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.
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.