Joelbarton87 wrote:
You may have just hit the nail on the head and I have to admit I did not know about that problem. Presumably if I had a lens calibrated for the 60D when I bought a new body I would need it recalibrating for that body? If I upgraded my body it would be to a 5D mkiii as I have been talking to my misses and managed to persuade her to let me do it.
Not necessarily. It may be that it is just the combo of the lens you have now and THAT 60D body. Obviously, some 60D's must come from the factory working with several lens okay or there would be more complaints, but that's where it gets to be a little complicated. When you calibrate, we say "calibrate a lens to this body," when in reality, it is actually calibrating the body to the lens. The body is adjustable, not the lens, but it seems that it is the precision or lack thereof in the construction of the lens that makes THAT lens is okay for one body and not the next so it may be that moving the lens from one body to another accidentally finds a perfect match because the new body may have the calibration perfect for that particular lens.
We have to face a fact here - Canon started including the option to calibrate lens in their bodies fairly lately. That could have been a result of the imprecision in lens building and people who were not satisfied with what they got and sent it back, hence Canon came up with the idea of allowing the customer to calibrate their own equipment rather than creating all the returns. Each of the cameras that allow micro-adjustment retains a record of the calibrated settings necessary for up to 25 lens and you may need to calibrate each of the lens you have to those bodies to create that onboard database of minute adjustments so each time you mount a lens the body knows what it has to do to return to the calibrated setting for that particular lens.
Calibration may involve more than I know about it but it appears that doing a test to determine if a lens is soft because it is focusing in front or back of the precise spot you want to be sharpest and during calibration the sensor moves back or forward to that precise focus spot when you adjust and then remembers those settings for when that lens is remounted later. There is a reason that all of a sudden Canon decided to include that feature. It apparently allowed them to put the onus for sharp focus on the customer and give them the ability to do the adjustments so they didn't have to and also permitted them to be much less precise in building the lens while not suffering all the complaints and returns. In the "prosumer" line, the ability to micro-adjust first appeared, I believe, in the 50D, and has been put in the 5D, 5d2, 7D, and 5D3 in that order but for some un-explainable reason, left it out of the 60D. Crazy. So, the rest of the answer is that if you upgrade to the 5D3 and your new L lens is soft, you can fix it by using Google.
Before you do anything, you could, maybe should, perform a test on what you have now. The latest craze is to use a coke can, totally secure your camera so you don't have to touch it while testing, and aim at the fine lettering on the can, tripod, mirror lockup, remote release, or use the 10 sec timer so after you press the shutter button all vibration or movement has time to settle before the shutter fires. There is ample info on procedure and technique using both Google and Youtube if you prefer video. Using a Coke can replaces the necessity to buy or build a test target and shows how quick focus falls off as the can turns. Search of instructions on how to use a Coke can to micro-adjust or calibrate as opposed to just searching on those terms alone.
One further thing - there is a marvelous piece of software that allows you to calibrate with your computer when you have a body YOU can calibrate and offers some other advantages for you as well. It is called "Focal" by Reiken. There are three levels and good advantages with each rung on the advantages ladder. You order and download so you're working it in minutes.
http://www.reikan.co.uk/focalweb/ Several uhh members including myself use it and everyone seems to really like it although certainly one can calibrate without it pretty simply.