Lens Focus Calibration Tool Alignment Ruler Folding Card,Pack of 2

An amazing value for $5.00. There are many versions of this kind of thing, for anywhere from $30 to $120. Yes, most of the other versions are made from some sort of plastic and will last longer, but this works very, very well. Especially when you consider it's only $5. This is simply a heavy card stock, but when put together, it's actually quite sturdy. I would prefer it to be a bit bigger, and maybe the company will make a larger version for $8.00. <g> I would buy one in a heartbeat. Don't get me wrong, this works as is, I think it would be even better if it was larger only because it would then be better for wider lenses. With anything under 50mm lens, the target is a bit small, which puts the actual part of the calibration section too close to the target area. It still works, but you have to be careful to get the focus point perfect. Having said all that, it did show up a problem with the calibration on my camera that i was not aware of. After calibrating 4 different lenese, I ended up with a -9 adjustment of the MFA on my 70D. That's pretty consistent. Makes me happy that my lenes all seem to be good, and the camera was slightly out, and correctable. Honestly, this was the best 5 bucks I've spent in the last few years. I was close to dropping $85 on a different product that should be even better since it's slightly larger and a sturdy plastic, but I probably won't bother now. I would love to know someone locally that has one I could compare myself to see if more money really means a better product in this case. So, bottom line is I would highly recommend this focus target. If your camera can be adjusted by you, get one, you won't regret it. (oh yea, forgot - you get two of them for the $5 in case your dog eats one)

...and a great value, but note: first be sure your camera allows microadjustments to calibrate autofocus, because not all inexpensive or older camera bodies do. Look in your manual or search online to see if your camera offers this feature. Normally you can do this, if possible, at the MENU button and in Canon camera bodies that allow it, in a Custom Function submenu for Autofocus. If your camera can't adjust calibration, you can still use this to test, but you'd have to send equipment in for repair to get any problem corrected, and don't be surprised if the mfr. tests your gear and sends it right back unadjusted, saying it's within tolerance limits (happened to me). With adjustable gear that works properly, you can dial it right in, at least at your tested setting. Also even if your camera body allows adjusting the calibration of autofocus, if you just have inexpensive f/4+ kit lenses, you may not get much benefit from calibrating, whatever tool you use, because the depth-of-field on those lenses is usually close enough for autofocus jazz. These tools are most helpful for calibrating lenses that will be shooting wide open at f/2.8 or wider (smaller f/ number) which work with a very narrow depth-of-field, making autofocus often seem to just miss. You will get NO benefit in calibration accuracy buying a more expensive calibration tool than this one. All these tools just show you whether your lens is back- or front-focusing or dialed in. If it's off, you guesstimate a correction and try again, until it's right. (No tool can tell you exactly what correction is right. It's trial and error.) It's your *setup,* not the cost of a calibration tool, that is key to good results. There is at this writing a competing product that costs over 13 times as much as this one on amazon, and this one will perform just as well as that one. Yikes. You can even build a free one with materials around your house instead that will work just as well, but at this price, it was easier for me to just get this. You do need to learn how to use the tool. This one doesn't come with instructions, it's not intuitive, and if you try to wing it, some gotchas will probably getcha. Other reviews here go into the how-to, and there are a number of good free videos on YouTube demonstrating this product and others that helped me a lot. Just be aware, calibration tools are not plug'n'play; setup is critical, as I said; there are about a dozen guidelines to follow. But once you have it figured out, it goes pretty quickly, taking maybe ten minutes to calibrate a lens' autofocus. No calibration tool can fix photographer technique that is not optimal. Look for some YouTube videos on autofocusing to make sure you're doing it right. One important thing I learned watching one: my old-school technique of holding the shutter release halfway down to prefocus and then recomposing is a poor technique to use with a large-aperture lens wide open, because when you recompose, you change the focal plane just enough to frequently throw your "locked-in" subject out-of-focus. You're better off using Live View, or manually focusing, or at least dialing in one autofocus point on the subject and not recomposing after prefocusing through the viewfinder... or even better, try to avoid shooting wide open (but sometimes you need the extra light).

