"And he said unto his lad, Run, find out now the arrows which I shoot. And as the lad ran, he shot an arrow beyond him."

1 Samuel 20:36

Recently I went on a photography excursion, bringing all my necessities with me to take advantage of any opportunities I would find. Finding a suitable place to set up shop, I went ahead and decided to do something I hadn't done for quite some time, and that was to manually recalibrate the focus on my lenses.

You see, over time (and a lot of picture taking) your D-SLR or mirrorless camera will eventually lose its precise focus spot (would that be a focal point?!) and need to be fine-tuned.

There is a tool that you can purchase that lets you Auto Focus Fine Tune or make Auto Focus Micro Adjustments to your lenses. They are both basically the same. Let's say you use your autofocus on an object, and instead of getting a sharp image, your focus lands either in front of your subject (front-focusing) or behind it (back-focusing)

Much like in the classic Frogger video games, just as your frog needs to land on that lily pad, so your focus needs to land on its target. Missing it by even a millimeter can completely undermine the purpose of having a high quality high resolution camera. After all, what's the point to having a full-frame sensor or a high megapixel count if your image isn't in focus when you're done!

Fortunately the majority of professional cameras allow you to make these refined adjustments so you get the image sharpness you are looking for.

You can purchase an Autofocus Calibration Target that will allow you to do just that. Simply by locking focus on the target, and then looking at the slanted ruler in the image it will let you know, by the numbers, where your focus is landing so you can compensate for it. They vary in price but you can find them at or under the 30 dollar range, and some even include a Gray Card for White Balancing, which I wrote a separate article about that here: Simple Tips For Better Pics 6: Balancing Act