If you thought getting to the maintenance menu for the EX1 was a pain, check out the following procedure needed for the EX1R. This is what to do if your back focus is off:
LCD must be in the closed position
LCD back light switch (under top handle) must be in the OFF position
Gain switch must be set to H (high)
Press and hold Cancel + Jog Wheel, then + Menu
Maintenance, RPN and Information Menu items will be added to bottom of Menu below “Others” menu
Flangeback auto adjustment (also called back focus) is under Maintenance, shown as Auto FB Adjust
Procedure for actually carrying out the adjustment is the same as the EX1–
An 8″ or larger Seimens star chart is ideal. Siemens star — Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
It should be mounted on a plain wall, wide enough to cover most of the frame at full zoom.
Don’t have anything else on the wall that will be in the frame on full wide. High contrast objects within this field of view may effect the calibration
Mount the camera on a tripod, about 10′ away from the high contrast back focus target
Zoom all the way in to the target and center it in the viewfinder
Set lens to Auto Focus (focus ring pushed forward), Auto Iris, Auto Zoom, Macro Off.
Select Auto FB Adjust in the Maintenance menu
Select Execute
Don’t touch the camera until the procedure is complete.
Many thanks to the various posters at DVinfo.net for the instructions. Oh yeah, you can find some great free test charts here in PDF format. Happy flange back adjusting.
- Don
Don, thanks for the recipe. Just one question: You said “Set lens to Auto Focus, Focus Ring pushed forward, Auto Iris, Macro Off.”
Did you mean that Auto Iris should be set to on or off?
Thanks!
Hi, I have a sony EX1 and when I get to the Maintenance menu the FB adjust menu is un-selectable. Do you know why this might be?
Thank you.
It’s been awhile since I had my EX1 but if memory serves the maintenance menu was invisible until you did the following:
Press and hold the cancel button and menu button at the same time. Continue to hold these buttons and then hit the SEL/SET button. 3 more menus will show up below the regular menu items. The MN menu is where the back focus adjustment is carried out. Auto FB adjustment stands for “flange back”. If you still can’t select anything in the MN menu then my suggestion is to hit the RESET ALL button in the OTHERS menu. This should default everything back to the factory settings. If you have any custom picture profile settings, or anything else you’ve changed in your setup and want to keep you should copy those settings to one of you media cards first. Your owner’s manual will detail how this is done.
- Don
These instructions are invaluable, however, there is one other thing that needs to be set right before you can see the Auto FB adjustment — you need to have it set to servo zoom (not manual zoom)!
With that setting as well as the above it worked perfectly for me.
Laurence, thanks for pointing out the discrepancy in these instructions. I’ve made the appropriate changes.
- D