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Calibrating Panasonic 14-42mm lens

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Hi
Does anyone have experience with calibrating the Panasonic 14-42 mm lens on the x5s?
I continue to have focus problems, manual and autofocus.
On which focal point is best, to calibrate: 14 mm or 42 mm, or somewhere in the middle?
Hope someone can help.
Thanks
 
Hi
Does anyone have experience with calibrating the Panasonic 14-42 mm lens on the x5s?
I continue to have focus problems, manual and autofocus.
On which focal point is best, to calibrate: 14 mm or 42 mm, or somewhere in the middle?
Hope someone can help.
Thanks
Search function?
Been covered previously
 
Still no answer. Second time I readed it now. :)
I ment; in what "zoom point" of the lens is it best to calibrate?
14mm 42mm or somewhere in the middle?
Thanks
I do not believe the lens in question is parfocal so it depends on what you set the focal length to. In other words - the focus will not remain constant throughout the zoom range.
The only Oly lenses I know of that have parfocal characteristics are:

  • Olympus M.Zuiko 12-40/2.8 Pro
  • Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150/4-5.6R
Neither of which are much use lofting skyward.
 
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I do not believe the lens in question is parfocal so it depends on what you set the focal length to. In other words - the focus will not remain constant throughout the zoom range.
The only Oly lenses I know of that have parfocal characteristics are:

  • Olympus M.Zuiko 12-40/2.8 Pro
  • Olympus M.Zuiko 40-150/4-5.6R
Neither of which are much use lofting skyward.

Sow you are saying I have to calibrate it again as soon as I go from 14mm to something like 32mm?
 
My suspicion (and I have not confirmed this as we very rarely use this lens) is that because you are calibrating the infinity point on an object that is probably hundreds of yards away, the focal length you have selected will not make much (if any) difference. The calibration is only done once on each lens - not each time you change focal lengths. Hope this helps....
 
Sow you are saying I have to calibrate it again as soon as I go from 14mm to something like 32mm?
Only if you want to use it in MF, with the focus wheel or a knob on Cendence or the scale in GO4. The AF by tapping on the screen will always work across the entire zoom range, regardless of calibration. The calibration only sets the infinity point for the lens in MF, so when the scale reaches the infinity mark in GO4, the lens is indeed correctly focused to infinity. For zoom non parfocal lenses you'd need to teach the GO4 where the infinity is for each and every zoom point across the zoom range. That is in theory. In practice, I am not sure how much out of focus the picture would become throughout the zoom range if you did the calibration with the lens set to the middle of its zoom range, 23mm.
 
Last edited:
My suspicion (and I have not confirmed this as we very rarely use this lens) is that because you are calibrating the infinity point on an object that is probably hundreds of yards away, the focal length you have selected will not make much (if any) difference. The calibration is only done once on each lens - not each time you change focal lengths. Hope this helps....
Yes, I did. when trying objects around 50 meters away it keeps saying "to close". So ended up at around 100 meters or so.
Beside that, auto focus is not working good too. Moste pics not sharp sometimes is hits good and than it is real sharp, almost like with my Panasonic 15mm and Olympus 45mm really sharp. Calibrating these was no problem too.
Thanks for replying.
 
The calibration only sets the infinity point for the lens in MF

Linusbtu: I'd like to emphasize mmarian's point above, as it contains the key to putting your initial question to rest. To be more direct...you don't need to calibrate your lens in order to get sharp, properly focused pics and video, so I'd recommend that you forget about it. All calibrating does is teach the Go4 app what physical focus position to set your lens to when you invoke its "focus on infinity" function. As a long time commercial photographer I don't normally use that feature on my X5s. For still photos, I intentionally focus on the thing I want to be most in focus (either manually, or by tapping the screen), and choose an aperture to get the desired depth of field around that point (google hyperfocal distance if needed). For moving video I prefocus on a reference target that's an appropriate distance away (again based on hyperfocal calculations), and then fly/shoot.

If the above approach does not work, then calibration isn't likely to fix whatever the problem is either (motion blur or high ISO? Bad lens?). Sorry I don't have experience using the 14-42mm Panasonic... Based on concerns about gimbal load, I got used to using balanced primes on my I1 w/ X5, and have continued to use them for the same reason on my I2/X5s.

The above is, of course, just my 2c. But I make my living doing this, and shoot for demanding customers/applications. Works for me. Hope it helps.
 
Hi I recently had a similar problem l was getting
A lot of jello my lens would play up when zooming and intermittent focusing problems
this is the lens I use all the time . I replaced the lens with a new one and all is well
Cheers
 
Thanks for all the replies.
After testing by calibrating about 10 times. A few times on purpose compleet wrong. I discovered: When calibrated it wrong, I could not focus on an object manually , that was somewhere between 50 and 100 meters away, because the manual infinite point was reached around 10 meter.
Strange enough this was worst with the lens set on 28 mm. Testing the auto focus bij taping on the same object around 50 and 100 meters away it looked like a good focus (green square and peeking on), but this was far from sharp. The auto focus was focusing better and better while going to focus on objects closer and closer by. In my opinion bad calibrated lens, can lead to bad auto focus as well.
Than did calibrating as good as I could. with lens on different "zoom" points from 14, 20, 28, 35, to 42mm.
Again strange... good calibrated with lens on 42mm, at an object around 82 meters away, gave me best results over all. This way I could get the objects sharp in all zoom points at all distances. At 28mm the manual infinite was exactly right (in my opinion still not perfect, because all my other cameras/lenses have some more "focus room" infinit is always sharp just a little behind, even the moon.) Now also auto focus is sharp in almost all pictures, from 14mm to 42mm. Best overall sharpness with f8.
Hope this calibration will stay this way after using an other lens.
Thanks
 
Thank you for that last post!!! I did recalibrate at 42mm and now the DJI focus remote is working and I can set focus marks with the longer lens choice. Thanks!!

For those that find this post and want to recalibrate the lens the menu choice is in the camera settings menu where you change iso and f stop. Hit the settings cog and scroll on down and you will see it near the bottom.
 

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