$35 is pretty steep for something you can theoretically do yourself. This isn’t a deal breaker though, as you’ve already dialed-in the focus, you just need to re-launch and pick up where you left off. I had multiple crashes on my MBP (10.9.4) system, often mid-test. If you know what you're doing you can set up, calibrate, and pack away your camera and lens in 10 minutes.īugs, bugs, bugs, bugs.
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Looking at images taken at 1:1 is much easier than squinting at a 3” LCD on the back of the cameraĮasy setup, just print and hang the target, setup a tripod and use the target finder feature in the software to ensure pitch and roll are where they should be. You can preview what the micro adjustment will look like in real time on your laptop Note that the right half of the second "AF Image" box displays the changes you make in real-time before manually changing settings in-camera. It is important to note that FoCal also offers a Plus and Pro level programs which have more features including full-automatic calibration for some systems.īelow is a sample control panel from the Semi-Automated AFMA Test (from the FoCal manual):
Once you’ve dialed-in the focus you can change the settings manually on the camera, preview and refine as needed. After you’ve gotten everything lined up you’ll be able to preview a close-up live view of the target center as you adjust the focus. Once you’ve opened the FoCal app and connected the camera the software will help get your camera in the right position, detecting pitch, roll, and elevation deviations that might impact the test results. Once you’ve done that you will set your camera up on a tripod parallel to the target and connect it to your computer via USB. To use FoCal you’ll have to print out a QR-code-looking target and hang it on your wall. This is why I decided to invest the $35 into buying a copy of FoCal Standard semi-automated focus calibration software. You could always shoot tethered to LR to view your adjustments in real-time but that has its own issues.
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While there are manual options to AF micro adjust, they can be tough to interpret when you’re making decisions based upon the sharpness of a picture on the back screen. Immediately though, I noticed a lot of my images were grabbing focus on eyelashes rather than the eye itself, leaving the eyes slightly OOF. While I typically shot portraits at either f/2 and f/2.5 I figured buying a 1.4 and not shooting it wide open was like buying a Ferrari and only driving it to and from Starbucks.
Enter FoCal, a automated focus calibration software.Ībout a month back, I traded in my trusty 85mm f/1.8 for the Nikon flagship portrait lens, the 85 f1.4G. These discrepancies in camera / lens combination can be dialed in to get perfectly sharp images more consistently. While of course sometimes OOF images are due to user error, small variations in the lens and camera can result in less-than-sharp images. We invest so many of our hard-earned dollars into nice glass, painstakingly focus, then spend hours in post afterwards pulling our hair out when the eyes aren’t sharp. There are few things we, as photographers, are more OCD about than tack-sharp focus.
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