Quote Originally Posted by sedwards View Post
it seems like its the autofocus that isnt getting things as sharp as i think they should be. could it be the size of the area its trying to focus on ? i dont know how big of an area the sensor is looking at. i mostly use the center focus point only and i figured that with good light it would be better but it doeasnt change much. i mostly take pics of deer and wild turkeys . at 400-500 feet the red dot for the focus point fits on the animal pretty easy but if the sensor is looking at an area that covers 20 feet all around it , that would explain my problem.
Yes the point will cover more area and may be more prone to picking up a spot you do not want. One of the big advantages I found when I bought my 1D IV is that it had an option to make the area smaller and you can tune in on a small object.

However at farther distances the AF is going to be more forgiving. For instance if you are shooting a deer at 500 feet rather than 50 feet your depth of field is greater.

The first thing I would do is make sure it was not the lens. Set up on a tripod, take image stabilization off and shoot in live view at a subject and manually focus in 10x magnification. If you can get sharp pictures then it is just probably the AF system. (Any time you can set your camera up and manually focus like this on a subject it will be far superior to your AF system)

I would check with the IS on and off as well, at high shutter speeds and on the tripod you shouldn't need IS. If you are using it in those situations I would test that out to.

You can send the camera and lens to Canon and they can do an AF adjustment on the lens and camera. The higher end bodies have an AF adjustment you can do, the T4i does not.