M**Y
Very Useful Product
I am a serious photographer more interested in making great images than being a techie-type person. That said, I am very close to my equipment. I have the good fortune to have the best of both Canon and Nikon cameras and lenses. For example, have the D4, D800, D700, and a D7000 in the Nikon category. 5D Mark III and a T3i Rebel in the Canon camp. Lenses are those on everyone's wish list and I won't list them all here.I stay on top of various photo mags and blogs, reviewers, and commentators as I always learn something. So, I have seen what seems to me to be an increasing number of complaints about "back-focusing, front-focusing" and other lens related issues, even among the best glass made by Nikon and Canon. Just to be on the safe side, even though I haven't had any auto focusing concerns to date, I bought the Lens Align and spent a full day testing every camera and lens combination that I own. The results are very straightforward--not one lens/camera combination had anything but perfect focus performance. End of story for me.On the Lens Align product--easy to assemble. Then what? Had to go to the internet, YouTube, and other searches to get instructions on how to use the darn thing properly. Once that was sorted out, I was to put it mildly very impressed with how useful the product is. A really, really useful product. There are criticisms that it is overpriced, flimsy, not worth the money, yada, yada, yada. Let me say this--it is the CHEAPEST possible way to diagnose your camera/lens combinations to either prove or eliminate the potential autofocusing problems that are, in my estimation, significantly overstated. As good a photographer as I am after forty years of practice, I will tell you that not every shot I make is perfectly in focus--I move, the subject moves, the wind blows, I ham hand the shutter button--I could go on. Those are not autofocusing problems--they are human error. There is a lot of human error in photography. To eliminate it in my studio, I rarely shoot free-hand--the tripod is my friend. With a tripod, my keeper rate is three times my freehand rate.So, back to the Lens Align--the manufacturer should, without question, do a video on properly using this tool. I agree that what you are buying is a bit overpriced but the peace of mind that the product delivers (either things are good or not and, if not, you can microadjust or send in for calibration)is worth every penny. If you want inexpensive and useful tools, don't get involved in photography!
A**R
Good but better instructions would have helped a lot.
I calibrated several lenses with my D500 and D810 bodies and the LensAlign system seems to work well. I still need to get out and just take some pictures to be absolutely sure, but a preliminary cross check of my results with the AFtune 'On' against AFtune 'Off' definitely shows improvement in point of focus clarity. So it seems mission accomplished.Build quality of the system is fine as far as I am concerned. Very clever design...but it is not the most rugged in construction. However, I'm not sure what other practical alternates there would be (all metal???...I don't think so). I'm sure I will get many years out of it as long as I take reasonable care of it. So, from that standpoint I am happy.As some others have mentioned, I was not happy with the instructions...or lack of instructions more appropriately. Yes, I found the stuff on line and on the LensAlign website and watched it all. It seemed that depending on where I looked, there were different models with different print patterns and I just wasn't sure what I was going to get. But, okay.Other than that, my specific issues are:Sighting ports - there is a 'A', 'B', and 'C' port noted as "default", "close", and "Macro" respectively. Okay, Macro I got...but what focal lengths should the 'A' and 'B' ports be used for? I could find absolutely no direction anywhere and just kind of stumbled my way through it (I was calibrating 50, 85, 70-200 and 200-500mm lenses).After ordering, I saw there was an option for a longer ruler for longer focal lengths. I checked the LensAlign site and all I could get from it was that calibrating my 200-500 at 500mm was "marginal" and the quite expensive long ruler was recommended. What the heck does marginal mean? Well, I know now because I figured out they mean marginal because of the length of the "standard" ruler is maxed out in depth of field with a 500mm lens. But, again, I got it to work but it would have been better if all of this was made a bit clearer.Speaking of rulers, one side (side B) states "This side for special use only". The other side (side A) states "Optimized for Focus Tune Software". I don't have the software and what the heck does "special use" mean??? I used side 'A'...but again, just not at all clear.The distance to use for testing is also not clear. Yes, the site has the distance tool which shows minimum and maximum distances...but, what happens if you bust the minimum distance? What happens if you shoot in between the two? Are you better off shooting at one over the other? Some specific guidance as to what the impact these variables have would have been helpful.The procedure has a lot of different steps to it. It takes time...and gets easier to use as you get used to the process. But, this is not a quick "plug and play" thing...you will have to work at. In the end, the results are worth the effort. For example, I had to really crank in the compensation for my 70-200 lens for my D810 body (+17) but only needed +3 on my D500. I don't know how I would been able to figure this out without a tool like this.So, again, mission accomplished. Better instructions would have made it an easy 4 or 5 star rating.
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