Macro focusing problems and eventual success :)

Since I first got my dedicated lens , I’ve always hated macrophotography. No matter how hard i tried I somehow always ended up with a lot of shots severely out of focus (even when I was damn sure I *got it*). Shooting handheld and not bothering to use manual focus was ofcourse part of the problem.
Then I stumbled upon some articles about “back focus” issues , I was vaguely aware of the phenomenon but thought that it was a problem seldom encountered – but decided to try out some simple techniques for finding out, I disregarded the more complicated solutions and opted for the easiest method I had read about. Puting the camera on a flat surface – and put a diagonal line of AAA batteries some distance in front of the lens.

Using the single shot focus mode (AF-S on Nikon) i focused on the centre battery and took a shot – Lo and behold; I noticed that what I focused on was not sharp, but the battery in front was. By using the AF-finetune feature on the camera, I gradually increased the “+” value, each time taking a shot. By doing this I could find the optimal setting for my lens (in my case +9). This crude way of calibrating suddenly enabled me to focus on the right spot – so I tried it out in our garden – the result was a great improvement. Need I say that I have now ordered a Datacolor Spyderlenscal to finetune all my lenses.

Although not a fantastic shot; now the focus actually works:

Backfocus fixed

Cabbage butterfly