So I bought this knowing that it had a really small 0 focus target, meaning that it only REALLY works well if you're really close to it, enough to where your entire center focus point on your camera can cover the focus target. And that is this products biggest downfall in my opinion. Other than that, it's great. Especially for the price. I mean, comparable focus tools are 12+ TIMES THE PRICE - some magical how. Idk how that's even possible for them to cost that much, I mean... they're all just plastic and paper o_o ANYWAY: Here's how I got around that and turned this thing into a very useful focus tool that works for ALL of my lenses, ranging from 14mm all the way up to 1,200mm!!! 1. Print out a lens focus target - just google image search "lens focus target" and you'll find a ton of them. Print any of them out but try to cover the entire paper. I like the ones that have lost of stuff on the target so there is a lot to focus on (see the pictures attached for the target I used). 2. Cut out that target to exclude any extra bits of blank paper. 3. Cut out a piece of cardboard that has a long "stem" at the bottom. Make sure that this "stem" fits into the hole in the paper focus calibration tool (see photos attached). You'll want it to be long enough to where you can tuck it into the hole and then fold it, so it can be taped to the inner base of the focus calibration tool. I included rulers in the picture so you can kind of get an idea of lengths. Make sure to leave one side empty! This way you can still see the "ruler" on at least one side of the focus calibration tool. 4. Stick your target onto the cardboard using tape, glue or basically anything that works (and is light in weight). 5. Slide the "stem" of the cardboard into the hole of the focus calibration tool and bend it in an "L" shape towards the bottom. Tape the borrom of the "L" shape of the cardboard to the inner base of the focus calibration tool and tape the upright part of the "L" shape to the "target" of the focus calibration tool (see photos of the inner part of the calibration tool. 6. MAKE SURE that the part of the cardboard with the large target on it is pointed straight up and roughly in line with the "0" point of the focus calibration tool. NOTE: Due to the thickness of the cardboard, the new, larger target will be slightly pushed forward. But for the most part, this is negligeable. Just keep it in mind. Especially if you're using thicker cardboard. That's it! Now you can get even 30-50' away from the focus calibration tool and STILL get a good idea of where your focus point is hitting thanks to the larger focusing target! :) Is this the absolute best focusing tool ever after the modifications? No... But it's inexpensive and it seems to work really well. One of my lenses in particular was way off, this helped me get my subjects in the peak focusing point very quickly :) Hope this helps others out there! If you found it helpful, click the "Yes" buttons where it says: "Was this review helpful to you?" If not, leave a comment explaining why and I'll try to make it better :) I'd like to help people out there in any way I can :D Other notes, possibly to manufacturer: I really think you could make this tool a lot better by making the target a lot larger. It seems like you could include a second hard piece of paper to attach to this tool OR even have the "cutout" use a larger piece of the tool itself. It seems like there's a lot of space you could work with to achieve that. Also wouldn't mind if the tool itself was a little larger.

You can shell out another $1500 for a new body...or several thousand for new lenses.. or you could spend five bucks and an afternoon getting the very best out of what you already have. I have seven or eight low to mid-grade lenses and a Nikon D300s. Two of the eight were dead on. The others needed 2 to 4 degrees of tuning to hit the sweet spot. Not major changes, certainly, but just enough to be worth the effort. I don't make a living doing this, so a hundred dollar tool really wasn't really an option, but five bucks, yeah, I'm in. It worked very well. Not sturdy by any means, but can be re-used several different times if you take just a little care. Another buyer suggested adding a couple of pieces of tape to hold everything in place, and that definitely helps. Given the number of times an average or enthusiast photographer will use one of these, five bucks for two is a bargain. They do make a larger size, which would be nice, but I didn't really have any trouble focusing on the target using a center spot focus. It does help to use a good tripod, timer mode, and the on-camera flash to eliminate all the other variables when deciding between the fine tune settings.

I spent hours trying to calibrate my Sigma 35mm lens autofocus with this and it feels like such a waste of stress and time after trying a more expensive option (Vello LENS-2020 Lens Calibration Tool) I can't believe how much time I spent, ugh. All good now, and cheap as chips, I guess.

