A brief glance at google will tell you that there’s a lot of noise about the D7000 and back focus issues. As an adept googler, I couldn’t seem to find any images illustrating the issue, so here we go…
baseline/AF fine tune turned off
This is not absolutely horrible, but it is troublesome. This is wide open with an 85mm 1.8D Nikon lens, of a test chart available here: http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/focus-chart
There is a slight amount of focus error visible here, but in real world shots I am experiencing 15′ (fifteen feet!) of back focus behind a subject 30′ away. That’s a problem!
With the D7000, and most of the top tier Nikon DSLRs, there is a manual adjustment in the menus called “AF Fine Tune”. This setting allows you to compensate for slight inconsistencies between lenses. I have no idea what to call the increments, but there are forty (40) of them +/- 20, on either side of a stock setting of zero. To use the setting, you have to first enable AF fine tune and then mess with the value. A value is saved for each chipped lens, and then even multiple copies of the same model of lens. One can make this adjustment for both mechanical (screw driven) and AFS lenses.
On my D700, some of my lenses needed slight tweaking. Only very slight and it worked perfectly.
On my D7000, the results are baffling and it plum doesn’t work. Here’s a setting of -20 (the most you can set in the direction of front focus)…
-20 AF fine tune correction
This isn’t bad. There’s still a slight amount of back focus, but I could use this as is. As you can see the bottom of the number “1” closer to us is sharp, but the whole “1” further away is sharp. This is almost acceptable, since depth of field does naturally extend further behind the subject than in front. It’s very close to perfect. However, since -20 is a the end of the range, I’ve got no wiggle room. If over time, things get further out of wack, I’ve got nowhere to go.
Here’s where it gets baffling. This is a setting of +20, which should push focus further away from us:
+20 AF fine tune correction
Wait, what?!
Yeah, +20 is slightly closer than -20, and focused closer to us than the baseline of 0 or with the AF fine tune turned off. I would call this broken.
This would be akin to your steering wheel turning your car left when centered, almost straight when turned all the way right, and completely straight when turned all the way left. I would not call this out of calibration, I’d call it broken.
So…I’m sending it back. Hopefully it doesn’t take the 10 months that it took the Nikon USA repair department to get me a working D700.
I’ll report back here with results when I get back a working camera!
Interesting topic. I have been fiddlig with the same problem today. I am using a focuschart downoldeable here:
http://leongoodman.tripod.com/d70focuspart5.html
Funny that my Tokina 100mm Macro is spot on as my old 18-55mm also is. My 55-200mm is nearly perfect. 18-200mm is bacfocusing, but not as much as my 18-300mm . 35mm is just fine. Shall the finefocusing be turned off, when the adjustment is done, or left on?
Ooh, thanks for the interesting link! That’s a neat way to test the properties of lenses. My concern was more with my camera body, and its ability to critically focus–which it lacked!
I sold the D7000 and replaced it with a D300s and I’ve been much happier. The image sensor performs slightly worse at higher ISO settings, but the autofocus is pretty close to what I expect from my other body, the D700. And in a pinch, it also does video, but again, not as well as the D7000. Focus is MUCH better though. I’m happy and have been using it for my work without issue.
…except for a lens I’ve come to recognize is broken…see my latest post.
Well, I will say that critical focus is difficult to compare between lenses for several reasons. First, differing maximum apertures: an F1.4 lens will have less depth of field than an f5.6 lens. The 5.6 lens will look more in focus, even if it’s focused incorrectly. Also, varying depths of field with different focal lengths can mask things: a lens that is incorrectly focused at 17mm will appear to be sharper than a correctly focused 50mm lens. And finally comparing an f2.8 lens with an f1.4 lens when both are set to 2.8 may cause issues if the f1.4 lens suffers what’s known as “focus shift”, which is where the plane of sharpest focus moves slightly as a lens is stopped down. That last one is something to be aware of when calibrating AF fine tune settings.
Finally, yes, absolutely leave the “AF Fine Tune” setting on once you’ve made adjustments (assuming those adjustments are correct!) If you turn it back off when you’re done, you are turning off any corrections you made.
Hope this helps, and thanks for the link!
I had the same problems with my D7000’s just recently bought.
