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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tdodd" data-source="post: 1862300" data-attributes="member: 55450">You need to be very careful when judging hand held results from the 7D at 100%. A while back I was trying to shoot garden birds from close range with my 7D and 100-400. Trying to get my focus perfect, every time, and also achieve shake free images was beyond my skills. The problem was not the camera, or the lens, or the subject. It was flesh and blood causing the problem. My results improved significantly when I started to use a tripod. Not only does the tripod eliminate shake, but it also locks the distance to the subject, and when your DOF at 100% is measured in mm that can make a world of difference. Here are a couple of examples with the tripod. In the first image I've just about got the eye in focus but nothing in front of the eye is sharp and there really isn't much behind the eye that is sharp either. Now, did I mess up the focusing, or did I luck out this time on the inevitable variation in AF performance that you can expect from shot to shot, which would not be noticeable at all when viewing at more conventional sizes, or did the robin simply move a fraction between focusing and firing? Either way, there is no room for error here at all, but AF does have a margin for error in its operation and I dare say that humans do too. There is no doubt there is something sharp in that image, but the DOF is miniscule. If you need mm perfect focusing then it is definitely worth checking out your AF calibration and making sure that any necessary adjustment is made. In the second shot I think I've nailed it, and when you nail it there is no doubt the 7D can extract bags of detail from your subject.</blockquote>

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