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It only takes about 20 minutes to set up, and it seemed to work very well in that, after I had my lenses adjusted, they seemed to focus on the test box very consistently. I haven’t yet tried them in a while.
Which lenses needed the most correction? Well, the results are somewhat surprising for my Canon 24-70 f/2.8, a L series lens which I’m very very fond of and which gives me nearly flawless shots every time (at least to my naked eye):
- Canon 24-70 f/2.8 = +9
- Canon 85 f/1.8 = +2
- Sigma 50 f/1.4 = +12
- Canon 70-200 f/4 IS = 0
- Tokina 16-28 f/2.8 = +1
I had noticed that my Sigma 50mm f/1.4 had about a 25% bad focus rate when I was using f/1.4. I just chocked it up to using a very thin depth of field, but maybe the slight back focus had something to do with that. I’ll have to keep an eye on that moving forward.
If any of you plan on trying it, make sure you watch the videos on the website first of Michael Tapes actually doing it. I fumbled through it with the instructions that came with it, and missed a few key steps that Michael does in his vids.
I've seen test charts that can do nearly the same thing, so if you're on the fence about spending money on one of these, you can most likely get similar results out of that technique.
If any of you plan on trying it, make sure you watch the videos on the website first of Michael Tapes actually doing it. I fumbled through it with the instructions that came with it, and missed a few key steps that Michael does in his vids.
I've seen test charts that can do nearly the same thing, so if you're on the fence about spending money on one of these, you can most likely get similar results out of that technique.
So there you have it - I highly recommend this tool. In my experience in reading lots and lots of lens reviews, I’ve often heard complains about front and back focusing issues - LensAlign should fix a lot of those.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and experience. It is really appreciated and I feel that this is a wonderful way of helping others expand their knowledge about a shared passion for photography. I have tested my lenses at home using a paper scale placed flat on a table with the camera at a 45 degree angle. I can definitely see the advantages that using LensAlign would have over that method. I was wondering if you could talk more about the process of adjusting the lens once it's been tested. I shoot Nikon and I don't really know how you would go about adjusting a lens.
ReplyDeleteThanks again for sharing your knowledge and experience.
~Joanie Eddis-Koch
Actually, the homebaked solution probably works just as good - LensAlign just puts it into a nice package. If you watch the videos on the site, you'll see exactly how it's used. Canon and Nikons are probably slightly different, but for my 5D Mark 2, you go into the menu system and there's an option there to tweak the focus forward or backward. I think mine was "Autofocus drive adjustment". Hmm... Maybe try a google search.
ReplyDeleteSo if I have it correct you are adjusting the lens by adjusting a setting on the camera menu. My Nikon D90 does not have this feature. I was hoping it was something simple like turning a screw on the lens. Wishful thinking I suppose...
ReplyDeleteThe good news is that when I had to send my D90 in for service because the on body focus system seems to have broken I was able to tell them that the D90 was back focusing slightly. Supposedly they addressed that problem and reset the camera back to factory settings. Of course I have no idea what was really broken and what was really fixed because Nikon refuses to communicate about what problems were discovered and what was fixed/reset. I can only pray that they did more than just a 'firmware' update!
Since each of my lenses seems to focus slightly differently now (but still in an acceptable range) I was wondering if the adjustments you make using the camera menu apply across the board to all of the lenses that are used with that particular camera body or do you have to tweak the focus adjustment for each lens.
Thanks for putting up with all my questions. Eventually I hope to upgrade to a camera that will have this function so your experience will help me when I get to that point.
~Joanie
For my camera, you can change the settings across the board, or just to a particular lens, so you can do it either way. I would imagine that the next body level up would support it, so that's unfortunate.
ReplyDelete