Does this shot look out of focus to you?

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eurotrash

Senior Member
Just made that focus chart project last night. Took me awhile to find actual GLUE! So tonight, I plan on really testing all my lenses and seeing what's what. It's likely a misunderstanding of DOF at large distances and a wider lens than I should have been using.

On a side note, I'm hunting for a used 1.8D tonight. I remember that lens being awesome for so many things, though I sold it when I had my 5100. Lack of focus motor really turned my shoots into guesswork. Coupled with a camera that I felt was a little crippled in it's menu system, it was just horrible. One more thing to add to the confusion was manually focusing in the dark, LOL!
I was also at a little rock show (some of you might say, "AGAIN?!") and with the 35 just had a hard time getting close to the band with all the attendees. I wasn't really that far away, but that moment made me realize how much I missed that little 1.8..
 
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Dave_W

The Dude
Blow it up so all you see it the middle line and the +10 and -10 and it will help you dial it in. You can see that the back 10mm is much clearer than the front 10mm, which means your camera is back focusing. Set the AF fine tuning to -6 and take another image. Also, be sure you're wide open and have the aperture at the widest setting
 
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Dave_W

The Dude
Yes, you can save up to 12 different lenses on your camera and it will adjust to that lens automatically. The D7000 is an awesome camera that seems to not get near the respect it deserves, IMO. There's a great deal more to it than simply being a D5100 in a magnesium alloy case. For all practical purposes, it's a full blown professional camera that for some reason is being marketed as a prosumer camera. But compare its abilities to that of a pro level camera and you'll see there's not much difference at all.
And your focus looks perfect! The only thing left now is to practice reducing camera shake as much as possible. I went from a D70s to the D7000 and had to unlearn some bad habits. But once you have the camera shake reduced and the AF tuned in, you'll amaze yourself with how tight and sharp your images are.
 
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eurotrash

Senior Member
I'm having trouble with the 16-85 in getting the adjustments dialed in. I am certain this is because the test requires you to stop down as much as you can with each lens. This means, that in order to "fill the frame" as much as possible, I'd need to be closer to the focus chart than the lens can handle at it's minimum focus distance. It's also very difficult to get any sort of bokeh going on with a wide angle and f3.5 of a chart that's more than a foot away :/

The 35mm 1.8G should be at "-2" for accurate focus.
The 16-85mm 3.5 so far, looks to be very good at -8. More testing required..

Just wanted to share these little tidbits so people can find it if they ever need to search for it. Also of note is that these corrections are merely a starting point. YMMV, your lens may be a tad more/less corrected than my samples are.
 
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