This past weekend I did something I had never done before, which isn’t hard to do with camera stuff since I’m so new to this all. I calibrated my lenses!

What the heck does that even mean?!

It means tweaking the autofocus of your camera for the lens that you have on it. This hopefully means faster autofocus and sharper images. And you want to do this and check this, because each camera and lens are different. Each combination of lenses and cameras is different. This means that the manufacturers can’t get everything 100% correct all the time. It would be great if they could, but, there are just too many variables in the way for that. So, we put the lens on the camera, and do some micro adjustments to the autofocus to get things as correct as possible.

With my Sigma 150-600mm Sport, I’ve had an issue where if you pick up the lens and start shooting, it won’t engage in the autofocus (AF) right away. You have to manually focus a bit before the AF will take hold and finish the focusing job. This is a bit of a PITA for when you need to very quickly get the shot as you often do with wildlife. Because of this issue, I and been thinking about doing this for a while, to see if it will fix it. Spoiler: I don’t know if this fixed the issue, as I have not had a chance to play with it since. But I also don’t really think it will have fixed it. Just have sharper images for when it does kick in.

When I got my Sigma 150-600, it came with a thing, called LensAlign, to help you figure out your lens AF points. It is a gizmo that you put together, set it up and look at different points on the gizmo and see where you think you are focused and where you really are focused. It is a really cool design and super simple to put together. Probably one of the easiest things ever to put together, the directions were great, and the pieces are labeled so you can’t muck it up at all. As you can see in the image of it, it has a slanted ruler like thing, and a bunch of bulls eyes and the like. Yup, all the technical jargon here!

What you do is using the Lens Align, you align it to your lens using some sighting holes on it. Then you unfocus your lens, then you auto focus it, and take a picture. You then look at where it focused and can adjust things as needed from there. Easy! Right? Maybe? Not really…

I took the picture, I looked at the picture on the screen of the camera. I looked at the picture on my computer screen. And I couldn’t tell what was sharp or not where it was supposedly focused. I do have an eye issue (astigmatism) where I have slight blur, so that definitely does not help. I decided it was time to see if there was a better way, a computerized way that can do the looking for me to see if things were sharp or not.

I started looking at the software that is suppose to work with Lens Align, and it seemed kind of pricey, but I didn’t really know much about it. I did what everyone does, and YouTubed it and the only videos I found on it were by the people that make the software. No one else really seems to use it. That there is a red flag. The next thing I noticed was that you have to take a bunch of pictures, upload to your computer, let it analyze them, then go back take more pictures, and back to the computer, etc, until the software figured out what you needed to do for the camera to be at the correct settings. That sounds like a bit old PITA right there.

I decided to see if there was something else out there. And I was very happy I did.

I came across multiple people using something called FoCal. And right off the bat, I was hooked, because you hooked up the camera to the computer so you don’t have to do any back and forth with the files! It does most of the heavy work for you as well with most settings and such. It was also about the same price as the other software, so, I grabbed the old MC and bought a copy.

So yes, no sponsored content here, I bought it all with my own money.

The first thing you need to do is print out the image that you will be pointing the camera at. Then put it on a wall someplace where you can make sure it gets plenty of light (something I struggled with in my dark house!) You will also want to make sure you have plenty of space to do this with. If you are testing a 600mm lens, like I was, you will need 12 meters of space. That is 40 feet. That’s a long way. And I could only get to about 11.3m (37 feet.) And the cool thing about FoCal is, it knew. It knew I was at 11.3m, and it warned me, that it was shorter than it should be. But, I had no more space at all, so that extra .6m was not going to happen at all.

When you first setup, the software will run some tests whilst connected to your camera. It will check a variety of things like the distance, and amount of light. There are a couple of things that it cannot do by itself, like set the camera to aperture priority. So, you will need to know your camera and how to get to those settings. As well as how to set the micro adjustments for auto focus. So, read your manual or other books you have about your camera!

Once you and the software are happy with how things are set it, you tell it to do its job. It will change some settings, take images, analyze, make graphs, then it will stop, flash on the screen, and if you have your audio turned up, it will literally tell you to change your autofocus micro settings. Then you tell it you did that and it goes back to doing its job.

You go back and forth several times, until it says it has figured out your best settings for the camera and lens and you just set it and forget it. That is if you have a camera that can remember which lens is attached and can store that info. The Canon 5D Mark IV, which I have, can remember 40 different lenses, so I don’t have to worry!

