D90 no af tune

My 24-70 front focuses and my 70-300 back focuses on my d90.

What can I do?

Ouch.

Options (after confirming that the stated issue is in fact real!)

1. Send all three to Nikon to sort out.
2. Upgrade to a D300

3. Exchange the lenses, then try the new ones and if need be exchange them ... etc etc. Eventually you will get lenses which both fall on the correct side of the manufacturing tolerances to match your body.

4. Wait for the D90 replacement - surely supporting accurate focus will be one of the items on Nikon's agenda.
5. Use Live View focus. (A nice shutter "Ker clunk ker clunk" sound)

If one lens front focuses and one lens back focuses then at least one lens needs adjusting, and maybe both lenses needed adjusting, and maybe not. It is possible that one of the lenses is spot on and it’s your camera is off. Might be that all three are off to some extent. As Allen stated all three would have to be sent to Nikon, provided both lenses are Nikon; Nikon won’t adjust non-Nikon lenses.

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While amateurs change the camera’s settings; many Pro’s prefer to change the light.

Brooks
http://bmiddleton.smugmug.com/

I would not waste my time sending the lenses and camera in to Nikon.

You have been spoiled by comparing your D90 to a D700. I can see by your history where you have been lately. You are being unreasonable. You are hung up on precision.

Let me hep my making some adjustments to your head so you can be happier. Follow samjstern's advice. Leave it alone.

Now, after that I am going to give you another tool and something else to think about. You were using Jeffery's target and using the black characters which are way off axis. That makes you susceptible for parallax and astigmatism errors which really do not effect your primary focus point.



The green dots indicate the point of sharpest focus for horizontal lines. The red dots show the sharpest focus for circular lines. The blue dots show the sharpest focus for almost vertical lines. This is the left side of the target. The right side is identical to this. This is the most popular lens sold with the D70. It is no wonder that there was a hysteria about back focus. This particular lens does not rotate the zoom assembly at different zoom ratios and the focus lens is in the rear, near the camera body. Other Nikon lenses like the 28-200 D rotate the zoom assembly and the focus lens is up front.

The following image was taken at 70mm with the 18-70 kit lens. The busy field focus was used and the focus sensor has been drawn in for reference. There is a decided backfocus with this lens, but the horizontal line focus actually moved closer to the focus point near the edge of the image. This would have looked OK as far as the horizontal line sharpness on the Tim Jackson target but you would not have been able to accept the center image at "FOCUS HERE" on his target. In all fairness my own previously published target would have done the same thing.





This image has a rectangle selected for the circle to the left of the image. The Std Dev indicates 71.54. The top circle may measure 65 indicating less sharpness. Another important thing to notice is the shape of the histogram. There are two distinct spikes, one indicating black values on the left and the other indicating white values on the right. The middle of the histogram indicates the values at the edge of the lines, the values that are not the line or the space between the lines. The distance between the spikes show the contrast of the image. If you use an editor that does not have Standard Deviation, you could look at a selection of a histogram and get a good idea of the focus.



This image shows an out of focus condition. The spike representing black is not there. What is happening here? Remember that we are working with positive images in digital photography. We are literally painting with light. If the image is out of focus the light is being scattered and it therefore goes to the black areas to reduce the blackness. It is light pollution. This is the same target as above but the circle selected is further from the focus line. You no longer have to make a value judgment using your tired eyes. Out of focus now has a number. In this case it is 46.08. Even if you don't have Photoshop, you can interpret this chart with a histogram.

Now, using Standard Deviation on Jeffery's target go back and check again and don't depend on your tired eyes.

Last advice and I am not going to encourage you to insult your fine d90.

Set your lens to f11 and go out and take some fine sharp pictures with that great Texas sunshine. Remember, this year's 50% crop is last year's 100% crop. Don't worry, be happy!

http://leongoodman.tripod.com/d70focuspart5.html
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http://www.leongoodman.com/balance
http://www.leongoodman.com/expose
http://www.leongoodman.com/d70focusnew.html
http://www.pbase.com/photoleon
http://www.leongoodman.com

Jmlacy said:

My 24-70 front focuses and my 70-300 back focuses on my d90.

What can I do?

Click to expand...

Nikon considers that up to 10% focus error is acceptable on consumer level cameras and lenses. This miight be acceptable to some but having to use a narrow aperture all the time often defeats the purpose of having fast lenses, AF, and means higher ISOs are needed which in itself might not be desirable.

When people report AF issues at DPR the fanboys take offence; consumers generally expect to get what they pay for and this includes accurate AF on DSLRs. Experienced photographers and lens reviewers frequently remark upon back and front focussing, a mismatch between individual cameras and lenses is becoming more commomplace.
http://www.lensrentals.com/news/2010.03.06/this-lens-is-soft-and-other-facts

I would test as many AF lenses as you can and see whether this is happening with all of them or just these two. If it's just these lenses and they're Nikon you can send them back for alignment but due to their

Recently I had to return a perfectly good lens because whilst the AF and metering where fine with a borrowed D40x and a 35mm AF SLR, both were issues on my particular D90.

Happy shooting, Lizzie

How did you do the testing to confirm this? Has to be on a tripod, not handheld.
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Lora

I've been on Dpreview since June 2006. Unfortunately, some posting history has been lost along the way...

I recently came from Canon and no stranger to focus issues. I'm more than a little gun shy.

One lens was spot on my d700 and the other was -13 out. When I did the same tests with the d90, I found both lenses were off.