LensAlign Pro: Achieving Lens Alignment

Will LensAlign Pro offer a simpler and more efficient product against others that are available for lens alignment?


Recently I rented a lens from LensRentals.com. I wanted to try out the Nikon 14-24 against the wide angle I already own the Sigma 12-24 to see if there was a significant difference in quality between the two lenses. Though this review won’t be about the above comparison, I can say that the 14-24 is a much better lens; I did not find it to be 3x better than the Sigma. If you just look at cost that is what you would expect. Of course that doesn’t mean I won’t purchase it at some point in the future.

I have looked on and off at doing lens to body calibrations. I have tried multiple different sites to see how each method would perform. Each time I came away disappointed in the reproducibility of each of these techniques. Despite many glowing comments, I never was overly pleased with the results enough to keep the calibration data active in each of my DSLRs. I always turned it off after a period of usage and comparing images and not being satisfied that the level of sharpness was what I demanded.

This might change.

When the LensAlign Pro was announced I was quick to be interested in such a device that seemingly could take a lot of the guesswork out of the lens/body calibration voodoo. With a positive review from Michael Reichmann at Luminous Landscape and listening to the Image Doctors also have success using this device I was all set to purchase it some months ago. Then I saw the price. At $139 it is quite pricey for something that won’t be used more than twice a year so I held off. There is a lower priced model, but I had not read as much positive press about this model. I would want a device that was easy to use and accurate. The LensAlign Lite I read was accurate, but not as easy to use.

In browsing the LensRental.com site I was able to discover that I could rent a LensAlign Pro for one week for $15. The shipping from LensRental.com is the same regardless of how many items you rent. So it was a no-brainer to just add this to my cart.

I have spent the last week checking and re-checking each of the settings on my digital cameras. Since I have 3 of them this can take some time. One thing I have learned is that I really need to trim the number of lenses that I do have down to a manageable number. Well, maybe later. After all of this testing here are my impressions.

The unit works and does the job very well. I consistently was able to re-calibrate with each of my lenses and received for my efforts a result that was within 1 or 2 of what I originally calibrated it at. I don’t believe there are any units associated with the numbers under AF Fine Tune so there isn’t any way to know how far your focus was off.

In my testing I didn’t see any consistent results between camera and lens combinations. Each changed with each separate camera/lens combination. An 85 f/1.8 on my D3 had different settings on my D700 and D300. Sometimes there was positive change needed an on another lens/camera combination there might be negative. After my testing I did some comparisons and it did seem in every case that there was improvement in the lens. The LensAlign Pro did it’s job and seemingly very well.

The downside of this product is the lack of instructions. There was a brief one-page document included with the set-up. I can only say that some trees were wasted for that brief of an instruction manual. There also were some videos that helped me to get started. A little trial and error later and I felt I had a streamlined system. Once I got that, the testing went very fast. For the price of this product I would have expected an instruction manual either online or enclosed in a CD-ROM.


Another important part of this process was also neglected by the lack of a instruction manual. There wasn’t any idea on how close to the LensAlign Pro should I try to focus the lens? From reading other sites there seemed to a contentious of 2.5 to 3x the focal length of the lens. Upon searching the website discussion group that was also the common thought here as well. I will say that though I did not ask a question it appears that the manufacturer is quite active in the forums. My suggestion if you don’t naturally figure things out quickly, I would ask your questions there and I suspect you will get help pretty quickly.

I have included some before and after pictures of a calibration that I did with my 70-200 on my Nikon D3. The AF Fine Tune used in this case was +5. As can be seen from the 100% crops of these photos there is a difference in how “sharp” the photo is with even this small of a change. You also will see included some photos of the LensAlign Pro properly set-up and one not. Though this may sound a little difficult, the nice feature of the LensAlign Pro is the ability to get behind the unit and center the camera in the center hole to help in the alignment. After I figured this little detail out the alignment went much faster.

Despite the shortcomings of the instructions I did find this product to work and work well. It was much faster than any of the other utilities that I discovered on the web and I felt confident at the end that the information that was generated was accurate for that lens/camera body. For my taste it is still a tad high in price for what I would pay to own this type of device. I will however rent it again at an appropriate time from LensRental.com to calibrate my lenses again.