Of several paper targets I bought to calibrate some lenses, this one was the winner. The perpendicular focus plane, the checker patterns along each side, and the different scales all combined to make one target I could use reliably for a variety of lenses. While looking at the photos @ 100% the markings I made use of varied for different lenses. This was the key: comparing its different scales against each other to make sure I was seeing real differences in the changes being made and not just my perceptions of changes. I've seen both expensive and inexpensive targets have only 1 or 2 types of scales/gradients on them but this little guy has 3 scales and 3 sizes of checker patterns for a total of 6. Also, the longer lines running through the middle that extend the numeric scale were useful too (7 ways to check). I only wish the company who makes this would offer a larger, heavier model to handle telephoto lenses better.

Works great and good price. You could do as well with a sheet of newspaper and some sort of focus target (a playing card propped up facing straight towards your camera lens, for example) placed in the middle of it. But this is more convenient. Similar products (those with just a slanted scale and a focus target) that cost a lot more (some are a lot more) are kind of a rip-off. Some of the expensive alternatives include software, but I don't see where software would save any work or provide more accurate results unless maybe your computer monitor is too pathetic to show better detail than the tiny screen on the back of your camera. You need to view the focus test photos you take on the larger screen of your computer, and you already have software that does that, right? No instructions included which is OK. You are really better off doing some research online to learn and understand how to do "AF Fine Tune" (that's Nikon speak. Canon, Sony, etc. each use a different name for the same thing). Just following some instruction list without understanding would be frustrating and error prone. It's really a pretty simple process after you understand it. Basically, you let your camera auto-focus on the little vertical card in the middle of the tool, and your test photo will show where on the slanted scale is in-focus or blurry and hopefully the in-focus part is right next to the little vertical card. If not, then adjust AF Fine Tune in the camera & take another shot. I was at first concerned this tool might be too small, but it's really just the right size to show where your camera is actually focused. You don't do this procedure at 50 yards range (that would require huge targets).

This took some time to learn how to use. I first set the card stock up on a table with some books underneath it to give it some height. I then put some bright lighting over the top so the camera could see the relatively small numbers clearly. I put the camera on a tripod and used my Pentax K5 II level tool on the LCD to make sure it was perfectly level. I then raised the tripod so I could focus on the center position of the card. As a rule you should have the camera set back at least 5 times your focal length that you are calibrating. You want the camera to be as level to the card stock as possible. I then set the camera for the lowest F stop and set my focus to spot mode. I used a remote infrared trigger so I wouldn't have the camera move when the shutter released. (You will find that when shooting higher F stop numbers, your camera will use longer exposure times.) I then took three images. I shot in RAW format, but I think JPEG would have worked just as well, maybe even better as it would have processed the images brighter. It was very clear to me where my lens was focusing once I zoomed in at 100% using Adobe Lightroom. I tested both a Pentax 100mm Macro WR lens and a Tamron 17-50mm F2.8 zoom. Both were new lenses. The Pentax was dead nuts on but the Tamron was front focusing quite a bit at F2.8. I adjusted the fine focus to -10 and I could see it was now back focusing. I found that -6 gave me the best result. You will have to take some time in finding out what the right fine focus setting is for your particular camera. It can be somewhat difficult to see small changes in this focus adjustment. In the end, I don't think small changes in adjustment are going to make much difference in real life photos. As long as you get it close, your lens is going to take sharp images. This whole exercise took me about 2 hours to really learn how to use this tool. I could now do it easily in just 15 minutes. Before I used the tool I thought my Macro lens was off and the Tamron lens was spot on. I learned that it was the exact opposite. What I learned from using this tool, is it is very difficult to tell if a lens is front or back focusing without a tool like this. The one thing I don't like about this card stock is the center target is difficult to keep perpendicular to the back. There is nothing to hold it in place. I might try to use a piece of tape to keep it dead perpendicular to the scale in the future. I, like others would like this to be a bigger card stock, but for the money, this thing works just as well as the more expensive tools out there. I'm sure the more expensive tools would be a little easier to use, but at almost 10 times the cost, no thank you. If you spend some time with this inexpensive tool, you will get similar results.

Funciona bien. No es el mas fino pero si trabaja

good

Ok, aczkolwiek mógłby być wykonany ze sztywnego plastiku

Het middelste (focus) plaatje moet je zelf nog afknippen en rechtop terugplaatsen. Het is niet uitgesneden zoals op de foto doet vermoeden

Perfecto para ajustar el enfoque.