Will Nikon ever give us AF fine tune for zoom lenses?
- Thread starter 10 Gauge
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sonicbuffalo_RIP
Senior Member
Nikon seems to move at a snail's pace when it comes to new innovations for their gear. Don't get your hopes up too high.
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
Buy a Sigma with the USB dock. They give you 4 regardless of body.
It works only with Art and Contemporary lenses. I have three Sigma lenses (all bought within last year or so) and the dock works with only one of them.
Until it happens, fine tune your zoom lenses near the long end which has a shallower depth of field. A zoom generally isn't the sharpest when zoomed all the way out which is why I suggest doing it near the long end. And do auto fine tuning by standing at the closest focusing distance from your subject...again the shallowest depth of field especially when zoomed out.
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
Which is why I included the dock and the lens in the same sentences instead of just talking about Sigma lenses.
Which is why I included the dock and the lens in the same sentences instead of just talking about Sigma lenses.
This is kind of nudging me towards the 150-600C instead of the Tamron. I am still waiting however. (sorry for the derailment)
Horoscope Fish
Senior Member
For anyone who might be interested, here are the specifics on the Sigma USB Dock. I've been thinking about getting one for a while as my list of compatible Sigma lenses continues to grow.
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I thought they recommended setting your fine tune at 50x the focal length.
That may be, but the way I mentioned is to tune it where it has the shallowest depth of field.
Don Kuykendall_RIP
RIP :(
I use FoCal and they tell you to use 50x the focal length and I can highly recommend this software for anyone who really want their lenses tuned correctly. It also checks at all apertures and graphs the focus at each aperture and tells you where your lens is the sharpest. My 35mm tested at F8 and I just did my 24-120 last night and it tested at F10. I have used several methods of Fine tuning and I am getting much better results with FoCal.
The reason I asked about 50x the focal length is because it seems to make a big difference as far as my af fine tune midpoint goes on my 24-120. If I'm ~2.5ft from the focus chart @ 120mm my AF tune point comes in @ -14. If I move the camera back to ~6ft from the chart, my af fine tune mid point is -6.
Don Kuykendall_RIP
RIP :(
Everything I read states 50x which for the 24-120 is around 20 feet. That is a small target to focus on and I had good luck with it. I shot real world with it today and was pretty happy with the results.
I went through and adjusted all of my lenses last night. Interested to see if it made any effect on real world shooting. I couldn't get my 50 1.8 to tune, it showed confirmed focus at +20/-20. I even moved it as close to the target as I could get it to focus, wide open... Guess that's ok!
BackdoorArts
Senior Member
To give you an idea of what it's capable of, here's a screenshot from Sigma's Optimization Pro software from a blog my brother did about the Sigma 120-300mm and some issues he had with it focusing on his Canon 1D Mark IV (feel free to read the entire thing if you're into the details of focus calibration - he uses the Reiken FoCal software Don mentioned).
It not only tunes at different focal lengths but allows you to calibrate at different focal distances within each focal length.
Horoscope Fish
Senior Member
Fine tuning AF pretty much defines "suck", yes... Has to be done though, IMO.
And you know, I have to give kudos to Sigma: not only are they turning out some of the best glass on the planet, they put out things like the USB Dock which, to my knowledge anyway, is unique. And lets think about this... Four different focus ranges for a prime lens and, and for zooms, you get the same but also at four different focal lengths?!! Holy cow... Personally I'm glad it was Sigma that did this and NOT Nikon because if Nikon HAD done this, they would not have done it this well. The Sigma dock is so simple, so elegant and the solution is, as far as I can tell, perfect.
I like my Nikon camera's, make no mistake, but I think Nikon, as a corporate entity, is sadly out of touch with it's user base.
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BackdoorArts
Senior Member
Problematic at the body level because you need the lens firmware to adapt and they're not all going to support that. Plus now your body, which can currently only store 1 fine tune setting for 10 lenses (I think that's the number) needs to store 16 per zoom lens and 4 per prime. Stick it in the lens and it doesn't matter what body you put it on. Kudos to Sigma.
I agree it's a great system. It's just very dissapointing the lack of control and adjustment, even versus Canon. I'd seriously be happy with 2 focal lengths per lens just to be able to do minimum and maximum. I just took some shots tonight with my 24-120, which I calibrated quite critically at 120mm, that look rather soft at somewhere near the mid-zoom range after reviewing them on the body closely. I noticed if I zoomed in to 120 and took the same pic, they were much sharper.
I think the most discouraging part of Nikon not giving us more control is the fact that this isn't rocket science. We're talking about very basic control over the zoom system. This shouldn't be hard to develop in to something far more useful. If Sigma can do it, Nikon should be able to do it even better!
I think the most discouraging part of Nikon not giving us more control is the fact that this isn't rocket science. We're talking about very basic control over the zoom system. This shouldn't be hard to develop in to something far more useful. If Sigma can do it, Nikon should be able to do it even better!
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It's not hard to develop indeed. The cam receives the information of the focal length in use so adding some program that adjusts the Fine-tuning to the focal difference can't be that difficult. It has hardly any negative effects since we seldom change focal length during bursts.