Lens calibration

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I was watching Steve's review of Nikon D500 and noticed the LensAlign product.
I am not game enough to try to use it and found Reikan Focal Automatic Focus Calibration Software on the web which looks pretty easy and simple enough for even me to use :cool:
Wondering if anyone have had good/bad experience with this ?
Price-wise a lot cheaper than LensAlign but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for.
Thanks.
 
Your D500 has fine focus automatic adjust built in . You just point at target and follow the instructions ..Main problem is check on the rear screen ( not top screen) you are in AF-s as it can say AF-f and it wont work in that.
You already paid for lens calibration .. it's in the camera !!!
 
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I think you should back up a step. Does the lens need calibration? There are simple tests you can do before spending time and money to calibrate. When in the field I usually am able to find something that will serve as a test subject. A fence on an angle works well. I find one post and focus on it, take the picture with the lens aperture wide open. Look at it on the lcd and if the sharpest part is where I focused, no adjustment needed. More often than not, my lenses are close enough out of the box that they are within the variable ability of the AF system. Put another way, the AF systems won't put the focus on the exact same spot every time, there is a little "slop" and it also depends on which way the focus is turning to get there. While doing af fine tunes, I will de-focus in one direction and get slightly different results if de-focusing in the opposite direction.
Many years ago I built my own rig, targets glued to foam core blocks. There are 5 of them each stepped 1/2" behind the previous one. Works quite well. I also purchased the Lens Align and did use it. It is time consuming as well as eating up many shutter clicks. You need a good 10 samples at each setting. The computer program always seemed to indicate it needed more samples and you had to use jpegs. Now I use the Lens Align rig but do my own analysis using fewer clicks. The biggest problem is getting a decent working distance. With longer lenses you need to be quite far away and I find I need to do the serious calibration out of any wind and heat waves which means mostly indoors. The target gets small which makes very small differences harder to differentiate. In the end, I gave up and will only check AFFT if I'm seeing a consistent problem. Then I'll do a quick field check and that's usually enough to get the results I need. One other thing, AFFT calibration can change with temperature. I've noticed lenses I've dialed in in the summer need some adjustment in the winter.
 
The LenAlign product isn't any more expensive than the Reikan, and you don't have to buy the LenAlign Focus Tune software as you can do the testing manually with the target/ruler apparatus. It's not difficult to do just time consuming. Hardest part is getting everything set up.
The Auto AF Fine Tune built in to the D500 can work, too. Steve has a video on that that discusses the pros and cons:

 
The Dot Method is free and a good way to at least validate that your lens might have front or back focus issues or might not need fine tuning at all:

Remember, AF fine tuning doesn't make a lens sharper. It just fine tunes whether the plane of best sharpness is aligned to where the AF system thinks sharpness should be.
 
I didn't buy any additional software for it. I just use a Sypder LensCal and Nikon Capture NX-D. With these tools I do the calibration "manually" and I never had any issues, but good results. Just a few day ago I did it with three lenses on my new second hand D850 and it just works.
 
I have used Reikan FoCal for a number of years and it has worked well for me. There are two version of FoCal, Plus and Pro. The Pro version is more expensive but offers some additional tests you can perform on your lenses. I also noted that the Plus version only supports lenses up to 400mm.

My take on lens AF fine tune is that you need to be certain it is needed and you need to be certain that your adjustments improve the focus of your lenses. If I feel a lens needs fine tuned I will usually use several different methods and compare the results.
 
I think you should back up a step. Does the lens need calibration? There are simple tests you can do before spending time and money to calibrate. When in the field I usually am able to find something that will serve as a test subject. A fence on an angle works well. I find one post and focus on it, take the picture with the lens aperture wide open. Look at it on the lcd and if the sharpest part is where I focused, no adjustment needed. More often than not, my lenses are close enough out of the box that they are within the variable ability of the AF system. Put another way, the AF systems won't put the focus on the exact same spot every time, there is a little "slop" and it also depends on which way the focus is turning to get there. While doing af fine tunes, I will de-focus in one direction and get slightly different results if de-focusing in the opposite direction.
Many years ago I built my own rig, targets glued to foam core blocks. There are 5 of them each stepped 1/2" behind the previous one. Works quite well. I also purchased the Lens Align and did use it. It is time consuming as well as eating up many shutter clicks. You need a good 10 samples at each setting. The computer program always seemed to indicate it needed more samples and you had to use jpegs. Now I use the Lens Align rig but do my own analysis using fewer clicks. The biggest problem is getting a decent working distance. With longer lenses you need to be quite far away and I find I need to do the serious calibration out of any wind and heat waves which means mostly indoors. The target gets small which makes very small differences harder to differentiate. In the end, I gave up and will only check AFFT if I'm seeing a consistent problem. Then I'll do a quick field check and that's usually enough to get the results I need. One other thing, AFFT calibration can change with temperature. I've noticed lenses I've dialed in in the summer need some adjustment in the winter.
I have only had to use AFFT once and that was on my Nikon 200-500 and it had serious problems and went back to Nikon 3 times (3rd time they did a recall) and they finally got it fixed but by then I moved on to Tamron 150-600 G2 and had Tamron fine tune it to one of my D500's just in case :) Free service from Tamron for any lens in warranty. I was really impressed with that service.
 
