Quick question on micro adjustment

danjama

danjama

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Hi all, just a quick one. I have a Canon 50mm 1.8 that front focuses by about 7 miles. I bought it back in March but I've lost the receipt. I know it's a cheap lens but before I bin it I wanted to ask the following.

Unfortunately my 60d doesn't have a micro adjust function. However, I have a 6d at work. I'm wondering, if I micro adjust the lens on the 6d, will it adjust it permanently or is it only going to apply when attached to the 6d?

Thanks in advance :)
 
7 miles!!!

Seriously though the MA will apply only to the 6D as it is an in body adjustment only.
 
Ideally as you say if you can try with your body before commit that would be great. Going to the 1.4 will actually make things more tricky as the dof wide open is smaller that the 1.8 which means the body and lens will have to be spot on together.

The alternative but more costly is to get a Sigma lens that supports lens adjustments using their additional USB dock. It is far more costly but there are bargains to be had second hand (they crop up here in the sale section). Otherwise consider changing bodies either up to the 70d or to a full frame. If you could pick up a cheap 70d and retain your 50 1.8 plus sell your 60d it might work out at roughly not much more than buying a 50 1.4 for your existing body. MA problems cured and a newer body with some features (image quality wise nothing really in it between them).

Good luck!
 
Thanks Sharky. Some good options to consider there, I love man maths to make purchases work haha :). I'm actually already saving for a 6d for myself but that's a while off. Good point you've made on the 1.4 being even trickier, so I may just hold off until i've upgraded my body.
 
Yeah man maths in full flow ;). For now stop down the lens to increase the dof, use live view or manual focus.
 
Note that many wide aperture 50mm lenses of older design suffer from aperture related focus shift due to spherical aberration. If you adjust this to get perfect AF wide open you may lose it as you close down, and vice versa. DSLR AF isn't perfect, and is often not quite good enough for the most difficult focusing situations. That's why the top cameras with the best AF also have the best manual focus aids.
 
danjama said:
Fair point Chris. But it irks me that I see plenty of people using the nifty fifty and getting decent results, and mine struggles to focus properly in even simple situations!
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I adjusted mine to be sharpest around f4. That kept it sharp at f2.8 upwards, but f1.4 was seriously off. If I adjusted it for f1.4 everything but f1.4 was off. So I used manual focus at f1.4, and got good results. I was told that some photographers learned how much off their lens was at f1.4, and just swayed that little bit after half pressing the shutter before pushing it fully home. That others are getting good results with their nifty fifties doesn't mean they got the AF to do it :-)
 
You have to adjust it wide open to be accurate. The caveat to that is that it won't necessarily make it accurate at all distances. Try to figure out the rough lens to subject distance you use the 50mm at the most frequently and adjust it to that.
 
The23rdman said:
You have to adjust it wide open to be accurate.
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Not if the lens suffers from aperture related focus drift, in other words, focus changes as aperture changes. This happens at wide apertures with lenses which suffer from spherical aberration, which many of the older design "nifty fifties" do.
 
Is this a case of if you look for problems you find problems?
 
Not at all redsnappa. As I said it's front focusing quite dramatically, i'm not imagining it. I shoot mainly automotive and portraiture, so it's pretty obvious when the lens has mis-focused.

23rdman is spot on. I'm a technician by trade so if something is broke I try to fix it.
 
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