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Lesson Info

Lens Maintenance

So if you have all these lenses, the main maintenance of them, a lot of questions that people have about this. So let's get those answered. Cleaning your lands. What do you need? Generally, I just use a micro fiber cloth. Which of these really tightly woven cloths? There are papers and other little gadgets, But you know what the micro fiber cloth does it for me in virtually all the situations you can use air. You do not use compressed air to clean the sensor of your camera, but I do use this to clean the outside of my lands and sometimes stuff on my lands. You do have to be careful about how you pointed. You don't want to tilt it upside now because it can propel the frozen elements on your lens, which could damage. So you do need to be careful in how you use this. You can use lens cleaning fluid, although I really don't find it necessary. I just blow a little hot air under the front of the land, so there's from moisture. So if there's a water droplet, you could get that off fairly easi...

ly. And finally, I will sometimes clean the outside areas of the lands with a brush. If I've been in a dusty or sandy environment trying to get out, trying to get that sand out of the grooves of the mechanism of the zooming and focusing focusing mechanisms for lens protection who were getting into a touchy issue here very personal feelings for some people in this how do you protect the front of your lens? We have three different options. Lens caps, hoods and filter. So let's look at each one of these lens caps. Okay, what's good about these things? They protect your lens when you are not using your lands when they're in the camera bag. The downside is that they are a hassle to work with. I see people dangling these things around, losing them. It's a great dust collector, and then you can put it right on the front of your lens. Were all that dust can get deposited right on the front of your lands. The filters there nice for protecting your lands at all times, whether you're using them or not, it completes that weather, sealing a lot of those l lenses and doesn't hurt on a lot of the other lenses as well. Now I'm not going to say that this makes the lens worst, but it doesn't improve the image quality by adding on another filter. But if you do put on a good filter, you're not going to notice the difference in image quality. I've done tests, and I can't see the difference if I use a good quality filter. But you gotta buy the filter, so that's gonna add in a little extra cost. The lens hood. We've talked about that in the previous section that is important in good for a lot of situations for preventing flair and really getting the best image quality from a Lanza's possible also helps out in a rain environment so that it's not landing on the front. The downside of this is that it does increase the lens size, which means it's a little bit taking up more space in the camera bag, or you may reverse it so that it takes up less space. But then you got to reverse it back on there, and then we get people like Jane from our Cuba trip who refuses to turn it around, even though they brought around because it's a hassle to attach to the camera, and so it can also block the flash. And in some very windy situations, the wind can catch that and cost problems as well. And so the question is, which 12 or three of these options are you going to go with? Very few serious photographers use all three. They generally are going to decide one or two of these things that they're going to use, and that is enough protection for the lands. One of the most common combinations that I see with serious photographers is the hood and the lens cap. It is always good. Well, not always, but it's almost always good to use a hood, so that's kind of a default. Yes, you should be using your hood, and then they use lens caps to protect the equipment while it's in the camera bag. I personally don't like this system. The advantages to this is you do get the best image quality or not shooting through a filter. And there is the minor hassle of taking the lens cap on and off and potentially losing it. I really dislike this minor hassle, and part of my reasoning for this The reason my history is from a photo journalism background is you better be able to pick that camera out of your bag and shoot that photo right now. And if there's a lens cap on it, you may miss that shot. And so I personally go with the filter and the hood philosophy, and I don't use lens caps. I have never in 25 years of photography lost a lens cap because when I buy a lens, I put it back in the box that I bought it and it goes in the closet. So they're all in my closet. And so in this situation, you get good protection. You get excellent image quality. You could argue it's not as good as this, but I could also argue that it's insignificantly different. And there is virtually no house of the only household. But I have to deal with is reversing lens hoods, which is what most people are going to deal with. Some people don't like this system because they don't like the cost of the filters, and they think the filters affect their images, even though they've never tested it and proven it. They just think that Um, but it's your choice as to which combinations you want to go with. And one of the things that drives me nuts more than anything else is if you've ever seen the lens cap keepers, it's that little leash that you put on the strap of your lands. And then it hangs down here. Nichols, Clank Clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank and you walk down the streets got clank, Clank, clank, clank, clank, clank, clank And it just makes