How to Easily Understand Lens Calibration 

The most thing after a long day of shooting is to find yourself with blurry images. If you consistently encounter this problem, then you might have a ‘missed focus’ issue.

If this is happening across multiple images, then it might not be down to your focusing skills. You’ll need to calibrate your camera to ensure your lenses can focus on a subject correctly.

Do You Need to Calibrate Your Lens?

Cameras lenses are so advanced these days that you can practically use them straight out of the box.

But unfortunately, camera lenses aren’t foolproof. Since they have moving parts, they are still prone to mechanical issues.

So does that mean you need to calibrate camera when it’s new? Not necessarily. But you may need to fine-tune your lens if you end up with blurry images, even when you’re focusing correctly.

Another reason why you should calibrate your lenses is when you’re using older optics.

Your lens from the ’80s may fit perfectly on your camera mount but there’s a good chance that the lens alignment may be off. Furthermore the technology behind their focusing system is older, so it may have issues “communicating” with your new device.

How Often Should You Calibrate Your Lens?

Once you calibrate lens, you generally don’t need to do it again. In most cases, your camera even stores a ‘preset’ that remembers the adjustments of any particular lens.

The presets are useful, especially since no two optical devices have the same adjustments. You have the option to save your calibration for an old 50mm lens and store another preset for an 85mm.

The methods of saving your adjustments vary from one manufacturer to the next. We suggest you consult your manual to help you figure out the process.

I can find this feature is under the AF Fine-Tune menu. After I calibrate lens, I go to List Saved Values to save my adjustments. (you’ll learn more about this later).

Of course you don’t have to save every single lens on your camera. After all, newer lenses don’t even need calibration at all unless you experience issues with them.

In general you should only save your adjustments for your older optics. But you should also do it on the new lenses if you find they’re always missing the focus point.

Remember that you may also need to calibrate your lenses again when you buy a new camera. Since your device is not familiar with the optical adjustments you made, then you’ll need to program it.

How Do You Calibrate Your Lenses?

When most people hear the word ‘calibrate,’ they think of something obtrusive and challenging to complete. With lens calibration, it’s effortless.

Nevertheless, this process requires a lot of attention. You need to make sure that the calibration you just did on your camera lens is precise and accurate.

Apart from the calibrator, you don’t need special tools to do calibrations. All you need for the most part is to push a few buttons and a lot of patience.

Without further ado, let’s get on with the step-by-step process!