Sigma lens dock inconsistencies

Years ago I bought a 35mm Art to go with my 5Dc body. At the time I wasn't fully satisfied with the AF performance, so I bought the dock to microadjust the lens. It only needed a -3 adjustment at the furthest (editable) focusdistance and I've been really happy with the sharpness since then.

This winter I rented a 5D IV to shoot a wedding and I quickly adjusted the lens for that body. Although I used the camera's back screen for reviewing the settings and it was only a one day shoot the combo worked exactly like I felt it needed to.

This is where it gets interesting. Ever since I set the lens back to the settings which it worked perfectly with (I took a screenshot in the "before" situation to be sure) I haven't been satisfied like I was before. And I can't work out why it is.

Unfortunately I don't remember the adjustments I had for the rented body but I know they were significantly different from the ones with my own camera. I do recall upgrading the lens firmware, though.

Has anyone experienced something like this before or does anyone have a suggestion on how to solve this?

So I went through some testing again and it seems like -7 or -8 is the new setting for the furthest focusing distance. The closer distances all seem perfectly fine.

Can anyone maybe comment on this? I'm still not a 100 percent satisfied...

Lens MFA settings are body AND lens dependent. So settings for one body and lens combination will not be the same for any other lens/body combination. So even if you put that lens on another camera body that is the same model the required settings will be different. It's because MFA is designed to remove the manufacturing tolerances between each item. So you are seeing perfectly normal and expected results.

Alan

Just a "reach" in the way of a theory...I bought my first "dockable" Sigma lens several years ago at a local photography store that had (for the day) a Sigma tech on site. It was an tented outdoors type event and the temperature was in the mid-80's. They tried to talk me into buying the dock, it had only been out a few months. The Sigma tech took my 60D body, the lens I bought and he tweaked the lens for me. In conversation I mentioned I do a lot of landscape work and he mentioned that I might want to tweak it again if I did work outdoors in the winter. I was always under the impression temperature was more of a factor on long lenses.

As I said, just a theory to explain your differences.

thijs wrote in post #18575711
This winter I rented a 5D IV to shoot a wedding and I quickly adjusted the lens for that body.

As a side note, I would not have adjusted the Sigma lens to the rented 5DIV body but adjusted the body to the lens. But not owning a 5DIV I don't know which is easier and you did use the word "quickly".