Back focus on both bodies (and strong back focus) the AF fine tune cannot correct this for all lenses (some are too far off)
The other issue is that the AF is inconsistent..take 10 shots with a D7000 and you will see that the degree of focus misses is not the same, some will show strong back focus, some moderate..some slight.
You can’t correct for this with AF fine tune. IMO the camera is flawed..and has a broken AF module/or simply very bad calibration at the factory.
Nikon service is awful they had 3 tries to get this fixed and failed to do so on every service the cameras had.
My advice to folks is avoid the D7000 great camera with an awful AF system.
Give your lens a test with this chart: http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/focus-chart
The tutorial should take care of all your questions, but if you’re confused, please feel free to ask questions here.
I found that I had to be quite persistent with Nikon’s repair department in order to get an adequate repair. If I had a chance to do it over again, I might have taken some of my lenses and a chart to the local store I bought from, and tried out D7000 bodies until I got a good one.
Sorry, I know this is a pretty old post but I just got a D7000 to upgrade from my D90 and every lens that was tack sharp on the D90 needed adjustment on my D7000. my 28mm 2.8 was the worst, needing -20 (closer to the camera) and is still back focusing a little. I have a really hard time believing it’s the Lenses and not the camera.
I suspect that there are two things at play here: the AF is broken on many of these cameras. And to boot, a move up in resolution accentuates the already poor AF performance.
I just bought the d7000 on black friday and just used it at an event yesterday using the nikon 28mm 2.8g. 90% of my pictures were out of focus and they all looked very soft. before the d7000, i used d5100 and i had no issues with AF. so it must be the camera right? so i googled AF problems with d7000 and found out that i have to use AF Fine Tuning. I will give d7000 another shot using AF Fine Tuning and hope that this fixes the AF issues and the softness issue of the photos
Actually, I think you have it backwards. You dial in a negative number if your camera is back-focusing and a positive number if it is front-focusing. My D7000 only had a slight back focus, needed a -3 or -4 adjustment. My D300 had a slight front focus, needing about a +5. These numbers were pretty consistent w/ different lenses (-3 to -5 for the D7000, and +4 to +5 for the D300). I hope this helps.
Not sure where the confusion is, but I don’t disagree–minus corrections are for back focus and positive are for front focus.
My numbers were and still are more extreme for most of my lenses. And this is after a second time back to Nikon last month. Although I will say that things are much improved and AF is now working acceptably.
EDIT: Ok, I understand–you’re looking at my OP. It may be unclear, but I was doing it right. Out of desperation/need to experiment, I tried setting a completely incorrect AF fine tune adjustment. That’s what I was talking about with the +20 adjustment. The crazy thing was that that worked better than no adjustment or an adjustment in the correct direction.
I have many doubts. First: is CAM4800 just really bad in anything but white light that’s pretty bright? I get this impression sometimes.
Second: What is the repair department doing to fix these things? I have received my D7000 back and my 17-55 still requires -20 compensation to be spot on in all situations.
Third: I’m starting to think that besides the AF issue (which, although not perfectly fixed now, is much improved after repair) my sensor itself may be slightly out of line. I note a consistent softness on the left side with all of my lenses, even when using live view and focusing manually.
Fourth: my experience with Nikon’s repair department has been so bad that I’m not sure what to do next. Just really abysmal experience, and it’s clearly systemic with Nikon USA.
Do not buy this camera. I had two cameras one was refurbished one brand new and they both have problems with the focus or back focusing issue. Nikon has ack’d the problem but after two repairs they were not able to fix the problem. All my lenses are original Nikon DX. Lots of people are not aware of this problem that exists. The problem is very noticeable once you start cropping the image. I think they have problem with the entire D7000 batch but they do not want to admit that because it’s going to be very costly to repair each camera that is currently on the market. I shot in AF-C, AF-S and AF-A mode and the images were not clear and the camera is inconsistent. I never had a problem my D70, D60, D200 & D300. I think their customer service and repair department is incompetent to handle this kind of problems and since our last conversation they are not responding to my emails or phone calls. I shot approx 3000 images @ 5 different events and 2000 of them are out of focus. Nikon does not want to justify or deny my claims based on the samples provided to them.
Again, do not buy this camera. The web is flooded with complaints of this nature.
Took me 3 months with Nikon and the camera has not been fixed.