Until recently I had never used the micro adjustment facility that has been available on all of my more recent Canon DSLR cameras as I have always felt that all my camera/lens combinations produced sharp results. However that changed when I purchased the Canon 7D MkII which with a number of lenses in particular my Canon EF 300mm f2.8L USM IS II both with and without extenders and my EF 400mm f5.6L produced unacceptably soft images. My first thought was to return my camera as never having had this problem before I thought the camera was faulty! On discussing my problem with friends and looking on the internet I quickly discovered that quite a few owners of the 7D MkII and for that matter other cameras were also finding they were getting soft images from lenses they knew were sharp and in many cases were able to correct this with lens calibration using the cameras micro adjustment! As a result I carried out a number of tests using the micro adjustment and manually adjusted it to get acceptably sharp results with both of these lenses and extender combinations.
Some time later I was discussing the problem with Anthony Sinfield, a colleague in the photographic industry, and told him I felt I needed to make further adjustments as I felt my images weren’t quite as sharp as they should be. Anthony suggested that I let him calibrate my lenses as he had the pro version FoCal which would take any guess work out of calibrating my lenses. FoCal doesn’t take just one or two images to make it’s calculation but the software and automated process of using the cameras micro adjustment takes typically between 15 and 30 images before giving you it’s calibration result!
As a result I spent a few hours with Anthony and he calibrated most of my lenses against both my Canon 7D MkII & 5D MkIII. Even though I had been reasonably happy with my own efforts at micro adjustment the Focal automated software did disagree slightly with my own adjustments and in practice has resulted in fine tuning my focus to achieve even better and more consistent results! The same software will also tell you your optimum aperture for a given lens.
If you are not confident about carrying out the micro adjustment yourself or want to be assured that your camera/lens combination are as accurate as possible then visit www.cameracal.co.uk.
Anthony offers bespoke training on a wide range of photographic equipment and applications as well as software like Photoshop and Lightroom.
Anthony also offers other services like Sensor Cleaning, Firmware Upgrades, Adobe Lens Profiles and Camera Configuration to best suit your type of photography with a FedEx service using locked Peli cases for those that live further afield.
David