>I am interested to hear if your AF performance is
>better than before service even though you were happy with the
>camera from that aspect before servicing.

Well Marc, you ask an interesting question, but I honestly don’t know if I can give you a good answer at the moment.

What I have done so far is first trying out the 18-105 kit lens again. I never really liked the performance of that lens, so I thought I would see if things improved with the re-calibration. While I feel it may have improved a bit, I’m still not overall pleased with it. For one thing I feel the VR on that lens is nowhere as effective as the one on my 70-300 VR. And it initially appears that the Sigma 50-500 OS is also better, but I have not really put it through any real usage yet (only got it yesterday). And the general quality is not near to what I achieve with my 17-55 and 70-300 VR. I’ve mentioned that in another post that perhaps I’m asking too much from a consumer kit lens compared to the other two; but others claim the kit lens is a fairly decent quality. So I need to persist and give it more testing.

I’m not one of the more experienced or talented shooters that frequent these forums, but that does not stop me from having fun. And occasionally I get lucky.

I’m one to define reach in the digital world as the amount of pixels placed upon the subject. In the past I assumed one could crop and get better results than a 10 or 12 MP image could. And to an extent I could, but not as much as I expected.

But since getting the camera back, I cannot help but wonder if there was a slight miscalibration of the AF system.



So a day or so after getting the camera back I mounted the 70-300 VR and my dog and I headed to the park. As we were walking along the river I heard a bird call on the other bank (I would estimate about 50 feet or so). So I quickly swung the camera up and caught a female belted Kingfisher.

This is the full frame to give you an idea of what the camera AF had to deal with.

Hand held at 300mm with VR on, f/5.6, 1/200th and ISO160.





And this is a 100% crop of the bird.



I guess the focus could have been a bit better, but overall I was pleased. And perhaps a more experienced shooter might have done a bit better.

After I do more shooting and comparisons, I have a better idea if indeed the AF is better now than before. But at the moment I can definitely say its no worse than it was.

Pete

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