The camera focus can be made either directly on the camera or through Xangle. In some cases, it is easier / more accurate to do it on the camera. Either way, you’ll need to have your calibration bar in place as it is going to be your focus point (see instructions below). Make sure the lenses are in focus before you perform the digital calibration. Out of focus lenses are going to make the markers look bigger, resulting in poor calibration.
- on the camera (Canon): Go in live view, tap twice on the “zoom” button, and hold the back-focus button to perform auto-focus. If the focus zone is not in the dead center, hit the garbage key at the back of the camera to reset it.
- from Xangle (all at once): on the dashboard, click on the “focus” button right to the camera model (each camera group need to be auto-focused individually). From there, you can auto-focus all lenses at once. This works well if you’re using a calibration panel in a properly lit environment. However, when using a slim calibration bar, most of the lenses are not going to be able to hit the target. An easy work around is to use a textured blanket on a tripod: https://www.instagram.com/p/B9vGk23hA2W/
- from Xangle (one at a time): If only a few cameras didn’t auto-focus correctly from the procedure above, you can fine tune individually from the live view (use the arrow buttons)
- step focus. As an alternative, you can use the “Step Focus” to bring all lenses at the same distance. This is still experimental, but it works in some case. As there is no way to tell the camera to go to a specific distance, the alternative we found is to bring back all lenses to infinity focus, then to increment by a number of steps. This is quite consistent across all cameras, but you may have to fine tune some of the lenses.