Nikon 200-500 FINE TUNE?

jpgreenwood

jpgreenwood

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jason
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Here are some examples of photos i took. I always try and focus on the eye. Although im not very steady hand held, these were took on a blustery day, F5.6 at 390mm and 1/200sec.
I think the lens might be slightly front focussing.
Wildlife isnt my strongest subject and i really use the lens for aviation, but i need it to be spot on.
Would you recommend fine tuning it on my D500, or does it look as close as can be?
_JAY4961-Edit by jason greenwood, on Flickr
_JAY4961-Edit-2 by jason greenwood, on Flickr
 
That looks good to me. You're wide open. Much slower shutter speed than recommended for the focal length (and crop).
Have you found the sweet spot for the lens at each focal length with respect to the aperture?
 
Fine tuning can be really frustrating and does not always in my experience resolve the issue. I spent an awful to of time trying to fine tune a 200-400 Nikon zoom a few years ago and I am not really sure it actually improved the pictures in the end. Fine tuning zooms is even harder as you have to pick a focal length to do the tuning at. The image of the robin zooms like it is front focused but @1/200 it might never be that sharp, with a potentially mobile subject. When focus tuning I have always found it hard to separate focusing issues (front focus/back focus) from reproducibility issues, i.e. if I take a shot and refocus and take it again is the plane of focus in exactly the same plane. I found I needed to look at multiple images and effectively average the result.

Using a focus target on a tripod, camera on a tripod and additional lighting focus tuning does seem to help but it is not very easy and for the best results you need to reproduce the subject distance you intend to take pictures at. The software solutions might be better and I am sure take a lot of guess work and subjectivity out of the process but I have not tried these. I guess what I am saying is before you start this take some test images of static well lit subject and make your decisions based on these.
 
as the other comments if you still have the shot on your card ,put it back in the camera and ascertain actual focus point .you will probably find its not where you think it is .hand held will always be slightly off due to the camera moving as you depress the shutter button
 
Jeff that's excellent advice. Ive never thought of that before. So, i just checked and the focus point is just below the eye, on the "shoulder?"
However, when i set the shot up, I pressed the BBF and got the confirmation beep whilst on the eye.
 
It’s as you push the shutter down it automatically pushes the lens down every action has a reaction . It helps to shoot burst even on stationary birds as the chances are it will bounce back up again
 
So, I started off by using the cameras own fine tuning system and after a couple of goes, it appeared to be settling on +4. Setting the lens at 500mm, F5.6 and about 15 meters away from the target.
If anything, i would have expected a - number but hey-ho. So i then went on to using a ruler on a 45 degree angle and took many many shots at various tuning ranges, from zero to +10 and down to -10.
I finally settled on +4 which looked sharpest at the point where i was focussing on.
I then took a couple of test shots in the garden at F5.6 and 500mm which is where i would normally use the lens for fast aviation.
Im not sure where the sweet spot for this lens is yet.
_JAY5066 by jason greenwood, on Flickr
_JAY5062 by jason greenwood, on Flickr
 
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