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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

AF EPIC tests finished - its the future.

While I've been using the canon mount since October, it was not until I read this thread yesterday and tried the AF mode. It is scary good. Thanks for sharing this whole new way of working with moving images!

Best, Peter
 
Peter Strietmann said:
While I've been using the canon mount since October, it was not until I read this thread yesterday and tried the AF mode. It is scary good. Thanks for sharing this whole new way of working with moving images!Best, Peter
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OCTOBER!!!!!! Peter Peter Peter...:smilielol5::thumbsup:
 
Mark, this is off topic, but is there any chance you could make a thread and share your "Hotel Workflow" ? With what software and hardware you're using. This would be incredibly helpful to many people.

Thanks in advance.
 
Mark Toia said:
Hi Rob,
You can completely disagree, this is an open forum after all... And your thoughts are all valid.
but I don't think you read the post correctly...

Please know firstly the reason why I went for this outside walk and why I shot over 200 shots, it wasn't to capture great images as I was shooting for know other reason other than to see how good or bad the AF system would work in all types of situations... Fast , slow, dark, bright... What ever the circumstance.
Once you know how to get the best from the AF and know the small tricks to pull focus using AF, then it works very well.

It did everything i hoped it would.
Breathing has never been an issue for me... If it becomes an issue, I just crop into the frame and key frame it back... simple as that. 2 seond job. 99.99999% of the time... I don't even worry about.

I'm just sharing results is all.. I like to share.


Not sure you know what your on about here...
My 125 cinematography awards from around the world... think this statement is completely incorrect.



Some canons are only as sharp PL Master primes, PL RED PRIMES are sharper than a canon lenese... Whats you point?

At the end of the day, while your wanking all over PL glass. (which I have done for the last 25 years), I'm banking on future trends and technologies as well.

There is enough room for both old and new technologies in your life... Try not to fall behind...
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Ahem, Mark, just because I don't jump on everything that is new because it is new does not mean I am falling behind. I actually am on the consulting design team of two new Red post tools, and fully embrace digital workflow in a very knowledgeable manner. But not all new things are really better than those that came before them, only some are. I also don't like the crude and disrespectful reference to my wanking over PL. I have shot lots of very glossy stuff for happy customers using Canon glass, but this process had its own struggles that made me miss PL.

As far as your credentials, we are well aware of them as you repeat them often here, and I must admit you have shot some extremely impressive stuff. But so have others on this forum. It doesn't mean only your opinion matters or that it's cool to speak in such a crude manner to someone who disagrees with your subjective opinions about cinematography.

As far as what I'm "on about" re focus curves. Look at a side by side test at the same f-stop and you'll see it right away. All lens models have a distinctive curve, as distinctive as their bokeh.

My experience with fixing breathing adds a second level of motion that is slightly misaligned with the first unless you futz with it a long time. I fully know the technique you describe. I just find the results often look a little off unless you spend that large amount of time which I would rather spend doing something else.

My point about sharpness was that it was not a huge consideration for me. All reasonable modern lenses are sharp enough for 1080p which is 100% of our work at our shop. What's important, in my opinion, is all the rest of what makes up a lense's character.

I should point out that British, English Canadian and Autralian current TVCs are very doco-like. The rest of the world, including the U.S. is very different. Different aesthetics, different goals, and thus different tool prefs.
 
wanking is an Australian idiom referred to as getting excited. It is not seen as an offensive remark other than saying a person is getting a little bit over excited or fixated. However if he called you a wanker, that would be a different story. Please continue.
 
Jason Sinclair said:
wanking is an Australian idiom referred to as getting excited. It is not seen as an offensive remark other than saying a person is getting a little bit over excited or fixated. However if he called you a wanker, that would be a different story. Please continue.
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Ok cultural difference. Sorry.
 
Hey guys,

Received my SH this week and have wandered the NYC cityscapes with it. The Scarlet has lived up to and fully exceeded my expectations set on November 3rd. Irrelevant to this posting, but I had to get it off my chest!

