Focus!

[Mike Yonts]

I'm starting to really like the menu item on my Epic known simply as "Focus." It puts a bunch of sharpening onto the monitor image, making it easy to see where the plane of sharpest focus is in the shot. (In other words, its very similar to the peaking control on a regular video camera.) I hadn't heard of it when I got my Epic this week, even though I've been studying RedUser quite a bit. I'm a little surprised this feature hasn't been talked about more.

HOWEVER, I wonder if Focus could also be the source of some complaints people have had about noise and strobing. It sends the super-sharpened image out the HDMI connection as well as to the Red LCD (and presumably to the EVF and out the HD-SDI connection, but I haven't tested that). And it's there when you play back a shot from the camera too, unless you turn it off. So if you leave it on by accident, and point your Epic into a dark area, and snap in to focus, you might see some hyper-sharpened noise. (Obviously it's not being recorded that way, but I wonder if not everybody is aware of that.)

Do you guys think it's likely that in a future build, or with the Pro I/O, we'll have the ability to send Focus only to the outputs we select?

 

[Clint Lealos]

All really good points Mike. I too appreciate the new focus assist tools on the Scarlet and Epic. Coming from a video camera background, it is nice to have something similar to "peaking". I've actually done exactly what you are talking about! I thought I was trippin, but I had accidentally bumped one the user programmable buttons. Took me a minute or two to realize that was a new feature. Maybe others are doing the same and not realizing it? Like I said, good points

 

[Mike Yonts]

Yeah, I need to get in there and disable some of those buttons...

 

[Thomas Koch]

i love using Edge. So cool.

 

[Jason Wingrove]

Love it too. its my default

 

[Jonathan Stevenson]

I keep the Focus view on about 95% of the time. Super useful.

 

[Phil Holland]

Same. The focus tools on Epic/Scarlet are critical to locking critical focus. I love 'em.