Thank you so much for detailed replies.
I am actually happy with my lenses but as mentioned after watching Steve's video I thought it would be a good idea to check.
Thanks again - much appreciated
 
I’ve never heard of this method. Tried using the AF fine tune on the D7500 and it’s diffi to do to say the least. I was going to buy FoCal Pro but I think I will try this first instead. Just because it is from 2013 or so doesn’t mean it still works and since the auto fine tuning capability isn’t in most bodies I never actually asked myself what most people use.
 
Hmm. I must be doing something wrong. I just tried it (DOT method) 3 different times.
1) I got a middle number of -2
2) I got a middle number +5
3) I got a middle number +3

I'll try it again tomorrow when the light comes back and see what I get.

I'm leaving my adjustment on the lens at 0 for now (Nikon 200-500 on a D500) which is close to half way between the -2 and +3. The +5 seems to be an outlier.
 
When you try the DOT Tune method ensure you have good contrast in your target and have the target very well lit.
After a little while you will get the hang of the DOT Tune calibration and it can be completed quickly, which is good if you have a few camera / lens combinations to check.
You will also get a good idea of what your camera/s, lens / lenses are doing in relation to the focus position from your observation of the resulting images.
Any minor changes can then be made usually without doing a complete calibration, usually just a small change of the AF Fine Tune setting.
If you are not satisfied with the DOT Tune result/s you can always buy a software package to do the testing, pretty sure you will be pleased with the DOT Tune results though.
 
When you try the DOT Tune method ensure you have good contrast in your target and have the target very well lit.
After a little while you will get the hang of the DOT Tune calibration and it can be completed quickly, which is good if you have a few camera / lens combinations to check.
You will also get a good idea of what your camera/s, lens / lenses are doing in relation to the focus position from your observation of the resulting images.
Any minor changes can then be made usually without doing a complete calibration, usually just a small change of the AF Fine Tune setting.
If you are not satisfied with the DOT Tune result/s you can always buy a software package to do the testing, pretty sure you will be pleased with the DOT Tune results though.
I was using Steve's Focus chart and it was on a wall in good outdoor light. I was about 40 feet away (shooting with the 200-500). I only had time to run 3 tests before I started losing light. I just found it interesting same lens, same tripod location, same target gave 3 different results. I'll have to follow Steve's advice for the auto fine tune and do it a bunch of times and take the average.

I do like the DOT method better than my usual method of shooting objects against rulers and concrete sidewalks at different distances and averaging then trial and error.

I just never got around to doing it for the 200-500.
 
Hmm. I must be doing something wrong. I just tried it (DOT method) 3 different times.
1) I got a middle number of -2
2) I got a middle number +5
3) I got a middle number +3

I'll try it again tomorrow when the light comes back and see what I get.

I'm leaving my adjustment on the lens at 0 for now (Nikon 200-500 on a D500) which is close to half way between the -2 and +3. The +5 seems to be an outlier.
Ran the procedure on my 500PF yesterday and checked both ends of the range 3x before settling on -3 as the middle...the end points varied a bit on both ends through the trial but I went past and back inside each end point a couple of times each pass to make sure I had it right. I was somewht closer than 50x focal length as I was doing it inside for wind but will try again outside the first calm day I have so the target won’t move. The process seems a lot less finicky than the fine tune method in the Nikon software.
 
Ran the procedure on my 500PF yesterday and checked both ends of the range 3x before settling on -3 as the middle...the end points varied a bit on both ends through the trial but I went past and back inside each end point a couple of times each pass to make sure I had it right. I was somewht closer than 50x focal length as I was doing it inside for wind but will try again outside the first calm day I have so the target won’t move. The process seems a lot less finicky than the fine tune method in the Nikon software.
OK, here's what I did today.
I ran several tests with "dot tune" and 15 with the Nikon internal method (focus with live view then press the record and manual/auto button.
Both of them seemed to average between -1 and -3 (which is a very small adjustment no matter how we're looking at it. I have set it at -2. We'll see. Honestly, the lens was perfect before I sent it to Nikon for repair of another problem. It seems just a touch soft and I see sometimes it seems a little focused behind the subject's eyes. However, that could be the vagueness of hand holding a 500mm lens.
 
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