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Home » Articles » How To Test a Lens

How To Test a Lens

Introduction
This is the second article we have posted
written by Roger Cicala. It's an insanely
indepth look at testing lenses.

Enjoy!
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By: Roger Cicala

LensRentals.com

If you read my articles very often, you may

have realized I’m not one to let a lack of
knowledge prevent me from writing on a
topic. First-hand knowledge I mean. I write
a lot of articles that I may spend 6 weeks
researching before I feel knowledgeable
enough to start writing. But this is one
topic that I know well: its what I do for a
living. About 8,000 new lenses have come
through Lensrentals over the years, each
one has to be tested, inspected, and
accepted before it goes on the shelf. And
every day 150 to 400 lenses return from
rental and go through the same process
before they ship out again.

I don’t mean to suggest we’re lens

reviewers, dissecting and measuring every
possible aspect and index of a lens. That
takes days, tons of equipment, and a
mindset that I don’t have: full-blown
obsessive-compulsive nitpicking disorder.
I’m glad there are people who do that. I’ll
never be one of them.

(Don’t get me started on the whole are-

lens-reviews-worthwhile thing. I find it
very similar to measuring the height of
one third-grader and then saying “all third
graders are 4 feet, 7 inches tall and weigh
52 pounds.” Someday someone will start
evaluating 20 copies of a given lens,
include the copy-to-copy variation in their
reviews, and in a short time will own the
lens review business. But that’s another
topic.)

Why Bother?
When we get that shiny new box home, we
expect it to be perfect. And it probably
will be. But after opening some 8,000
shiny new lens boxes I can assure not all
of them are. Whether its quality control at
the factory or getting knocked around in
shipping our experience is about 2% of
new lenses need to be exchanged. It
varies by brand and it varies by lens
complexity (an autofocus zoom with
image stabilization is more likely to have
problems than a manual focus prime). But
every lens needs at least a basic checkout
when you first get it home. Used lenses, of
course, require it even more.

There are several levels of testing and

examination one can do. The simplest is go
take some pictures and see if they look
okay. This works well, and has the
advantage of getting to take pictures, but
has some shortcomings, too. First, you
may not notice a problem until it is too late
to return or exchange the lens. Second, if
something is wrong, simple photographs
don’t usually determine what kind of
problem the lens has. This lens is soft is a
good article title, but not a good
description of a problem.

(BTW – if you send a lens in to factory

repair with “This lens is soft” as the only
description of the problem, chances are
extremely high that it won’t be fixed. Trust
me on this. We have 20 lenses a week go
in to factory service. We’ve learned.)

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At the other end of the spectrum is

Extreme Tester Guy (and you are a guy,
there are no Extreme Tester females) who
will spend 16 hours testing a lens in every
way possible including the laser
collimator he keeps in the garage. He’ll
send back 6 copies to get the perfect lens
which he won’t take pictures with because
a new lens has just been released and he’s
too busy getting a perfect copy of that
one. This article will just bore Extreme
Tester Guy, he really wants to be a lens
reviewer.

But without taking it to extremes, a little

basic testing does several things. It will let
us know the lens we bought is what we
expect it to be, that its assembled
properly, functions as it should, and
provides a reasonable match for our
camera (if you don’t understand what I
mean by that last statement, you might
want to read the two “This Lens is Soft”
articles).

Testing will also show us some important

characteristics of the lens that weren’t
listed on the B&H blurb or the
manufacturer’s website. The marketers
are quick to tell you it has
+Supermicrosecretformula coating_, 4
aspherical, and 2 ultra-beyond-low
reverse distortion elements. BUT do they
ever tell you if it focuses using internal,
rear or front element groups? If it is
parfocal (if you zoom in on the subject is
the lens still in focus, or does it need to be
refocused)? Is the plane of focus flat or
curved? How soft are the corners wide
open and at what aperture to they get
sharp? Does it have barrel or pincushion
distortion? These are things a bit of
testing will show us about the lens. And
they are good things to know that will let
us use the lens more effectively.

The manufacturer goes to great lengths to show the

aspherical and low dispersion elements, but don’t show you
which ones zoom or focus.

Step 1: Examining the Lens

But before we start optical testing, we
need to do some basic hands-on, touchy-
feely examining. Some of this is to make
sure the lens is in good shape, some to
make sure we know how it is going to
work. More new lenses fail my touch-and-
feel tests than actually fail optical testing.

The Barrel
If the lens is poorly assembled now, its not
going to be better after a year of use. The
lens barrel is made of several different
cylinders assembled together. There’s
usually a joint under the rubber zoom and
focusing rings and often another near the
end of the lens just under the filter ring.
Gently move, rock or extend each
segment of the lens and ask yourself the
following questions:

Are any sections loose from the next?

Can you rock the filter ring?

Do all the screw holes (including the

ones at the lens mount) have screws in
them?

If there’s an extending internal barrel

does it slide back and forth easily when
you zoom and focus?

Does the front ring accept a filter easily

(more important to check in a used lens,
but we’ve seen a few new ones with
defective threads).

While we’re here, gently shake the lens

and make sure there’s not a loose screw
rattling around inside. Yes it happens. (If
the lens has an image
stabilizing/vibration reducing
mechanism, this may rattle a bit when
you shake the barrel. Don’t freak.)

The Focusing Mechanism

This isn’t for accuracy. That comes later.
Set the lens on manual focus and run the
ring back and forth a few times (even if
you’ll never use manual focus).

Does it move smoothly with no catches

or gritty sensation? This is also the time
to note what part of the lens moves
when focusing: front element, rear
element, or internal group (neither the
front or rear elements move when
focusing).

