The importance of camera and lens calibration has increased in correlation to the increase in pixel count of camera sensors as well as the camera’s technical sophistication. Your photographic equipment is not only expensive and highly sophisticated. It’s performance is extremely delicate. Such is the sophistication of your DSLR cameras that even brand new lenses straight out of the box, let alone lenses that have had light knocks and bumps, can need calibration with your DSLR camera body.

There are many reasons your photos aren’t sharp…..

It could be because you are using a poor quality UV filter or protection filter. Blog – Focussing with Filters

It could be you have the wrong focus settings on your camera for the genre of photography you are doing.

It could be warping of the lens mount. This can occur when using very large and heavy zoom lenses without handling and supporting the camera and lens properly.

A knock or a bump on the lens may have put a glass element out of alignment. This is surprisingly easy to do depending on the build quality of the lens. An astigmatism test  ( commonly known as a ‘stig test’) can quickly confirm this. We often use it for customers who have recently bought a used lens and want to make sure of its quality.

However, one of the most common reasons your pictures aren’t pin sharp is because your lens needs calibrating. Camera and lens calibration can dramatically improve your focussing and thus your success rate in getting those important shots. Read More on Why calibrate

 

How do you know if your lenses need calibrating?

 THINGS TO RULE OUT BEFORE CALIBRATION

Well this is relatively easy. If you zoom in on a picture on the back of your camera (though this has to be where your focus point is), you might notice that the picture is sharper behind or in front of your subject/focus point. This is called front or back focusing, depending on where the picture is sharpest. This is common enough, but it can make or break your pictures. One of our customers, a photographer who had recently been to Namibia went through her photos at the end of the day only to find most of her photos were unusable. It was absolutely gutting for her because she had spent all day at a water hole in Etosha photographing Lilac-breasted Rollers, and all her pictures were focused about 10 inches in front of her subject…no pin sharp eye and a whole lot of unusable images!

 

The chance of getting a perfect lens from the manufacture is highly unlikely, and no two lenses perform the same. These performance pitfalls are known as tolerances. In terms of AF adjustment, Canon’s tolerances are plus/minus 5, Nikon’s are plus/minus 10 and Sigma and Tamron are around plus/minus 15. Additionally, imperfections can also exist within the camera’s focus sensor (positioned beneath the mirror mechanism) where improper seating of the sensor will produce problems of its own in regard to back and front focusing. In reality, the likelihood of having a camera setup with back and front focus issues is highly likely. It’s a shame that such tolerances exist, but in such specific optical science, individual lenses are bound to have imperfections when they are produced in such large batches.

 

How Camera and Lens Calibration Works…

 

As mentioned above, cameras front and back focusing is a major player in why you aren’t getting sharp images. Luckily for us, most cameras have a setting which allows for compensating back or front focusing lenses. This is called AF Fine Tune in Nikon and AF Micro adjustment in Canon. Calibration is used to compensate for anomalies in the autofocus sensor, and since most mirrorless cameras focus directly on the imaging sensor, there is no need to calibrate these systems. There are some exceptions to this though….Nikon Z7 for example and Sony A7

This compensation can be performed in small incremental steps (typically between -20 to 0 and then to +20). Putting in a negative figure will move the point of focus closer to the camera, and dialling a positive number will move the focused point away from the camera. This effectively tells the focus system to aim at where it would normally focus, except slightly move the focused point away or towards the camera.

An important thing to keep in mind however, is that calibration is camera and lens specific. So, if you have multiple cameras and lenses, you have to calibrate each lens on each camera, Additionally, you might need to periodically re-calibrate your camera gear and many professionals do it as often as twice a year!

One important thing for us bird photographers to take into account, is when using tele-converters, the focus issues are magnified umpteen times. Also, 3^rd party lenses are known to be really bad for it, so it’s worth checking it on your camera if you have a Sigma or Tamron lens.

Camera and Lens Calibration Methods 

DIY Camera and Lens Calibration:

This is basically buying a focus card and tweaking the micro adjustments in your camera settings until you have the best result

Manual lens calibration:

A number of camera shops, camera repair agents and even some companies ‘specialising’ in calibration use a manual process of ‘shunting’. A slightly more methodical approach to DIY lens calibration but nowhere near as accurate as the software driven method. Where this method is of great advantage is when the lens needs a huge adjustment. Typically over + or – 20. With such a big adjustment is necessary to shimmy a glass element until within range of a finer more accurate calibration. Work is done on both the camera body – adjusting the seating of the sensor to compensate for extreme problems in the camera and the lenses separately. A light is shone through the lens onto a targeted grid and then the lens is adjusted for pitch or yaw (this is know as “shimming”) This is only available for Canon L  lenses.

Software driven lens calibration:

There are a number of software solutions for lens calibration on the market but there is one clear market leader who have maintained that position for many years by driving development in additional functionality as well as keeping up to date with the exceedingly fast launch speeds of new models by the camera manufacturers. Focal by Reikan.

SAMPLE LENS CALIBRATION REPORT

 

 

Which Cameras Can Be Calibrated?

In short any Canon and Nikon camera that support autofocus micro adjustment or autofocus fine tune. That said when a new model is released the is significant testing and updating of software to ensure the camera and lens calibration process can be performed accurately.

Canon Cameras

Nikon Cameras