I went through this process for the Sigma 150-600mm Sport lens I have, as well as a nifty fifty 50mm F1.4 lens that my Beautiful Bride had gotten for her camera. And I recently purchased the Canon 16-35mm F2.8L III, and did the testing with it as well. Which was kind of sad as that was the first time the lens was actually on the camera, so the first images, weren’t even real images.

This whole process actually took me the better part of a day (8am – 3pm) as I tried to figure it all out. So it is time consuming, but I’m expecting the results to be well worth it when I get time to get out side and play with the lenses again!

Hey Gang!

Today we are going over the second part of my trip to Sheldon Lake State Park back on 2019-01-05. We will check out some more pictures I took that didn’t make it to the video, and I will babble some more about the day.

This cardinal was absolutely handsome in his breeding plumage. Extremely bright red and looking fine for the ladies! They can be quite fierce though and will defend their territories. There has been many a times when a pair of cardinals came after me because I was too close to where they were hanging out. So, be careful if you are walking amongst them, and they are feeling feisty. They will come after you too!

Sheldon Lake is a lot of fun. With all of the ponds there from when it was a fish hatchery you get so many chances to see different wild life, at each pond. It is like each pond has its own ecosystem. Different animals and plants are in each one, so each pond is like changing a channel on the TV. Some are just birds, some have snakes, some gators and river otters oh my!

The other side of the park has the coastal prairie, where a whole other ecosystem lives. The area is awesome as a whole.

This cute little guy, the Ruby-crowned Kinglet, are fun to watch, but hard to capture! They bounce around quickly looking for their snacks of bugs and insects. Quite often you will see several of them around, so it it can make it even harder to decide which one to focus on as they jump around.

The day was pretty cool, so finding the reptiles was not easy. There were no snakes or alligators to be seen anywhere. But the frogs and turtles did eventually come out.

This Red-eared Slider came out to check things out. Sadly someone took a chunk out of the side of its head so you cannot see its red ear. But, that is Pond Life. Everyday is a struggle for survival.

Shortly after seeing this guy it was time for me to head on back. So, I packed up my gear and started the drive out. And luckily as I was driving out, the Kingfisher that almost hit me on the way in to the park was chilling on a tree, and I was able to check it out and take a couple pics of it… Check out the video to see that guy!

Today we are talking about my latest video that went live yesterday. Part One of my VLOG where I was at Sheldon Lake State Park on 2019-01-05.

Yes, I’m blogging about my vlog. And I will tend to do that, blog about a vlog. This way I can bring you some more behind the scenes information as well some extra images that don’t make it to the video for whatever reason. Like this one….

This great blue heron was just walking around the bank of the first pond, and was in some absolutely gorgeous morning light. It was really hard to walk away from him to go find other images to take.

Let’s keep in mind that the day started off in the upper 30s fahrenheit (3-4C) so it was a chilly day to start with. But the temperatures did warm up as the day went on and we ended up with upper 60s (18-20C.) Let’s also keep in mind that there are alligators in the park. Especially these first two ponds I’m visiting. Because it was cold in the morning there was no real issue with the gators, since they were hunkered down in the water someplace. But as the temperatures warm up, they will rise to the top of the water and crawl out on to the banks to get some of those sun rays. So you always need to make sure you are aware of your surroundings when taking photos!

The above great egret was also at the same pond chilling out in the wonderful lighting and I was able to get a couple really nice reflection shots of it like the above one.

I’m still learning the whole DSLR camera game, and the Sigma 150-600 lens is my second lens. This is the second time I took it out to get some photos and I was really impressed with how nice the images are. The only issue I have with the lens, which could be a completely user error at this point, is you have to kick start the auto focus. If it is completely out of focus when you goto take the image, and you try to auto focus, it just won’t. You have to get it a bit in focus before the camera will take over and focus for you. A bit of a pain when you are in a rush, but I have yet to really sit down and play around with things to see how to make that better.

With the whole learning still, I still do something that some people are against, and some people are for, which is cropping. Most of the images you will see in my videos are cropped, up to this point anyways. The images above were also cropped. The next image is not cropped, then after it will be the image after I cropped it so you can see what I see and do with them.

A lot of the things I take images of are quite far away and even at 600mm don’t quite fill the frame as you can see with the cute little grebe there. So, I crop. Sometimes though, I do manage to get up close and personal with some images and don’t need to crop them, which of course is preferred.

And that is about all I have for today. Please check out the video below and enjoy. And of course, stay tuned for Part Two soon!

Cheers Gang!