Unpopular Opinion?

[thebrothersthre3]

Yeah its knowing what to focus on for sure. One day it will get to the point where its beyond human abilities. I honestly don't think its far away now. 

[Mokara]

1 hour ago, kye said:

It depends on how good the AF is to begin with.

I've lost more shots waiting for CDAF to work out that a portrait shot isn't a macro shot, or that the focus point wasn't on the train window but on the scenery outside it, that I could MF for the rest of my life and still come out ahead.

MF doesn't always nail focus but it always knows what to focus on.

It also depends on how out of focus you're comfortable with.  Movies and TV spend more time out of focus than you'd think.

It doesn't have to be spot on. That is what DMF is for.

[Yehouda]

3 hours ago, kye said:

It depends on how good the AF is to begin with.

Of course if we use AF we must use very good AF only. I would only use Canon DPAF and Sony PDAF for professional use. And the combo very good AF and touch screen is a must have. I will never use AF without a touch screen to control it.

[kye]

4 hours ago, thebrothersthre3 said:

Yeah its knowing what to focus on for sure. One day it will get to the point where its beyond human abilities. I honestly don't think its far away now. 

AF is beyond human abilities now to maintain focus on an item.

In terms of selecting which item and giving the right kind of seeking behaviour to match the style and creative intent, it may never exceed human beings for that.

4 hours ago, Mokara said:

It doesn't have to be spot on. That is what DMF is for.

DMF would have to get a lot better in terms of usability and physical control interfaces before I'd give up MF from dedicated MF lenses.

Any time you rotate the focus ring you encounter what makes a nice MF experience: long focus throws, linear response, heft and weight and smoothness to the ring itself, and it will be a long time before you can buy a camera and set of lenses that suit your other preferences and all support DMF as well as having a nice ergonomic MF experience.

My only experience of DMF was a "flick the plastic ring in the general direction, no linear response or focus peaking to know where you are, and hope it guesses the rest the way you want it to" which is a bad MF experience in almost every way.

1 hour ago, Yehouda said:

Of course if we use AF we must use very good AF only. I would only use Canon DPAF and Sony PDAF for professional use. And the combo very good AF and touch screen is a must have. I will never use AF without a touch screen to control it.

A touchscreen is fine if you're inside and shooting on a tripod, but any time you are outside and using the EVF or are shooting hand-held then the ergonomics are just awful.

There's a broader issue for shooting hand-held using the EVF and that is that you can use one eye to look at the image through the EVF and the other eye to keep watch over what is happening outside the frame.  The famous street photographers all used to do this to aid composition, but it's still a useful skill to have when shooting sports, anything live, or any kind of action that you'd like to capture on the first take.

MF is part of a film-making ecosystem that must be considered in context rather than simply being thought of as a dial that gets operated by either you or the camera.

[Yehouda]

MF is a very important artistic tool for sure but when you are on a gimbal trying to keep your subject in focus artistic considerations is not the priority. With good AF you have a camera set up smaller and lighter and this is also important for artistic creativity.

I use the screen 90% of the time and EVF 10% of the time so I don't have any issues even in outdour shooting but it is true that it can be tricky in some situations in very bright light.

[kye]

2 hours ago, Yehouda said:

MF is a very important artistic tool for sure but when you are on a gimbal trying to keep your subject in focus artistic considerations is not the priority. With good AF you have a camera set up smaller and lighter and this is also important for artistic creativity.

I use the screen 90% of the time and EVF 10% of the time so I don't have any issues even in outdour shooting but it is true that it can be tricky in some situations in very bright light.

Yeah, gimbal work is a different thing altogether.  Unless you have a follow-focus with wireless monitoring, then it's pretty much AF-only.

[thebrothersthre3]

5 hours ago, kye said:

AF is beyond human abilities now to maintain focus on an item.

In terms of selecting which item and giving the right kind of seeking behaviour to match the style and creative intent, it may never exceed human beings for that.

 

Agreed though touch to focus stuff could easily replace manual focus pulling systems. 

[Cinegain]

I always say 'I consider focus to be a creative choice, a way to literally direct the audience's attention'. I'd rarely be willing to give up control over that.

That said, there's the right time and place for just about anything, including C-AF if it's well-behaved, reliable and smooth, works with programmable pulls too. So... I'd still prefer to have a camera where I could rely on it at times, rather than not having it at all. And in the future with all the deep learning AI and whatnot it will probably know where I'd want to have the focus on before I do myself.

[Skip77]

On 7/20/2019 at 11:39 AM, fuzzynormal said:

I'm a manual lenses guy.  I despise auto focus for my filming.  Even when it works I find it more of a curse than a blessing.  Weirdly, I like it when subjects move out of focus and someone on the other side of the lens makes an organic correction to maintain it.  And I love a slightly sloppy but creative rack focus.  It's a neat trick of the craft.

I'd rather have imperfections created by humans than perfection created by programming. 

Am I simply justifying my anachronistic (read: old fart) attitudes or do I really have a legitimate point?   Am I alone?  Is anyone else attracted to this?

Af or Manual focus doesn't matter if you get the shot you need. 

Do you ever look at footage someone filmed and say "that's AF and that sucks?" 

It's all a choice. 

AF is a useful tool and to dismiss it is more of an old school no-sense that has to do with old cine views that don't embrace technology. 

 

[Mokara]

9 hours ago, kye said:

AF is beyond human abilities now to maintain focus on an item.

In terms of selecting which item and giving the right kind of seeking behaviour to match the style and creative intent, it may never exceed human beings for that.

DMF would have to get a lot better in terms of usability and physical control interfaces before I'd give up MF from dedicated MF lenses.