I've been trying out similar tests with AF on a 24-70 and 70-200 and while responsive and surprisingly accurate, both lenses "reaction times" have considerable more search than seen in Mark's video. Nothing alarming but, is this a property of the Scarlet's slower hardware or potentially my half-assed lighting? (Shot open and then at 5.6 in not-very-good tungsten setting, noticed little difference between apertures though)

Any thoughts welcome, always appreciated gentlemen!

Best,
Drew
 
Anderson Boyd said:
Hey guys,

Received my SH this week and have wandered the NYC cityscapes with it. The Scarlet has lived up to and fully exceeded my expectations set on November 3rd. Irrelevant to this posting, but I had to get it off my chest!

I've been trying out similar tests with AF on a 24-70 and 70-200 and while responsive and surprisingly accurate, both lenses "reaction times" have considerable more search than seen in Mark's video. Nothing alarming but, is this a property of the Scarlet's slower hardware or potentially my half-assed lighting? (Shot open and then at 5.6 in not-very-good tungsten setting, noticed little difference between apertures though)

Any thoughts welcome, always appreciated gentlemen!

Best,
Drew
Click to expand...

Could be that you were using the 70-200 at the far focal length and were wide open... it's very difficult to achieve quick AF at say 200mm and f2.8. Try having the aperture around f5.6.
 
Reading this thread I feel both excited about the new technology and utterly horrified....

I just bought a set of 5 Zeiss Cp.2's less than a year ago. I took out a huge loan to do so but I told myself "Hey, a good set of lenses will last me 5, maybe 10 years... They never go obsolete and I can always sell them for very little depreciation..." I did a lot of research before settling on the CP.2's. I even sold some Canon L series primes to pay for them.

Now I'm reading your posts and I'm scared shitless. Was my $25, 000 investment a total waste? Should I quickly sell my lenses before the rest of the industry catches on and instead spend my hard earned (and borrowed) money on Canon AF lenses? I could get a whole wackload of Canon lenses for $25 000. I know what you're going to say... Keep the PL primes, they are a still a good investment and invest in some super fast Canon AF lenses as well. BUT I can't afford to do both.

I was trained as a film cinematographer and trained on manual PL lenses. I love the mechanics. I love the look and feel of my CP2's but I shoot without an assistant A LOT. The kind of productions I am on in this stage of my career, autofocus would be a god send to me. I want to embrace this technology but I just spent a fortune on a set of manual PL lenses.

What should I do?

By the way, I just got my Scarlet so I haven't had a chance to try the AF. But if it is as good as you make it sound, I will be using it a lot especially since I usually pull my own focus....
 
Mark thanks for this, I have a slew of AF Canon lenses and have been manually focusing while run and gunning, i'll try the autofocus tomorrow.
 
I got pretty pumped about this post, and did some testing and offered this technique to a fashion photographer on a pretty big shoot today. he was stoked about it, and we tried it because we had two bodies today (one epic, one canon scarlet), but when the time came, he could not get a good focus on the model's face. It basically kept failing, and he could not change the focus without it rolling all the way through the lens's focus through each time. The motors weren't slow, but going through the entire throw of the camera each time was just frustrating. But the worst part was that he just could not get good results out of a person's face. I wonder if I was missing something. I want this to work SO badly, and I've seen it work beautifully with a steady camera looking at inanimate things, but with a handheld camera doing a closeup of a model, it just can't find the focus reliably. its easier to just use a manual prime and a focus confirmation. We definitely used contrasty edges like dark har against white skin, etc, but now luck. For now, I think this feature needs to be explored more and at the very least used for B-roll. I used the "single mode" and a 50 prime, L series, and 70-200mm. But it was just not working for us yet. I definitely look forward to hearing how things go with this technique on your commercial, and what you do and don't recommend from your experiences. Thanks again for your post. Always exciting and challenging.
 
It always focuses through as it searches for the right point. I find the 24-70 to be relatively slow but the 70-200 is much faster and sometimes acceptable. I have experienced complete failures too, on inanimate objects that I thought had a useable edge, but the BG contained some under-exposure and noise. I'm currently thinking that was part of my problem.

