I've been gathering a few lenses, and then taking photo's with them. Generally, I'm pretty disappointed with the image sharpness, as the focus on all of the lenses seems to be a little off.

I then found out about the Auto Focus Fine Tune, and over the last hour and a half have been fiddling around with al my lenses and some text on a 45 degree angle and some of the kids figurines set up at slightly different depths.

My conclusion is thus.

I've been far too far away from the subject for the lenses I have. That, and you need good light for tight focus. With ISO's over 800 my camera (d7200) struggles. If the subject doesn't take up a good deal of space in the view finder, I'm not going to get a sharp image.

I took a few of the kids outside in good light and the lenses I tried were sharp (not tack sharp, razor sharp, knife edge sharp etc). I was only a few metres from them, and they were still and co-operative.

I tried the 55-300 on some Twenty Eight parrots which were only 7-10 metres from me, and the images stunk. I was leaning on a wall to stabilise myself, the light was average, and the images were very soft.

So what's the outcome? For me, it's to take photo's within my distance means. Landscapes are one thing, but kids, pets, cakes, drawings etc all need to be within 4m.

Luckily learning is enjoyable... I just hope I learn more of the straight forward stuff early on.