Several months ago, I took my beloved favourite camera to a Hana soccer game, fully intending to take photos. Between the torrential rain, and my parents having come to watch I ended up not taking any photos. My camera stayed in my pack for the entire game. Sadly I hadn’t paid much attention to protecting it from the rain. (spoiler: wrapping a camera in a tattered plastic shopping bag, and putting it in an entry level day pack will lead to heartbreak if you stand in the rain for 2 hours.)
After the game ended I took a few of photos and they were all out of focus. I didn’t think much of it, but the next time I took soccer photos, they were all unsharp. And the time after that, more blurry photos. Time to take my head out of the sand. After trying multiple lenses on both camera bodies, I became reasonably confident both the body and the lens had issues.
I sent the body to Nikon (something I hate doing) but was still unsure what I should do about the lens. I’d bought some time waiting until the body came back, but soon would need to figure out how to ‘fix’ the lens. (My camera body is a Nikon D500 and the lens is an 80-200 AF 2.8)
When my body came back from Nikon, I wanted to figure out how to get my favourite lens back to being useful. My first plan was to setup my fancy test target try different AF-FineTune values. I eventually landed on the following setup:
- test target in the bright sun shine
- camera mounted on a tripod close enough that the target filled the frame (but far enough away that it could focus)
- shutter release timer
I forget the exact AF FineTune value that resulted from this exercise, but sadly when using the lens wide open, it still tended to focus behind the subject. 🙁
I was able to sort of work around this by:
- trying to focus in front of my subjects
- stopping down the aperture (eg F4)
But still, even with these adaptations I was getting a large portion of photos being blurry. Eventually, I tried a different experiment. I:
- took my son’s bike to a grassy field and set up the camera on a tripod 20 feet away
- set the zoom to 80mm (widest value)
- using typical settings (1/1000s, f2.8) took photos using different AF Fine Tune values (-20, -15, -10, -5, 0, 5, 10, 15, 20)
- Moved the camera a few different distances from the bike (35′, 45′, 70′) For the middle distances, I used multiple zoom values (typically 80mm, 125mm, 200mm) The further away I went, the longer the focal lengths I used.
- In all distance/focalLength combinations, I’d take photos with the same array of AF Fine Tune values
The results of this experiment were revealing. All photos were focused behind the bike. The -20 photos were generally less back focused, not much too blurry to be usable.
Unfortunately, the cost of repairing this lens most likely exceeds the cost of replacing it.
In happier news I have now acquired a very modern 70-200 F4 lens. Less shallow depth of field, but also less weight, and much less expensive. While I still dream of switching to mirrorless (I’d love to use a Z6iii) I’m enjoying the sharp photos I’m able to create with my 70-200 and D500. I’ve also enjoyed doing the ‘bike on grass’ experiment with different combinations of lens and body.