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Alignment (D800E, Distance Scene)
One of the big frustrations with high resolution digital is alignment:
- Plane parallelism of the lens mount to the sensor.
- Alignment of the lens optics to the lens flange.
- Symmetry through focusing rotation of of the optics themselves—almost never perfect no matter what the brand— a slight focusing change and the symmetry across the field shifts.
High-res digital is very sensitive to flange-to-sensor alignment, especially at infinity focus. Below is documented a image in which the combination of the Nikon D800E + 135mm f/2 APO-Sonnar shows a right-side blur problem.
The camera is the primary suspect, because not long before, two 35mm lenses (Zeiss 35/1.4 and Sigma 35/1.4) also showed a forward skew of focus on the right side.
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Want a preview? Click on any page below to see an excerpt. And see Lloyd’s articles for Lenspire.Zeiss.com.