lens calibration.. or?

dirtyghettokid

one thing i've noticed, which really wrecks my head, is that i don't get proper focus. only if i have time to manually focus, do i get a good sharp shot.

this example here, taken with my 600D (it doesn't matter what camera body i use, i get the same results) and my 50mm f/1.4

these were taken at f/2.2, 1/160 using AF on centre point.



with the loupe even on 50% on honey's face, you can see it's not sharp



but if you move the loupe down, you can see the bit of crap on the ground about a foot in front is sharp.. and the snow along the edge of the path is sharp.



what can be done about this? sometimes i have to use auto focus, i'd like it to actually focus on what i choose with the points.

dirtyghettokid

some lens tests with the two bodies..
nice chromatic aberration :rolleyes:
aside from that, it's looking like i have focus trouble with the 50mm, and not the bodies.

Canon EOS 5D MarkII / EF 85mm f/1.8


Canon EOS 600D / EF 85mm f/1.8


Canon EOS 5D MarkII / EF 50mm f/1.4


Canon EOS 600D / EF 50mm f/1.4

Pete67

The 5D2 has a microfocus adjustment which can be set per lens to help eliminate front/back focus issues.

See page 200 of the manual, online here

I'm not sure if this is available on the 600D, I suspect not.

5uspect

You can get both the camera and lens calibrated together iirc. It seems to be primarily the lens at fault though.

dirtyghettokid

the problem appears to be more prominent on the 600D (with the 50mm f/1.4 lens)
it does not have micro adjustment
i assume i'd have to send the 600d with the 50mm to canon uk, (via ISS) to get it calibrated?
any idea of how much this costs?
what a pain..

Paulw

dirtyghettokid wrote: »

i assume i'd have to send the 600d with the 50mm to canon uk, (via ISS) to get it calibrated?
any idea of how much this costs?
what a pain..

Last time I had a lens/body calibrated it cost €140. I did it via ISS.

dirtyghettokid

Paulw wrote: »

Last time I had a lens/body calibrated it cost €140. I did it via ISS.

nearly half the price of the feckin lens, which i only got a few weeks ago! :mad:

5uspect

dirtyghettokid wrote: »

nearly half the price of the feckin lens, which i only got a few weeks ago! :mad:

You could try and get it done under warranty perhaps?

dirtyghettokid

wans't sure if it was a warranty item. will have to look into it.

pullandbang

Funny enough I have the same issue with my 50mm f1.4 on my 5DmkII. I even mentioned it in my last blog post. Might just try the calibration thingy. Any idea where to get those ruled sheets to focus on?

dirtyghettokid

pullandbang wrote: »

Funny enough I have the same issue with my 50mm f1.4 on my 5DmkII. I even mentioned it in my last blog post. Might just try the calibration thingy. Any idea where to get those ruled sheets to focus on?

if you pm me your email address, i can send the pdf to you!
as for the calibration on the 5d mark II i've seen a few articles on how to micro adjust.. i'll see if i can dig up the link form my history

sebphoto

pullandbang wrote: »

Any idea where to get those ruled sheets to focus on?

link

pullandbang

Well that was an interesting few hours messing with my 50mm f1.4 on two different 5DmkII bodies.
On my camera I found I was back focussing to the tune of 10 points (whatever the measurement is) so I brought the focus forward by 10 points. Now if I spent more time on it I might have found it was only 9 points or 8 or maybe 11, but I couldn't be bothered. It's certainly a big improvement on what it was.

On missusP&B's camera, she was out by 5 points on the same lens so she is now adjusted accordingly.

The interesting thing was that wide open @ f1.4 the image from my camera was virtually unusable whereas from her's it was way better - even after calibration.

Apologies for the long row of photos, but here's a few examples of what I did. The full set is on Pix.ie.

All the shots are straightforward jpegs from raw with no adjustments, colour correction or sharpening.

f2.8 SOOC


f2.8 with a + 10 adjustment


f4 SOOC


f4 with a + 10 adjustment


And on Missuspandb's camera;

f2.8 SOOC


f2.8 + 5 adjustment


f4 SOOC


f4 + 5 adjustment


Not much difference at f2.8 but a huge difference to be seen at f4.

I always knew that my copy of the 50mm f1.4 wasn't the greatest and after doing this exercise I can see I was right. Hopefully now with the adjustments made it will be a bit better. Now I'm wondering should I repeat this exercise for all my other lenses..........

dirtyghettokid

thanks for posting! i might try to adjust my 5d2 body, but it's a pity there's nothing i can do on the 600, where it's at it's worst.
shooting wide open is awful on it, isn't it! i just had a look there on your full album.

if so many 1.4 copies are bad, why don't canon look into this more? we all can't afford the L 1.2....
probably should have kept my plastic toy 1.8...

zerohamster

dirtyghettokid wrote: »

thanks for posting! i might try to adjust my 5d2 body, but it's a pity there's nothing i can do on the 600, where it's at it's worst.
shooting wide open is awful on it, isn't it! i just had a look there on your full album.

if so many 1.4 copies are bad, why don't canon look into this more? we all can't afford the L 1.2....
probably should have kept my plastic toy 1.8...

If you still have the opportunity to return the 1.4 I would certainly do so in favour of the Sigma 50mm 1.4 as the build quality is far better although slightly bigger...and you don't have to worry about the common occurance of jammed focus barrel if any pressure is applied to the front of the lens through a drop of simply a heavy object on your camera bag.
You could also try for calibration under warranty if the lens is out of acceptable tolerance.

dirtyghettokid

how can you tell if it's out of acceptable tolerance though? i had a look at the documentation that came with the lens, and i couldn't find anything that specified it's tolerances.

zerohamster

dirtyghettokid wrote: »

how can you tell if it's out of acceptable tolerance though? i had a look at the documentation that came with the lens, and i couldn't find anything that specified it's tolerances.

Without the specific optical rig and test gear that Canon base their standard acceptable deviation of calibration off of it would be near impossible to judge yourself however if it is noticeably affecting your images then you should definitely ring ISS up (who will post it to the UK for testing/repair/calibration and won't cost you the postage to the UK yourself if under warranty) and describe your situation making clear that the lens is not up to standard and your camera can't micro adjust etc...

Basically you won't be able to claim it's out of acceptable tolerance because you can't test it but if it is affecting your images enough to warrant your complaint then they should at least entertain testing/sending it off to be tested to see if it is or isn't.

Let us know how you get on anyway

zerohamster

Also for the mean time if you need the lens you can use live view to focus.
If the subject is something that you can take time to focus on, using the contrast detection focus mode (the slow one) will yield accurate focus.

This takes input from the sensor and keeps focusing until it reaches max contrast on the focal point which completely bypasses the standard AF system and will give accurate results because it takes only the image contrast into account when focusing...it is very slow though.