Cry for help - one-time shoot today spoiled due to mysterious blurring

[Martin Beek]

We are almost in tears after seeing the results of today's shoot. A one-time occasion, an unrepeatable shoot.

Shot with two different lenses, both part of our standard kit, with the same alarming results.
Totally blurry and soft / unsharp. Sharpness checked on set, with magnifying et cetera...

All our previous shots with this Scarlet are tack sharp with these same lenses.

Shot with a lot of light (see meta data) and high F stops. LOTS of DOF.

Is this a black shading error, an OLPF bushing problem (Scarlet does not have anti-flare kit), a firmware thing (3.3.4)?! We are DESPERATE.
WHAT IS THIS?!


Scarlet @ 4K 24fps project, 24fps, 1/50, daylight, Canon 17-55 glass. (Same results with new Canon 24-70L)

100% full debayer crop of part that had focus, see .r3d metadata for more info:

The .R3D file: http://mediatube.marvelsfilm.com/scarlet/aug82012/A001_C013_0808EK.0000000F.R3D

Another one:
100% full debayer crop of part that had focus, see .r3d metadata for more info:

The .r3d file: http://mediatube.marvelsfilm.com/scarlet/aug82012/A001_C029_0808JI.0001019F.R3D


Any help is very much appreciated!!


Kind regards,

Martin Beek

 

[Drew Baird]

Honestly thats about what I would expect to see based upon how wide your frame is on those lenses. You can try giving it a bit of a contrast and sharpening in your editing app, that will help.

It looks like the top image is being effected mostly by motion blur, and the second your plane of focus is about 10 feet behind your subjects. Just my 2 cents. Some sharper glass may help.

 

[Martin Whittier]

Did you switch between using NDs and no NDs? I've see unfavorable softness from low quality filters such as cheap VariNDs.

 

[Phil Holland]

What others have said about NDs and potentially how wide, but another culprit could be your back focus adjustment.

 

[BRANDON JAMESON]

Phil , I was thinking the same thing.

 

[Martin Beek]

Both the cam operator and i have checked focus on the LCD, magnified, with peaking. Same lenses produced superb images same day, same camera, but lower light conditions and wider aperture.

No filters. Better glass? The Canon 24-70L is the best we can afford...
Watch the .R3D, this is no motion blur, neither is the sharpness anywhere else to be found.

Again, we shot before with these lenses, this camera and comparable light conditions with great results. Problem first appeared today. Shot over 500 hours with this Scarlet and these lenses w/o problems.



Martin

 

[Martin Beek]

Having said that, what is the easiest back focus adjustment procedure without the need for the Red backfocus thingy?
But... if i focus on the LCD, zoomed in, than that is WYSIWYG, not? Can't see where the backfocus adjustment can be of help.


Martin

 

[Stephen Mick]

Did you file a support ticket with RED? That'd be the first thing I'd do.

 

[Drew Baird]

You are correct. WYSIWYG when you are in a 1:1 crop on the sensor. Backfocusing won't help you with this shot, but it would be good to get checked for future gigs.

I have a 24-70L that I rarely use cause it is worthless at apertures higher than f8. I've had back focus checked and my camera is good. If I have to use the 24-70L I will use good ND's to drop the light so that I can get my f-stop into a usable range. It kind of sucks but it is what it is.

 

[Tom.Wong]

what was your stop on the lens exactly? stopping down more doesn't always mean sharper. every lens reaches a maximum MTF at a certain stop (sweet spot) stopping down past it could mean you lose sharpness, and too much you get a ton of defraction in the lens causing more loss in sharpness. and being a still lens the tolerance for that is much lower. hence why a lot of still photographers choose to stay at certain f stops and just move their shutter speed up when they need to cut light.

 

[John Marchant]

Personally I'd say you're at the limit of deliverable sharpness for a few reasons:

1. The lens is not inherently mega sharp like better primes can be, and I feel is better around 5.6 than down at 8 and 9.1 as these shots are.

2. Perception: The shot is very wide with the human subjects small in frame. I've seen many people, pros included, mistake a closer shot of a subject for a sharper lens and vice versa. We tend to judge on faces and human detail.

3. Redcode. I know from experience that when I shoot deep focus exteriors (I do a lot of architectural stuff) with foliage and gravel particularly, I need to push to 3:1 or 4:1 otherwise the wavelet compression starts to soften detail. These shots are compression killers. If you doubt that, check at 200% the blue channel only in RCX. In the trees and foliage you can see substantial sized circular wavelet pools (like soft rounded macro-blocks).

 

[Nick Morrison]

This isn't the first time we've heard problems with these two lenses. I remember something being posted a couple of months ago, about shots suddenly looking fuzzy. I'm almost positive that case involved at least one of these lenses.

 

[Brad Webb]

Any chance the Image Stabilization was switched in the on position on these lenses?

 

[Les Dittert]

Meta data says focus was at infinity. They don't look that far away, even for a 17mm lens and it's DOF.

I think the lens was pretty nicely dialed in, as the meta data tells F.9.1 which might be very close to the sweet spot. I guess for that lens it might be around F8. (The 17mm shot indicates that to me.)

That both lens stop working or producing first good results and then not at all, indicates to me that it is not at all a lens thingy.

 

[Michael Mayda]

Did you focus at longer focal length, then pull back to shoot? These are still varifocal lenses, not true cinema zooms. Focus shifts with changes in fl are likely to happen. Just another possible source of softness...

 

[Zac C]

My Canon 24-70 was so soft I had to sell it, but not after I shot a huge gig at 2k. The footage was almost unusable.

 

[Bob Gundu]

As I don't use canon glass, so I'm just guessing here, does the the autofocus kick in everytime you hit record? I hate autofocus but maybe it mis-fired? Also, the suggestion of people thinking it is a varifocal lens can be an unpleasant surprise.

 

[Karl Krings]

Yes....maybe software changed focus? This will not happen with a full manual Lense. Ask RED. I had a Problem with apeture. Sometimes on Beta OS you have to refresh settings via software.mmm maybe its just backfocus.

 

[Sidney L. Plaut]

Could very well be that the focus on the lenses themselves are a little off - resulting in a soft image at "inf"- try and see if they are sharp at "inf" or just a little bit before.

 

[Timur Civan]

@1080p it looks moderately acceptable, about what i'd expect a Canon Lens to look like.


Canons are a crap shoot. Some of them are wonderful, some are awful. I got lucky, my 24-105 is extremely sharp from F4 till F11, and flares quite nicely. My friends 24-105 is rather soft all the time, and gets progressively worse as the stops get further down. I think this is why a majority of people look at the 24-105 as a crappy "kit lens". Same goes for the primes and zooms alike. My 85mm F1.8 is like a razor blade from F1.8 till F11, my 50m F1.4 is soft till a F4.0 then soft again at F11. It has a three stop Sweet spot. I believe it was Mark Toia who said he buys canon lenses in threes, and keeps the best one. This is the danger in cheap optics.