b.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1071/5122669698_0f2af00b22_b.jpg

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5201/5359614047_8fd9b68ec6_b.jpg

[William]

They look all right to me Crum, Have you tried shooting in RAW , And selective colouring in PP , Just a thought maybe :)

[kiwi]

if you are letting the camera choose a focus point it looks for high contrast (eg black on white), lighter colours dont have the same contrast and therefore not quite as accurate

[Roosta]

I had the same issue with my first round of Summer Nats shots, I switched to single point focus and they came out allot better. See under "Transport" I wish I had my CPL tho, would have made a huge difference. I found if i used the black roadway for a metering point first then focus on car approaching it seemed to help on that day.

[crum]

All shots were taken with the single centre focus point. I might just being too critical but it seems the black always seem to be top notch even straight from the camera and take far less work in PP. The other colours just don't seem to pop and have that same sharp glassy look to them. I've actually noticed this with a mate's images from his 550D and 75-300 kit lens too. The reds and blacks turn out great like mine

I've just bought a spare card so I'll definately try shooting in RAW + JPEG next round. Is there any secrets to raw editing compared to what I'm currently doing with my jpegs?

[Roosta]

Mate, there is heaps you can do to a 17MG Raw against a 1MG jpg/jpeg. Have you got your colour spectrum in your camera set to ADOBE RGB? This will help when shooting in RAW, if you google it you'll see, it's like the old colour monitors to the now adays colour monitors, the difference is huge. Your camera manual will show you the settings needed to select ABODE RGB.

If you use PS or the like, it will open Camera Raw first and you can play with all the colours and tones, adjust warmth (White Balance) it's endless, get a good fast CF card for your 7D, lots of space, it's cheap enough. The AP Sponsor link has a Card supplier (cant remember their name) they claim to be the cheapest around. Worth a look.

[crum]

Cheers for the replies. I'll swap the camera over to adobeRGB and see how it goes. Next round is in 3 weeks time so I'm keen to get back out there. Nothing better than sitting on the wall right next to the supercharged cars :D

Got a couple of 16gb 30mb/s cards so all covered there

[pmack]

focus looks spot on in each of those shots.
and they all look equally crisp to me!

[Arg]

focus looks spot on in each of those shots.
and they all look equally crisp to me!

I dunno ...... all shots but the first one look kinda hazy to me..... :D

[JM Tran]

everyone forgot to ask the most important question - is your monitor properly calibrated and what monitor is it?

shots look fine to me on my calibrated desktop and calibrated macbook pro screens

also if you have a cheap UV filter mounted on the front the sun's glare will reduce the contrast and makes certain pics look hazy