mawyatt Loc: Clearwater, Florida

I just read in a camera review site where the D7000 might have a slight backfocus issue. Has anyone experienced this? The site also mentioned the D7000 has an adjustment calibration routine to correct backfocus. Anyone try this?

Thanks

MT Shooter Loc: Montana

The camera itself does not have a "backfocus" issue. Some aftermarket lenses can back-focus or front-focus when used on many DSLR cameras. Most Prosumer level bodies, like the D7000, have an allowance to adjust the focus issues with these lenses. Nikons lenses are properly focus tuned to Nikon bodies to within fractions of a millimeter and such an issue almost never comes up with Nikon lenses of the same generation as the body you use. Older Nikon AI and AI-S lenses can give a little front or back focus issue but it is usually VERY slight.
The D7000 allows you to Fine Tune up to 20 seperate lenses to the body. I have 12 lenses at present and have only had to Fine Tune one Sigma which was front-focusing about 5" at 100 yards. and only at 400mm to 500mm on the zoom. The results were worth the trouble.

BuckeyeTom73 Loc: Chicago area

There was a minor problem with a very few D7000 bodies which backfocused. Google D7000 back focus and you can find out too much about it; you'll have to separate fact form fiction. There are numerous focus test charts and routines which you can use to check your camera. To confirm it's the body you'll need to find the problem on more than one lens. If two or more lenses backfocus by about the same amount it is likely the body. Nikon does fix them if still in warranty. Also need to check the firmware is the latest level.

melphoto60

youtube see dom brower, dont remember what camera hs is using but has a nice video about how to check if a camera and lens are back/front foucsing...

Utah Native Loc: Utah

The Nikon Rep was in town the other day and the focus question was put to him straight out. does the 7000 have a focus problem and he said YES. He also said that nikon will fix it if we ship it to them. I was with another nikon user so i didnt pay a lot of attention but i think i heard him say they would pay shipping also. at that time my 7000 was new and i had had little time to get to know it. I soon found that i wasn having a soft fucus problem but thought it was me. Today I shot the same object at the same distance off the same tripod under the same conditions with the same lense, a nikon 70/300 f5.6 at 300mm, I used my old d70 and my new d7000. Looking at blown up images side by side the 7000 is definately soft compared to my d70. I would get ahold of nikon and ask them what they recommend. If its their lens as mine was they should take care of it if its under warranty. The only variable in the equation was the camera body. back focus should fix the problem but being as how nikon has admitted a problem I would contact them unless its not a problem with you to adjust the back focus.

mawyatt Loc: Clearwater, Florida

Utah,

I have a D70 also and will try your approach. Keep us informed as to what you decide to do.

Thanks

Utah Native Loc: Utah

i do not tend to change my lenses as long as they are good therefore i have some of the same lenses that i bought back in the 70s. so given that i will probably try to go through the back focus proceedure first and see how that handles things.

mawyatt Loc: Clearwater, Florida

I just finished checking my D7000 and D70. I used my 50mm f1.8 wide open on both and found the D7000 OK, but the D70 has about 10mm front focus.

This explains why a few years back I had such a devil of a time getting tack sharp macro images of silicon chips we designed. The auto focus was never sharp and I ened up doing a manual focus on everything. I thought it was me and not knowing how to use the equipment properly. When I used the D7000 last year for the same thing (different chips though) I got much better results with autofocus.

I used this setup:

http://focustestchart.com/focus10.pdf


Anyway, how do you correct for this in the D70?

mawyatt Loc: Clearwater, Florida

I just reran the test but near the minimum focus distance with the Nikon 50mm f1.8. The D7000 is OK and the D70 isn't as bad as I indicated above. Then I used the Nikon 105 macro to get even closer and the results were even better for the D70, D7000 was OK here as well. so I don't think my D70 is that bad afterall, which is good because I still want to use it.

Utah Native Loc: Utah

its also good that your 70 isnt as bad as you thought because the D70 cannot be adjusted like the 7000 can. if it can be adjusted i dont know how.

claire

I just got my d7000 back from NIKON and it had a back focus issue. I got this camera in December and thought it might be me not being use to it- but it turned out to be the camera which needed adjustments. Glad I sent it in. It is now tac sharp like my old D90