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May, 2025

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Lens focusing question

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snowisawesome
Posts: 447 - Karma: 76
Ok so I have a Nikkor 16-85 and I use this lens almost 80% of the time.  Recently I noticed a bunch of photos and video out of focus and I I'm pretty good about being spot on.  Because of the small screen I would zoom in, focus, and then zoom out to whatever focal length I want to shoot in.  Now when I do this and zoom all the way back to 16mm my shots are blurry and out of focus.  I swear this used to be a non issue as I have been doing this for some time now.  Has something gone wierd withing my lens or is this just a faulty method of getting focused on my subject?
13 years ago
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Legion
Posts: 1374 - Karma: 29
your lens isnt faulty, it just inst meant to hold focus well when you zoom in and out. I'm not too familiar with nikon, but most canon cameras have a x5 and x10 digital live view zoom that helps you nail your focus.
13 years ago
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edai
Posts: 4995 - Karma: 4,701
Use your viewfinder to focus for photos, as for video, use the live view "zoom" function. Both Nikon and Canon have them, and it helps to really get the focus dialed in as said above.

13 years ago
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snowisawesome
Posts: 447 - Karma: 76
Ya, I've used the zoom on the screen, it's just gets a bit pixelated and it seemed to work in the past when I'd zoom in, focus, and zoom out.  The focus ring still is in the same spot so I was just trying to find a logical reason for why it was changing focus.  I don't necessarily understand all the mechanics of a lens so I was just looking for some more insight.
13 years ago
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sweatshirt
Posts: 1357 - Karma: 483
Zoom in digitally to focus and then switch to manual focus so the focus won't change
13 years ago
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eheath
Posts: 61957 - Karma: 126,732
Unless the lens youre using is parafocal, the technique you are using wont work. I could see maybe if you only were zooming a little bit it would work, but going all the way to 80mm then back to 16mm is a big jump. Video cameras with flxed lenses are parafocal (and still/cine lenses exist that are parafocal) but i believe the technique you used was origination from the fixed lens video camera users. So your lens is fine, your technique just is a little off, like other people said, use a zooming function on your camera to nail focus, or be lazy and use AF.
13 years ago
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michael_bc
Posts: 1400 - Karma: 814
This won't work because the focus will change when you change the focal length on this lens.

Are you focusing using live view (on the display) or in the viewfinder?

If you are using the zoom button on the live view display, that should work. Just make sure your lens is set in M so the camera doesn't re-focus afterwards.
13 years ago
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