Sharpen your vision

Discover how to make your lenses the best they can be. James Abbott shows you how to improve AF performance

We all want to take the sharpest images possible but buying the best lenses available will only take you so far. It’s certainly not what you want to hear, but other factors such as light, technique, AF performance and AF calibration between camera and lens can all play a part in reducing image sharpness. And while we can’t control all of these issues, all of the time, the one we can take control of is lens calibration.

Lens calibration, as the name suggests, is a way of calibrating lenses to camera bodies to iron out any autofocus errors that may result in a lens focusing just in front or just behind the selected point of focus. When shooting at narrow apertures this marginal inconsistency probably won’t reveal itself, but as soon as you shoot wide open, focus problems could seriously impact your photography. So, here’s how you can significantly improve the AF performance of your lenses when they need it.

Why calibrate your lenses

Modern lenses can be truly amazing performers. Designed for use, in many cases, with highperformance cameras, lenses are capable of resolving even the finest detail at ultra-high-resolutions. But, and it’s a big but, no matter how expensive or indeed inexpensive your lenses are, they may not always be performing at their best by focusing in front or behind the actual point of focus.

To be completely honest, severe front or back focusing, as these problems are known, are rare but subtle focusing issues in these areas are much more common. The result of this could be that