DotTune: AF tune technique without taking photos

I used to do this exact technique with my D7000 and it worked well as long as the focus distance remained the same. However, change the distance and the AF issues continued. I sent the camera to Nikon and it worked fine afterwards.

All of my lenses worked fine on the D3 and D700 until I bought the Nikon 28mm 1.8 and Sigma 85mm and then I ran into the same AFMA issue. I sent lenses to service. The D800 was the final straw, in ran into issues similar to the D7000. I believe the AFMA tool does not work very well. I confirmed my findings using the FoCal Pro program. With this program would run a series of repeatability tests and the miss percentage was nearly the same with (-3) and without adjustments. The degree of sharpness was a tad sharper with the adjustment but it was more erratic.

Now if I have a lens that struggles on multiple bodies I return it or send it in for repair. The same goes with bodies, thankfully all of my equipment is now working well again (enough). I hope that Sigma’s new lens adjustment device revolutionizes the industry by providing software similar to FoCal to test multiple sensors at different distances, hopefully then we will have truly calibrated equipment.