The focus is not accurate on sigma sd15

Off course you're right: the car was a bit of a far fetched example, I was overstating it just a little .

I agree that just having your gear calibrated by some local service dept will not be much of an incentive for Sigma HQ to step up their quality control efforts. But in my personal experience, the problem runs deeper than that. My SD14 suffered from very severe back focussing. I used it mainly for macro shots and it got so bad that at least 75% of my pictures were OOF. Not by half a mm. but by centimeters. If you're trying to capture bugs that are just about a quarter of an inch in size, that's quite annoying.

I tested the SD14 with all my lenses, same issue with each and every one of them, from 15mm. fisheye to 400mm. tele. Then I tried those very same lenses on my SD10: no problem at all. Now I'm no techwizz, but somehow that does seem to indicate the problem lies with the body, not the lenses. Delivered the camera with one lens (a 50mm. Macro) to Sigma Benelux with the explicit remark focussing was way off with each and every lens I owned, only to be told that focussing of both the body and lens was well within factory specified tolerances...

That really opened my eyes. It made me realise that Sigma has no real underlying QC-problem, but has chosen to produce equipment to tolerances that really are unsuitable in the photographic industry. At least, that's the oncly conclusion I can come to. And at that moment I just decided to give up on Sigma.

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'We are only immortal for a limited time'

I can understand the frustration but (it may have been after you had the problems of course as I do not know the time sequence) my arty-tickle has been around for quite some time and gave the very easy way to sort out back or front focusing, for both auto and manual working - and I expanded, with photos, on a previous similar article (I gather now was in the Nikon forum a couple of years ago ... so note ... the NIKON forum where, I since gather, the image of how to do the adjustments came from!). It honestly took me - the first somewhat trepid time - less than 20 minutes to do the whole job - less time in fact than even walking to the nearest Post Office here in my Spanish village, let alone time to get to and fro Sigma wherever, the postal and insurance costs and so forth.

It is a shame of course but definitely not confined to Sigma. It could be that because the Foveon sensor can give pixel width sharpness that it shows more than on Bayer sensored cameras! How about that for a debating point. Bet Roland could expand more on that from a technical point of view! (Where's my huge wooden spoon chaps and chapesses?)

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Zone8: Although I am a handsome geniearse, when I stand in front of a mirror, I vaguely recognise the ugly idjit standing on the other side!

LINK: For B+W with Epson 1400 (and other models) using black ink only PLUS other useful tips:
http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/epson1400-B&W.htm
Cleaning DSLR Sensors, including Kodak DSLR Factory Cleaning method:
http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/KodakDCS-sensorcleaning.htm
Solving back/front focus problems on Sigma DSLRs
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1027&message=35565277

True, your step by step description did allow me to improve the focussing on my SD14 considerably, but I just didn't manage to get it really near perfect enough. And as I said: since I wanted to use the SD14 mainly for macro shots, in the end it never did do the job well enough to keep on trying.

But in general: three cheers and a wooden spoon for your article!

--
'We are only immortal for a limited time'

Ringwraith69 said:

But in general: three cheers and a wooden spoon for your article!

Click to expand...

... a brand new stirring stick as a reward for your troubles! Bet ya feel proud now.

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Sincere regards, Jim Roelofs

Cherish your privacy? Avoid (sp)iPhones.



Please visit my gallery at http://www.pbase.com/jrdigitalart/

Maybe I was lucky but I was always able to tweak my SD bodies to have perfect focus across all my lenses.

On the other hand I just bought a "toy" SLR for my son - Pentax k-x with sigma 17-50 and it has perfect focus out of the box. I played with it a bit last night in low light and it was so much better then my SD15 (for a quarter of the price) that I'm a bit confused now. If it is as good in daylight (need to wait till Christmas to check it) I might consider getting one for myself. especially if there is a way to convert sigma mount to Pentax.
Pawel
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http://nopixels.net
http://photo.polas.net

jrdigitalart said:

... a brand new stirring stick as a reward for your troubles! Bet ya feel proud now.

Click to expand...

Well, Jim and others, many thanks ... I think. However, as the post lady has just delivered 437½ packages containing wooden spoons sent by admirers, where the heck am I going to store them all? I wooden have mentioned it had I been able to forsee the end result! ;-)

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Zone8: Although I am a handsome geniearse, when I stand in front of a mirror, I vaguely recognise the ugly idjit standing on the other side!

LINK: For B+W with Epson 1400 (and other models) using black ink only PLUS other useful tips:
http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/epson1400-B&W.htm
Cleaning DSLR Sensors, including Kodak DSLR Factory Cleaning method:
http://www.photosnowdonia.co.uk/ZPS/KodakDCS-sensorcleaning.htm
Solving back/front focus problems on Sigma DSLRs
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1027&message=35565277