Any time you rotate the focus ring you encounter what makes a nice MF experience: long focus throws, linear response, heft and weight and smoothness to the ring itself, and it will be a long time before you can buy a camera and set of lenses that suit your other preferences and all support DMF as well as having a nice ergonomic MF experience.

My only experience of DMF was a "flick the plastic ring in the general direction, no linear response or focus peaking to know where you are, and hope it guesses the rest the way you want it to" which is a bad MF experience in almost every way.

A touchscreen is fine if you're inside and shooting on a tripod, but any time you are outside and using the EVF or are shooting hand-held then the ergonomics are just awful.

There's a broader issue for shooting hand-held using the EVF and that is that you can use one eye to look at the image through the EVF and the other eye to keep watch over what is happening outside the frame.  The famous street photographers all used to do this to aid composition, but it's still a useful skill to have when shooting sports, anything live, or any kind of action that you'd like to capture on the first take.

MF is part of a film-making ecosystem that must be considered in context rather than simply being thought of as a dial that gets operated by either you or the camera.

I don't think you know what DMF is, or you are not using it correctly at the very least. It is one of the most powerful tools on your camera, if your camera has it implemented.

If you are shooting closeups of dynamic insects in the wild, bees for example, you literally have 1 or 2 seconds to get your focus and take the shot. A manual lens is simply too clunky to do that consistently. DMF makes it very easy to do (obviously if you have not taken the time to set up the related tools on your camera you will get less benefit from it). AF gets the ballpark focus, use DMF to get it where you want, then go.

Anything that has to be done fast or you lose your shot is going to benefit from AF. DMF and focus lock allows you to get your camera exactly where it needs to be fast enough to get the shot.

[aaa123jc]

I mainly use GH5 and EVA1 for my professional work so I don't really have a choice. It is full manual focus for me. But this is because the auto focus of these cameras are quite bad and extremely bad, respectively.

Sometimes I missed having decent auto focus system. Especially when I have to hand the camera to my friends (who come to help me for my job), and they are used to working with Canon or Sony cameras. I even had one time when my best friend filmed the whole event totally out of focus! 

Manual focus vs auto focus essentially depends on one's own preference. IMO.

[Mako Sports]

5 minutes ago, aaa123jc said:

I even had one time when my best friend filmed the whole event totally out of focus! 

This is why ALL videographers should have decent manual focusing skills regardless of what camera system they use. 

[aaa123jc]

2 minutes ago, Mako Sports said:

This is why ALL videographers should have decent manual focusing skills regardless of what camera system they use. 

Yeah. And I used to BELIEVE every videographer who works professionally, albeit only as part-time, has decent manual focusing skills. Now I know this is not true, at least in Hong Kong. ?

I didn't get paid at all for that gig. $1500 USD (approximately) gone. But this is my bad really. 

[Skip77]

34 minutes ago, Mako Sports said:

This is why ALL videographers should have decent manual focusing skills regardless of what camera system they use. 

My DP filmed a 3 day gig of mine, while I was directing, with pink hot spots on his sensor.  And he was a seasoned DP. 

[Skip77]

So the S1 has 10.5 stops of DR? 

WOW! Panasonic is running the spec deception on us again.

 

[webrunner5]

If just doing over and under exposures would Truly represent real DR a lot of sites and company's could save thousands, probably 100rds of thousands of Dollars of measuring equipment. All that does is highlight recovery potential. And that assumes that Zero is a perfect exposure.

DR tests have really nothing to do with perfect exposures. Just a test from pure Black to Pure White with out blowing stuff out. Zero to one Hundred in a sense. And no real cheap ass way to prove that.

[Skip77]

1 hour ago, webrunner5 said:

If just doing over and under exposures would Truly represent real DR a lot of sites and company's could save thousands, probably 100rds of thousands of Dollars of measuring equipment. All that does is highlight recovery potential. And that assumes that Zero is a perfect exposure.

DR tests have really nothing to do with perfect exposures. Just a test from pure Black to Pure White with out blowing stuff out. Zero to one Hundred in a sense. And no real cheap ass way to prove that.

Like a painter it gives you a range of values to paint with.  10.5 will be different with each camera band depending on what 10.5 values they give you to work with. 

I don't see the progression from high to dark in the sample above and would rather see it on a grey scale.  One thing I did study in college was art. I go by feel.

If someone technical would like to explain DR and how they measure it that would be great. 

[ade towell]

So you don't understand how DR is measured but came onto a thread about using manual focus to tell us all that Panasonic is deceiving us.

OK, as you were....

[kye]

2 hours ago, ade towell said:

So you don't understand how DR is measured but came onto a thread about using manual focus to tell us all that Panasonic is deceiving us.

OK, as you were....

This is EOSHD.  We tangent pretty hard around here.

[webrunner5]

10 hours ago, Skip77 said:

Like a painter it gives you a range of values to paint with.  10.5 will be different with each camera band depending on what 10.5 values they give you to work with. 

I don't see the progression from high to dark in the sample above and would rather see it on a grey scale.  One thing I did study in college was art. I go by feel.

If someone technical would like to explain DR and how they measure it that would be great. 

Well this might give you some idea what it is and how it is done by certain sites. Most all of the sites have had to update their equipment, because the older tests seems way off compared to an Arri Alexa which is probably the king of the hill DR wise. Realistically between 14 to 15 real stops of DR. They are really one of the few that states the truth.

https://***URL not allowed***/the-cinema5d-camera-lab-is-back-dynamic-range-tests/

http://www.xdcam-user.com/2013/11/whats-the-difference-between-latitude-and-dynamic-range/