greg huglin
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2011
- Messages
- 71
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 6
- Location
- Queensland Australia
- Website
- www.greghuglin.com
Focusing Canon 150-600FD lens with RED 7" Touchscreen vs. RED Oled EVF
To all the REDUSER folks who helped me recently make decisions regarding how to focus my Canon 150-600 lens in bright light, thanks. Here’s what I found out. Being over 45, I wear the El Cheapo Costco 1.25 reading glasses for reading and anything less than arms length. Had Lasik eye surgery but it ain’t perfect so Costco glasses are scattered all over my house, car, etc. I used to have 20/10 vision in my focusing eye and now the eye doctor says it’s 20/20 but it isn’t like I’m 18 any more. When looking at the 7” touchscreen, I need glasses to focus it. In bright daylight it’s impossible to accurately see what I’m doing. So, I bought a Cinema Oxide Carbonite scope and the 7” RED touch screen and it works really well. The scope has a diopter adjustment built into it and when I need to touch the screen I can flip it up, easy to do. I also bought the RED Oled EVF and tried that out as well. I found that the larger image on the 7’ touchscreen worked better for me. My true opinion, I’m not paid by Cinema Oxide, I paid retail for my scope.
Yesterday I did my first ‘real’ shoot with the Epic and my new rig in Portugal shooting big wave towsurfing. I had enough light to shoot at 5k at roughly 100 fps. Set the shutter to 1/800 and 1/1000 during the partly sunny day and the Canon 150-600 at f11. Had the lens at about 600mm all day but didn’t need any 1.4 or 2x extenders this time. Used the ‘focus’ setting on the touchscreen which seemed to help with what looked like slightly increased contrast. So, I had a red square in the center of the screen which I was hoping would change color to yellow or green when I was in focus. Well, it rarely did that, like maybe 1% of the time.
I don’t know if that’s because I wasn’t using an autofocus Canon lens or what, but it just didn’t confirm focus by changing color. But, when I downloaded about 2 hours of footage last night in my hotel room and looked at it on my 13” Macbook, I was very happy to see that 99% of my shots were tack sharp. Okay, I’ve been using manual focus long lenses since the early 1970’s and do practice a lot but that Touchscreen/Carbonite scope combo really really made it work for me.
Here’s two screencaps I made for the surfer and one of me using the rig.
The surf shots are cropped in by about 40% and are tuned up only by pressing ‘auto tone’ in Photoshop. No fancy tweaking. At hi-res the surf shots would easily be accepted by a surfing magazine for publication since they are quite sharp. Shutterspeed either 1/800 or 1/1000.
Finally I have a ‘movie camera’ and still camera in one so now I don’t have to carry a dedicated still rig with me. Thanks to RED for this amazing camera, even though I bought it just weeks before the 1/2 price drop. Now I don't have to carry another heavy fluid head, lenses etc. etc. Now if someone could lighten my overweight load by making those batteries, especially the REDBRICKS, weigh about 1/10th what they do now?
Greg Huglin
To all the REDUSER folks who helped me recently make decisions regarding how to focus my Canon 150-600 lens in bright light, thanks. Here’s what I found out. Being over 45, I wear the El Cheapo Costco 1.25 reading glasses for reading and anything less than arms length. Had Lasik eye surgery but it ain’t perfect so Costco glasses are scattered all over my house, car, etc. I used to have 20/10 vision in my focusing eye and now the eye doctor says it’s 20/20 but it isn’t like I’m 18 any more. When looking at the 7” touchscreen, I need glasses to focus it. In bright daylight it’s impossible to accurately see what I’m doing. So, I bought a Cinema Oxide Carbonite scope and the 7” RED touch screen and it works really well. The scope has a diopter adjustment built into it and when I need to touch the screen I can flip it up, easy to do. I also bought the RED Oled EVF and tried that out as well. I found that the larger image on the 7’ touchscreen worked better for me. My true opinion, I’m not paid by Cinema Oxide, I paid retail for my scope.
Yesterday I did my first ‘real’ shoot with the Epic and my new rig in Portugal shooting big wave towsurfing. I had enough light to shoot at 5k at roughly 100 fps. Set the shutter to 1/800 and 1/1000 during the partly sunny day and the Canon 150-600 at f11. Had the lens at about 600mm all day but didn’t need any 1.4 or 2x extenders this time. Used the ‘focus’ setting on the touchscreen which seemed to help with what looked like slightly increased contrast. So, I had a red square in the center of the screen which I was hoping would change color to yellow or green when I was in focus. Well, it rarely did that, like maybe 1% of the time.
I don’t know if that’s because I wasn’t using an autofocus Canon lens or what, but it just didn’t confirm focus by changing color. But, when I downloaded about 2 hours of footage last night in my hotel room and looked at it on my 13” Macbook, I was very happy to see that 99% of my shots were tack sharp. Okay, I’ve been using manual focus long lenses since the early 1970’s and do practice a lot but that Touchscreen/Carbonite scope combo really really made it work for me.
Here’s two screencaps I made for the surfer and one of me using the rig.
The surf shots are cropped in by about 40% and are tuned up only by pressing ‘auto tone’ in Photoshop. No fancy tweaking. At hi-res the surf shots would easily be accepted by a surfing magazine for publication since they are quite sharp. Shutterspeed either 1/800 or 1/1000.
Finally I have a ‘movie camera’ and still camera in one so now I don’t have to carry a dedicated still rig with me. Thanks to RED for this amazing camera, even though I bought it just weeks before the 1/2 price drop. Now I don't have to carry another heavy fluid head, lenses etc. etc. Now if someone could lighten my overweight load by making those batteries, especially the REDBRICKS, weigh about 1/10th what they do now?
Greg Huglin