If it’s a zoom lens, check the focusing at

both extremes of the zoom. On the
Canon 70-200 f2.8 IS II lens for
example, the rear element doesn’t move
during focusing when the lens is at
70mm, but moves a great deal with the
lens at 200mm.

If the front element moves, does it also

rotate (makes it very hard to use
polarizing filters) or is it nonrotating?

Does the distance scale rotate properly

when you move the focus ring?

Is there a clutch for manual focus, a

switch, or is the manual focus ring
always active?

Then switch to autofocus, mount the lens

to your camera, and repeat.

Does it autofocus smoothly?

Does the focus motor sound like your

other lenses?

Finally, autofocus on something close

and then immediately on something at
infinity. Then reverse the process. How
long did it take?

A slow autofocus system doesn’t matter

when you’re shooting Macros or
portraits, but it can make a lens useless
for sports or street shooting.

(For those of you with too much time on

your hands, if you want to quantify focus
speed do the near-far autofocus test right
next to a microphone plugged into your
computer. You can open file in an audio
editing program and see exactly how long
the lens motor was buzzing.)

Zoom Mechanism
Of course you want to test to see if the
zoom mechanism is smooth, both going
out and coming back. If the lens zooms by
extending the front element (or extending
an internal barrel) make sure there are no
sharp, sudden catches or areas of high
resistance. If there is an extending barrel,
make sure the internal barrel is clean with
no scratches that might indicate rubbing
when zooming. Also check that the barrel
isn’t loose when extended, it shouldn’t
rock back and forth.

If the front element doesn’t extend, look

at the rear element during zooming. If the
rear element is part of the zoom
mechanism it will move into and out of the
barrel during zooming. Why is that
important? Rear element zooms tend to
have shorter than advertised focal lengths
when focusing on near subjects. It may be
300mm at infinity, but only 240mm when
focused 9 feet away.

Glass and internals

Look at (not through) the front and rear
elements for scratches, coating defects,
etc. Front element flaws are of minimal
importance, but anything wrong with the
rear element (scratch, coating flaw) may
have a great impact. Then look through
the lens while moving the focus and zoom
rings. A bit of internal dust, even straight
from the factory, isn’t unusual and is of no
consequence. Things like a loose screw,
piece of cloth, scrap of metal, or a broken
internal element (yes, we’ve seen all of
those in brand new lenses) probably are.

Mounting Ring
Mount and dismount the lens several
times on the cameras and ask yourself the
following questions:

Does it go on easily but firmly?

When seated is it firm with no

looseness?

Does the locking pin catch properly and

then release easily when you push the
camera’s dismount button?

Principles of Optical Testing

There are several principles to testing that
are all too often ignored, but each is true
(and obvious if you think about it a bit).

1. If the fixed elements or mount of a lens

are out of spec the lens will be bad at all
parts of its zoom range and when
focusing both near and far distances.

2. With some lens designs an element 1mm

too far forward or back will cause the
lens to never focus sharply.

3. An element tilted as little as 3 degrees

from the plane of the lens can cause
side-to-side or top-to-bottom issues
sharpness differences.

4. An element just a bit off center can

cause chromatic aberration,
astigmatism, coma and edge softness.

5. Modern lenses may have 15 or 17

elements, each of which could possibly
be out of spec.

6. If the zoom elements are out of spec the

lens may be excellent in one portion of
its zoom range and horrid at another
focal length. (But every zoom is usually
slightly better at one end of its range
than the other. I’m not talking about
that, I’m talking about really bad in one
part of the zoom range.)

7. If the focusing elements are out of spec

the lens may work fine on close objects
but not at infinity, or vice versa.

8. If the autofocus electronics and

algorithms aren’t accurate or camera-
lens communication isn’t good the lens
may front or back focus.

The primary point of this is that you must

test zoom lenses at least at both ends of
the zoom range (and probably in the
middle too), and test all lenses focusing
on both close and distant targets. And a
key point in testing your lens is comparing
each quadrant to the other quadrants, not
just “is it sharp”. In fact, center sharpness
is probably the least important thing to
consider when testing a lens.

Step 2: Front- and Back-Focus Testing

We start by testing autofocus accuracy
because if the lens is not focusing
accurately the other tests are
meaningless. Even a manual focus lens
should be tested for focus accuracy on an
SLR – the viewfinder and sensor may not
be exactly calibrated in the camera, and if
the lens has “focus confirmation”
electronics, that is, in our experience,
more likely to be inaccurate than standard
autofocus.

Set Up for Depth of Field and Focus

Testing
This requires regularly marked surface set
up at angles to a focusing object. We use
a LensAlign Pro because it’s quick and
very accurate, but its not necessary. The
marked surface can be a ruler or yardstick
set at angles to a focusing target for near
testing and a fence (board, chain link,
brick, doesn’t matter) with some obvious
focusing target for the far testing.

A lot of people use computer generated

moire targets for autofocus
microadjustment, and they are fine for
that, but they don’t give all the
information we need for lens testing so I
don’t recommend them for this purpose.

Focus accuracy
Focus accuracy testing is done with a
single focus point selected (center point
unless you have some very odd reason to
do otherwise). We begin with the lens at
widest aperture and then repeat with the
aperture stopped down a bit.

The process is quite simple: we autofocus

the center point at the test target and
then check to see where the sharpest
focus actually is on the ruler or marked
diagonal line. They should be very close.
There are several things that need to be
taken into consideration:

Every lens can focus differently at near

and far distances. Test at several
distances.

A zoom lens usually focuses slightly

differently at the minimum and
maximum zoom ranges (and sometimes
in between too).

This 24-70 f2.8 focuses perfectly at 24mm (left) but

backfocuses slightly at 70mm (right).

Some wide aperture prime lenses

exhibit focus shift: they may focus
accurately wide open, but then
backfocus or frontfocus slightly as the
lens is stopped down.