How to Test My Nikon 24-70 Lens For Sharpness

ianbarber

ianbarber

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For sometime now, I have been thinking that my Mikon 24-70 f2.8 Lens is not as sharp as it should be. It could be my eyes that are letting me down but I am not sure.

Can anyone tell me what is the best way to setup a shot so I can upload the file out of the camera so someone can inspect it for me. Also do I need to take this in RAW or JPG.
 
Line up three C batteries about 3" further-in from each other. Place your camera on tripod. Use a cable release, or put it on timer with Mirror Lock Up. Aim at the centre battery shoot and peep, repeat for other two batteries.

Try this at f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6 ... all the way up to f/22 and use various focal lengths.

Of course, you could substitute the batteries for Coca Cola cans, Pepsi will not work :p (just kidding).

Not wanting to scare you, but I did have a copy of this lens that had a focusing issue; took Nikon a while to fix, but they did get it sorted and came back sharp as sharp can be.
 
You can also buy proper focusing tester thingies, or Im sure I saw a post on here a few days ago, someone had built thier own.
 
Wail said:
Line up three C batteries about 3" further-in from each other. Place your camera on tripod. Use a cable release, or put it on timer with Mirror Lock Up. Aim at the centre battery shoot and peep, repeat for other two batteries.
Click to expand...

I prefer to use books - gives a flat surface for the camera to focus on, as batteries and cans are round, the actual focus point may not be exactly where the icon is in the viewfinder.

Nikon aslo accepted the book shots as proof that the camera was not focusing correctly, and fixed it.
 
OutLore said:
I prefer to use books - gives a flat surface for the camera to focus on, as batteries and cans are round, the actual focus point may not be exactly where the icon is in the viewfinder.

Nikon aslo accepted the book shots as proof that the camera was not focusing correctly, and fixed it.
Click to expand...

Sounds more reasonable :thumbs:
 
Is it out on auto focus or manual focus? If auto focus I purchased the Lenscal, used this as a target and set the fine tune on the D300 to match the lens. Now whichever lens I use the camera auto sets to that particular lens.

Not that cheap the Lenscal, but it is a bit of kit that lasts forever and can be used for any make of camera/lens combo that has a fine tune AF setting on the camera.

A tip I was given was to set the camera up so the shutter doesn't work until focus is established
D300 menu a1 AF-C and AF-S priority selection - focus
Increased my saved photos no end
Realspeed
 
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You may find the server won't accept RAW files due to size and ask you to convert to Jpeg instead.
Just a thought ,are you using a tripod or hand held? Camera shake I am thinking of and any example needs to be taken using a tripod. I don't have the steadiest of hands and find that using a support helps a lot.

Realspeed
 
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ianbarber said:
Im not quite sure if or where the issue is, what I wanted to do was take a shot and then upload the Raw file to my server for someone to have a peep at
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If it's AF, then there are quite a few threads on that.

If it's the lens itself that's questionably sharp, then compare it side by side with another lens of known quality. Looking at any image in isolation is rarely conclusive, unless it's terrible.

Are you happy with your 50mm prime? Then set the zoom to 50 and shoot identical images through the parallel aperture ranges. Raw or JPEG won't matter, so long as you don't change anything between the two lenses.
 
I am more happy with my 70-200 f2.8 and this is what led me to think the 24-70 is lacking sharpness. I appreciate that RAW out of the camera can be a little soft thats why I was wondering if I should shoot JPG for the test.

I am going to setup the tripod in the morning and shoot some book ends to see how it performs
 
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