I plan to try some other glass and practice more but as of now I wouldn't use it on the fly, rather for pre-focusing. Rack mode works brilliantly!

TJ Hellmuth said:
I got pretty pumped about this post, and did some testing and offered this technique to a fashion photographer on a pretty big shoot today. he was stoked about it, and we tried it because we had two bodies today (one epic, one canon scarlet), but when the time came, he could not get a good focus on the model's face. It basically kept failing, and he could not change the focus without it rolling all the way through the lens's focus through each time. The motors weren't slow, but going through the entire throw of the camera each time was just frustrating. But the worst part was that he just could not get good results out of a person's face. I wonder if I was missing something. I want this to work SO badly, and I've seen it work beautifully with a steady camera looking at inanimate things, but with a handheld camera doing a closeup of a model, it just can't find the focus reliably. its easier to just use a manual prime and a focus confirmation. We definitely used contrasty edges like dark har against white skin, etc, but now luck. For now, I think this feature needs to be explored more and at the very least used for B-roll. I used the "single mode" and a 50 prime, L series, and 70-200mm. But it was just not working for us yet. I definitely look forward to hearing how things go with this technique on your commercial, and what you do and don't recommend from your experiences. Thanks again for your post. Always exciting and challenging.
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I'm basically noticing that its great for things in bright daylight that aren't moving, but its not yet good enough at the 4-10' range where the operator is trying to do it handheld and the subject also has some of their own movement. I think that the motion blur at that point has something to do with it. The camera keeps hunting, and then gives up much of the time. I suppose, if there were more light, or I were shooting with a shallow shutter, or I could ask the talent to hold still for a second it would work, but I obviously don't want to ask them to hold still for focus marks because I believe you shouldn't have to do that. Thats what a focus puller is for. And even then, you are locked into that distance for the whole take, so its not helpful.... YET. I agree I look forward to the future of this technology. And I definitely look forward to using this current autofocus on my next b-roll day!
 
That seems to be consistent with what Toia was saying, and with my limited experience with it so far. Hitting a moving target from a moving platform is an extremely difficult task, particularly if they moving directly toward one another. Motion blur is yet another fly in the ointment. With those things in mind my initial session was on sticks with inanimate objects and I still had occasional failures. My next step is to take it outdoors into more light and then maybe get off of the sticks.

Of the two lenses you used, was one noticeably better than the other?

TJ Hellmuth said:
I'm basically noticing that its great for things in bright daylight that aren't moving, but its not yet good enough at the 4-10' range where the operator is trying to do it handheld and the subject also has some of their own movement. I think that the motion blur at that point has something to do with it. The camera keeps hunting, and then gives up much of the time. I suppose, if there were more light, or I were shooting with a shallow shutter, or I could ask the talent to hold still for a second it would work, but I obviously don't want to ask them to hold still for focus marks because I believe you shouldn't have to do that. Thats what a focus puller is for. And even then, you are locked into that distance for the whole take, so its not helpful.... YET. I agree I look forward to the future of this technology. And I definitely look forward to using this current autofocus on my next b-roll day!
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If we agree that in the current auto focus Epic Combo subject and camera need to remain at constant distance (more problematic if you are hand holding and the subject is close) and that the system takes longer to work at wide apertures...
An expereinced craft doc operator can pull focus on the fly HD with very good accuracy, but 4k is a lot harder to nail given current viewfinder resolutions, without searching past the sweet spot and then reversing the back the focus ring a little.
I wonder if there is a semi auto focus mode that could assists pull focussing by the doc operator by letting him pull the majority of the move and then tweak the end of the move?
For doc work the subject to camera distance is often moving and slight tweaks need to be made on the fly and also framing exposure and focus needs to be on the money for minutes at a time whilst we wait for the uncontrolled subject to play ball.

Mike Brennan
 
A "snapping" focus mode, similar to an edit timeline, where the operator pulls it close and then the AF snaps to the nearest edge, without hunting, would be fantastic.

Michael Brennan said:
I wonder if there is a semi auto focus mode that could assists pull focussing by the doc operator by letting him pull the majority of the move and then tweak the end of the move?
Click to expand...
 
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