JR said:
jrista said:
@JR: It sounds like your lens(es) and camera body may be out of alignment. Thats not really all that uncommon (all manufactured equipment has to be manufactured within certain tolerances, and when you have broadly compatible interchangeable parts, tolerances usually have to be loosened to a greater degree than would be ideal), and the primary reason most higher grade cameras like the 5D III include lens micro adjustment features. You may have a general adjustment problem, or it may be lens specific. The 5D III supports adjusting for both cases, however by default micro adjustment applies globally.
I would try micro adjusting your lens+camera combinations and see if that improves your results. You will need a calibration chart or device. For a chart, you might try this one:
http://regex.info/blog/photo-tech/focus-chart (this site also includes very detailed instructions on how to print and use the chart.) If you really want to go all out and get things extremely precise, you should probably get a LensAlign device:
http://michaeltapesdesign.com/lensalign.html. Canon cameras allow you to micro adjust per-lens, and I think you can store up to around 20 lens micro adjustment profiles. The camera will automatically select the right profile for a given lens when that lens is attached (I am not sure if that works with third-party lenses or not...Canon lenses are microchipped with a bunch of statistical information.)
Hopefully micro adjust will help, and prevent you from having to return your camera (and incur all that extra shipping cost and who knows what other costs.)
Thanks jrista this is a good suggestion indeed, just not sure I want to invest the time required for this MA since I tried before and lets say I am note he best at these test. Point is for a brand new camera, I feel a should return it and get a proper unit that does work ...
Keep in mind, both the lens and the camera have manufacturing tolerances. It
sounds like you might have received a copy of the camera that is at one of the extremes of those tolerances.
On the other hand, you may have a few lenses that are at one of the extreme ends of their tolerance ranges, and whatever camera you had previously was on the same end of its tolerances. Returning the 5D III for another does not, in any way, guarantee that you will get a good copy next time...or even the third, fourth, etc. times. It may not even be the 5D III that is "bad"...if it IS the lenses, then you could get any number of normally calibrated 5D III bodies and they would all perform roughly the same for your particular lenses.
Calibrating is not all that difficult...you point the camera at a 45 degree test chart, AF the lens on a given mark in the test chart, and examine the focal plane. If the lens+camera combination is significantly out of alignment (i.e. opposing ends of their tolerance ranges), you'll know right away, and one or two microadjustments will solve the problem. It may take a little more work to identify and fix a slight misalignment, however if you shoot teathered (as the one blog mentions), you'll see the results in large size immediately on your computer, and it still won't take long to correct even minor misalignment issues.
You could save yourself a lot of hassle of returning one camera body after the other to get a "perfect" one if you just align your gear yourself. Once its aligned...your good to go, and don't have to worry about it again.