a whole lot of noise. And it is really disturbing, especially if you're trying to shoot a portrait photograph where you're kind of hypnotizing. The person is there watching your lens cap go back and forth. And so please avoid those that they're terrible. All right, folks, are we ready to get into a demo here? Just a moment. Let's run through these slides, Okay, so some of you have very, very high standards, and you have very low tolerance is, and you expect that when you buy $1000 wins or $3000 lens that it is going to be 100% perfect. And I'm sorry, that's not the case. We saw some images of cameras, lenses that were $40,000 those air not even perfect. Our lenses are designed within a reasonable tolerance to be very, very, very good, and our cameras are as well. And sometimes there's a slight discrepancy in these tolerances, and our cameras don't focus exactly the way that we had want them to. So we focus on a subject that's where we want it to focus. But this is an estimation. The way these SLRs work, and sometimes the estimation is wrong in our camera will focus in front of where it is supposed to focus, or it'll be slightly behind where we focus. 20 years ago, if your lens or camera did this, you would need to send your camera all your lenses into Canon. They would work on him for two or three weeks and then send him back to you. And then when you replace that lens and got a new lens, it was out of tolerances again. And so they decided on the current cameras toe let you make the adjustment if you want to. In order to do this, you need a focusing target, something to focus on, and then you need to measure as to whether you are focusing in front of or behind that subject. And so an angled yardstick like this will work quite well. If you want to spend a bit of money less than 100 bucks, you can buy a focusing target that measures out what's in focus, whether it's in front of or behind. And this is a really nice system for somebody who does this quite a bit. I tend to be a thrifty person, and so we would focus on our ruler here and then a yardstick like this. And so in this case, we focus on the ruler, and we look to see what number is in focus. And if number nine is in focus, its front focused. If it's number 11 and focus, then that's back focus, and we would need to make an adjustment in the micro Focus adjustment menu in our camera. And so if you want to do this, I did this. And here is an example. I set my camera. I didn't know how far off my camera waas, and so I just took five photos and the settings range in most cameras from minus 22 plus 20 and you can see it minus 20. The camera is supposed to be focused on 10 but it focused in front in front, a little in front, behind and behind. And so 10 was too much. Zero was too little. Extremely. Get that right. Yes, and so I probably would need to set this at maybe plus three or plus four in order to get this properly set. And so this is something that takes a little bit of time and a little bit of hassle. But if you are not getting consistent focus, this is what you need to do to adjust your lenses. Now it's not important that everybody needs to do this. If you have a rebel within 18 to 55 lands, don't bother. It's not gonna make a difference, because your lens doesn't have a shallow enough depth field that you're going to notice this micro adjustment off that your lens might possibly be. This is for people who have 85 1 twos, 1 35 F twos. 72 202 eights. 302 eights. 402 eights. Bigger, faster. Shallower depth field lenses. You need your camera, your lenses, your tripod. You're gonna need to shoot as sharp a picture as you can possibly get and using a target as a yardstick. Excuse me. A ruler and a yardstick. Just as an example, you could use something like this as a yardstick to measure off what you're focusing on. You put a ruler right here and you're going to be able to see if you're focused in front or behind it. You're going to set your camera up for maximum image quality and shallow a step the field. You could use either aperture priority or Emanuel to do this. You want to set your eyes so as low as possible. And what you're going to be doing is you're gonna be auto focusing, doing single shot auto focus so that your camera focuses on the subject and then stops. And then you're gonna be shooting this in several ways. You need to manually unfocused your image so that you're letting your camera focus on your subject and lock the mirror up so there's no vibrations, so you get a nice, sharp picture. Take the picture plant back, magnify it and see if you got a sharp picture. If it's focused in front or focused behind, you're gonna have to kind of go back and re adjust where that micro focus setting is. And this is something that Cannon has added on to all of their intermediate and higher in camera. So it's not gonna be on the Rebel Siri's. It's gonna be on things like the 70 mark to the five D Mark three and the one D X. And so those are for the people who have the faster lenses. When I need to do this for a couple of lenses, it takes me about an hour between setting everything up, getting it right, shooting the photos, shooting a couple photos back and forth to see exactly what's going on. And it enables you to get the sharpest possible focus on a consistent basis. Now you don't even necessarily need to do this unless there is a problem. And there is a problem if you are constantly focusing in front or behind your subject, and you really feel that your camera is at fault and it's not your technique, and so that's knowing that technique of how your camera focuses is very important in this and so good step to do for those of you with those higher end shallower depths of field lenses,