Should I microadjust all of my lenses to my new 5D? The process looks cumbersome and difficult. Thanks!

If you are dissatisfied with the sharpness of your photographs and suspect focussing errors, then yes. If all seems good to you then you do not need to. It has been my experience that my tele lenses benefitted from AFMA adjustments. It is not hard, there are several methods to do the adjustment, including some easy trial and error ways. For example, set the lens to its widest aperture, take some shots at the distance you most often use, look at the results at 100% to see if the shot is front, spot on, or back focussed. move the AFMA as described in the camera manual and try again.

I would just shoot and, if certain lenses are out of whack, MA as needed. Of my dozen lenses, only two really needed MA on my 5D2.

I MAed all of the lenses I use with any frequency. It goes pretty fast if you have the right tools (couple of tripods and a good focus target). I spent less than 10 minutes per lens and it can make a visible difference.

You can compare images taken with Live Autofocus (Contrast Detect) and regular autofocus. Live autofocus is about as good as you can get, if its better, you will benefit from AFMA.

claymiller wrote:
Should I microadjust all of my lenses to my new 5D? The process looks cumbersome and difficult. Thanks!

It's not really that difficult . If you really don't want to DIY it then you can get a program called FOCAL to do it for you.

There is also another program that will analyse the shots at different MA settings and tell you which is the best setting .

But to be honest I've done the lenses on my 7D by finding a good target that does not move and set up on a tripod and shot a series of test shots in 5 MA points from -20 to +20 . Then I've looked at the closest ones and then shot in 1
MA steps from 5 points either side

It's quite quick to do and will tell you if a lens has different MA at longer distances over close distances. Eg I have a sigma 300/2.8 which is a couple of MA points different close to far. So I leave it at in the middle but know that if my target is a longer distance I change it.

I am working my way through my 5D3 and lenses, and am finding some suprises...

My 70-300L, which looked really sharp at zero, needed a few points MA and it's even sharper.

I tested my 100L macro and at close distance it's takes one setting, and at a farther distance it's 2 points different - so I can set it to the middle value and it should be pretty sharp both ways.

So yeah, it's more than worth it to me. My current method of MA'ing 5D3 is running the AF accuracy check on FoCal more than using the automated MA routine.

It is a bit time consuming, but I like having everything working optimally. That's why I spent the $$ on 5D3 in the first place...

I only have two data points, having owned a 50D and now the 5DMk3. I needed no MA adjustments for the 50D but needed MA adjustments on the 5DMk3 for my 100mm f/2.8L macro and 24-105 f/4L. YMMV but it pays to check.

Great feature...I'd use it.......and do

I would test them if you can. I only have 4 lenses and three needed adjustment on my 5Dmk3. One was my Tokina 16-28, which I dropped two months ago and my two teles which are a few years old.

MA did wonders for my 100-400 @ 400. Only needs a touch of sharpening at full crop.

There is a discount forum for Focal which is what I used for the adjustments, semi auto is a little bit of a pain the in A by hey....