Admin's Blogs

Is your camera and lens calibrated?

Are your images looking soft? There is a reason why they look soft, and really the images are out of focus that is why, and you either have a front focus or back focus issue here most likely.
Don't panic, with todays cameras, most DSLR cameras have a calibration adjustment that will allow you to calibrate the lens and camera, and you only need to do this once, but if you travel a lot and you start to notice soft images than maybe it's time to do another calibration.

Here is all that you need to do, and will only cost you a buck or two to get a thermometer from the dollar store. How to Calibrate Low Cost. (Follow the instructions with this and you will be just fine).
Remember to open lens wide open and if you are using a zoom lens, use the full zoom out to calibrate that lens it should be pretty close for the low to mid-range areas.

Distance To Target
This one is where I found the answers to be either 50X or 25X the focal length of the lens, and I lean more toward the 25X as this seems more realistic in distance.

Example
500mm lens = 500mm lens = 50x500mm = 25000mm = 25 meters = 82 feet to target.
500mm lens = 500mm lens = 25x500mm = 12500mm = 12.5 meters = 41 feet to target. (This is what I use for distance calibration).

After checking these numbers out with the LensAlign Pro calculator it seems that the 25 times is what they are using for distance to align with there product, so go with 25X what ever your focal length is and that will give you the proper distance to shoot your target. In order to convert your numbers for your lens just do a search for measurement converter.

Important Note
If and when you decide to calibrate your gear, and you get to the maximum adjustments for either front and or back focusing and you are still out, than the camera and lens needs to taken in for repair or adjustment to the service department.


Now if you are looking for something better, it will cost you some chump change. The cost is $179.00 US

LensAlign Pro is a target that allows to to set the lens and the target square to the lens, and there is a ruler that is set at an angle to show you how much the camera and lens is out via front or back focusing. This is the product that I use on my equipment and takes a bit of time to setup and so does the other method. See the device images below.





Target Setup




Here is the close up of the ruler, and as you can see it is really close to being spot on, and all that is needed here is a slight adjustment maybe 1 or 2 max.




So get out there and calibrate your gear to insure you get the sharpest images possible, and if you don't need to make any changes that is great, but at-least you checked to make sure.