Blog Archives

You NEED to tune your DSLR autofocus!

Image of FoCalCam-3000 with some light rays

I try my very best to avoid making statements that I can’t back up, so I’m going to do just that for the following one: “You are almost certainly not getting the sharpest shots from your DSLR – and it’s not your fault!” What if I then told you there’s an easy fix? Read on …


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Mirrorless AF Calibration – Part 5: The Autofocus Processor

Lens, sensor and AF Processor render

In previous posts, I’ve covered issues that might affect the AF Sensor and the Lens. The last part of the Autofocus System is the AF Processor – the brains behind the whole operation. When I talk about the AF Processor, I’m talking about a conceptual block of functionality – It may be a dedicated chip …


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Mirrorless AF Calibration – Part 3: On-Sensor Phase-Detect Issues

Two microlenses and masks and colour filter arrays

In part 2, we covered the operation of the AF sensor, so now it’s time to take a look at some potential problems that could occur at the sensor which may affect the sharpness of our final images. This post will specifically look at issues relating to the phase-detection process occurring on the image sensor, …


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Mirrorless AF Calibration – Part 2: On-Sensor Phase Detect Autofocus

A number of sensels complete with masks and colour filters and light rays.

Overview Autofocus (AF) technology has revolutionised the world of photography, allowing photographers to capture sharp images quickly and consistently. One of the most popular and widely used autofocus technologies is Phase Detect Autofocus (PDAF). In this blog post, I’ll delve into the inner workings of PDAF so we have a solid foundation for understanding why …


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Mirrorless AF Calibration – Part 1: You SHOULD Calibrate your Mirrorless Autofocus!

Render of AF Fine-tune options on glass panels.

“Mirrorless cameras don’t need calibrating.” You hear that a lot, but is it true? At Reikan, we’ve been gathering autofocus calibration results for almost 10 years now from users of our FoCal software, which includes data from users of Nikon Z-series mirrorless cameras… and it suggests that you should calibrate your mirrorless camera.  I wanted …


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The new Nikon Z7 – investigating with Reikan FoCal

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ll be aware of the release of Nikon’s first full-frame mirrorless cameras – the Nikon Z6 and Nikon Z7. Our Nikon Z7 arrived at FoCal HQ last Thursday in the form of the “24-70 + FTZ Kit”. The documentation isn’t available from Nikon yet to control the camera …


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Do I need to calibrate autofocus?

AF Microadjustment Values for ALL Canon cameras and lenses

We’re often asked whether there really is any point to calibrating your camera autofocus. Obviously we’re going to say a big, fat yes! otherwise FoCal wouldn’t exist, but I wanted to show a few charts to explain the sort of performance you’re likely to get “out the box”. When FoCal is used to calibrate or analyse a …


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5D Mark IV “Dual Pixel Raw” – Focus Overlay

Canon’s new 5D Mark IV has been announced and includes a feature that’s got our attention. The Dual Pixel Raw format allows for new types of post capture analysis, it’s early days but so far looks very interesting! Dual Pixel Raw Apart from the usual incremental improvements on the 5D line of cameras, Canon have …


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Image Stabilisation Settling Time and Image Quality

The Mac version of FoCal is coming on very nicely, and we’re preparing for a public Beta release for FoCal Pro users within the next few days (keep an eye out!).  Right now, we’re doing some final tests and creating the OSX version of the manual.  In doing so, we have to run all the …


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