Monday, June 6, 2011

D7000 – No backfocus that I can see …

I speculated in the dogs article that my D7000 might be giving me backfocus. Well, I’m pretty sure that it is set perfectly. I have seen nothing but sharp images until this evening, and of course this evening I was chasing a fast moving puppy around in the dark. Plus, the 16mp of this sensor demands faster shutter speeds than I am used to requiring.

Which tells you that I should be carrying the D700 at times like this. Despite the amazing high ISO of the D7000, the D700 has less pixel density which is my friend in low light for several reasons, one of which is that I would get less visible CA and I would get less motion blur. It only takes a pixel or two to kill sharpness.

Anyway, I ran a quick test on the 18-200VR and a control on the Sigma 105mm 2.8 Macro and found that my focus zone is perfect … a little but more in focus behind the bar that in front, but nicely centered otherwise.

One interesting result here is that the Sigma really shows some fringing wide open. Of course, I shot this in the orangest light you have ever seen, so the blue channel is really pushed here, but still … the megazoom looks fine but the macro is challenged.

Anyway … the next time I am chasing Lexi around in the evening I think I’ll bring either the 85mm 1.8D set at f/2.2 or the Sigma set at 3.5 … both should do a great job …

Update: Although I think the 70-300VR was accurate enough, I decided to give it a slight tweak at 300mm to achieve this balance.

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