Olympus E-420 Backfocus, it's on its way back to the Mothership

I had an interesting discovery this weekend. When looking through some photos from Christmas Eve with my Olympus E-420, I realized that a few were sharper than I had ever noticed out of that camera. This was interesting, as I had just come off a weekend shooting at a Basketball game with the Olympus, and many of the photos were VERY soft. I just chalked it up to the strong AA filter.

When I looked at the Christmas shots that were sharp, though, I began to question the results I've been getting out of the E-420/Pancake combo. Although the sharp shots are nowhere the quality I get out of our new Canon 5D Mark II, they displayed levels of detail that I didn't think possible with the Olympus. What I realized was the sharp photos were all taken in LiveView mode...

I don't use LiveView much, preferring the shooting experience through an optical viewfinder, but I have used it on occasion to get shots that I otherwise would have had trouble with. Like this one, for instance:


Taken on the forest floor at Sharon Woods in Columbus, OH, I would have obviously had to lay on the floor of the forest to get that shot to compose through an optical viewfinder. LiveView made it easy, though. I have tended to use LiveView only when I had to, not all the time. But this weekend I decided to try out the Face detection in LiveView, as I had read that the Olympus would deal with challenging interior light in portrait situations in LiveView w/FD as it would optimize exposure for the detected human. Little did I know what else I would discover...

When I figured out what was ocurring, I setup a little test at home. I drew an "X" in the center of a piece of plain white paper, and taped it to a thick cookbook. I then stood up the cookbook on our kitchen island. Using a tape measure, I extended about 2 feet of measuring tape, and placed it perpendicular to the paper, using a candle to angle the tape at approximately a 45 degree angle next to the book/paper. I basically made a homemade version of the LensAlign:


I wouldn't use it for serious calibration, but it absolutely verified the backfocus problem on my E-420. I did two tests; in the first, I placed the E-420 about 5 feet from the target, and in the second, about 25 feet. I shot first using the viewfinder, and then LiveView with CDAF turned on. I repeated the test 3 times. In each case, CDAF nailed focus and TTL phase-detect backfocused. In fact, in the "long" test, it backfocused so much that the back wall of my kitchen was in perfect focus (about 7 feet behind the target).

In looking through "real" photos, I see evidence of backfocus, as well. Like this one, shot of my father and I after the basketball game; note we are in decent focus, but there is a few feet of backfocus as the only area of super sharp focus are the branches behind our heads:


And this photo, where I focused on the top of the knot and the focus plane is actually below that somewhere an inch or so from the top of the bouy (see the rope for evidence of this):


Really, perhaps the E-420 isn't as "soft" as I think it is. Certainly, the AA filter is stronger than many competing cameras. And when focus is generally decent (even a backfocusing body will give good photos at smaller apertures), the photos are softer than some would like. But it does have a very "natural" look to it when you have decent DoF/focus. I'm actually very HAPPY to figure out that my Olympus is behaving this way; as many times, especially when shooting people at wide apertures (something the E-420 should be good at), I've felt the results quite substandard. This has caused me to use the E-420 only in siutations where I want to "play" with photography a bit; develop ideas, shoot for fun, etc. In many of the very situations I thought the Olympus would excel over the G9, namely people photography, it hasn't. And that's been a disappointment. So now I know why, at least partially (the sensor will remain noisy...).

Here I will mention a little about the Olympus repair process. First, here is what I had to do with my dust-in-the-lens Canon G9:
1. Log on to Canon's site.
2. Fill out a web form indicating what the problem was, as well as date of purchase. This took all of 3 minutes.
3. Upon submission of the web form, Canon approved free warranty repair (even though I was out of warranty), and sent me an email within minutes detailing where to send the camera, as well as a repair # to log back in and track the repair.
4. I packed up the camera, a photocopy of the receipt, and a printout of the email they sent me.
5. Canon emailed me when the camera was received, when the repair begun, and when it shipped (with the tracking number). It was turned around in 3 business days, IIRC.

With the Olympus, it has already been a MUCH larger pain in the rear:
1. Log on to Olympus' site. No web submission form to be found, just a PDF describing where to send the camera.
2. Filled out the Olympus Repair order form, a downloadable PDF. I had to write my name, address, serial #s, and description of the problem on this paper. I declined to add my credit card preauthorization to the end of the form, as this shoudl be a warranty repair. Canon told me it was on the spot, no guessing.
3. As instructed, I copied the purchase receipts for my camera, lens, and all 3 warranty cards (camera, kit lens, and pancake lens).
4. Pack the camera, lenses, photocopies in #3, and the handwritten #2 in a box, and mailed it off.

So far, I have spent about 45 minutes getting all the materials together, handwriting the form, and photocopying the various purchase orders and warranty cards (for which I had to dig out the camera and lens boxes, in storage). I don't have a live repair # (obviously), and have no idea whether Olympus will repair my camera under warranty (as mentioned, Canon approved this on the spot when I submitted the web form). I have no idea how/when I will be contacted about the camera.

Definitely not as smooth of a process. Let's hope they nail the AF adjustment, though, because I absolutely adore the little E-420/Pancake combo (much less so with the kit lens, but...). I will update this blog with information as it arrives.