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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 :)

Magic Focus

(knowing that not all the features will be enabled by now)

Will the magic focus assist be enabled from day one?
 
is the histogram a plot of the difference in intensity between each given pixel and its neighbors? eg. as used in a standard sharpening kernel? Maybe I'm missing something but that seems rather straightforward to me, not sure why a viewfinder incorporating such a display would need to be $20k. Unless that's just the standard Hollywood price for anything slightly different than standard ?
 
The Magic Focus with the histogram below the picture sounds interesting, but I can certainly think of some situations that would lead to it giving the wrong results. For example, any picture with a long horizontal object that's not in the same plane as the background, such as a person lying on a bed (no this is not porn). Or any picture where a person is not in the same plane as a large foreground object, such as a person sitting at a desk. In a half length shot of an overweight person, it may lead you to focus on the torso instead of the face/eyes. Adding a histogram in the vertical direction would help, but there would still be tough situations.

Of course, I haven't seen it in action, and I'm just making conjectures. I hope Graeme gets all the kinks worked out soon so we can all see it.
 
Charts versus zebras.

Charts versus zebras.

I wonder how difficult it would be to implement it so that pixels with the maximum sharpness have some kind of zebra or coloration effect. That seems much more straight forward than having to look down and compare the image to a chart (I'd rather have that space for an actual waveform really). Buzzing eyelashes = sharp. I've been wanting that for a while. Hopefully the whole thing will be customizable and independant for the EVF and LCD.

IB
 
Sumfun said:
The Magic Focus with the histogram below the picture sounds interesting, but I can certainly think of some situations that would lead to it giving the wrong results. For example, any picture with a long horizontal object that's not in the same plane as the background, such as a person lying on a bed (no this is not porn). Or any picture where a person is not in the same plane as a large foreground object, such as a person sitting at a desk. In a half length shot of an overweight person, it may lead you to focus on the torso instead of the face/eyes. Adding a histogram in the vertical direction would help, but there would still be tough situations.

Of course, I haven't seen it in action, and I'm just making conjectures. I hope Graeme gets all the kinks worked out soon so we can all see it.
Click to expand...

I talked to the guys about the magic focus and what was not shown was the graph below the image represents a column but single row across the column. That row can be moved up and down the image vertically.
 
Jim Arthurs said:
Graeme told me point blank on Monday that the "magic focus" he was working on was NOT on display in the booth.
Click to expand...

For sure not a functioning version of the magic focus. But I was told the red line graph under the still image of the milk girl was a screen grab.
 
so maybe it'll be one of the last features to be enabled.. so till then, how shall we have accurate focus from a 35mm sensor?..
 
filmmaker's gang said:
so maybe it'll be one of the last features to be enabled.. so till then, how shall we have accurate focus from a 35mm sensor?..
Click to expand...

The old fashioned way - with a tape measure and your eyeballs. :biggrin:
 
There's a good bet that the focus assist is ready or will be at the top of the list of features to implement ASAP. I'm guessing that they weren't ready to show it to the competition at NAB.
 
Steve Tammi said:
I talked to the guys about the magic focus and what was not shown was the graph below the image represents a column but single row across the column. That row can be moved up and down the image vertically.
Click to expand...

Ahh, this would make more sense .. if the row adjustment can be made easily and on the fly, then you could just position the row over the subjects eyes etc, and watch the histogram while you rack. Very interested to see how this turns out.
________
YA-3
 
It's hard to comment on the histogram focus assist considering that the demo was a still frame and the histogram wasn't working, but it looked like it would be more trouble than what it's worth. The good thing was that the viewfinder was very sharp and I felt like I had a good gauge of the center of the focal plane and where focus fell off. If this isn't Graeme's secret focus assist, I will be much happier.
 
ibloom said:
I wonder how difficult it would be to implement it so that pixels with the maximum sharpness have some kind of zebra or coloration effect. IB
Click to expand...

Yuk! Imagine a closeup where the eyes are blinking zebras.
(and the actor asking afterwards "How was it?")

Jochen
 
SF Geek said:
The good thing was that the viewfinder was very sharp and I felt like I had a good gauge of the center of the focal plane and where focus fell off.
Click to expand...

But still, the imagine has 10 times (right?) more resolution in 4k than what you see in there. Makes me nervous.

Especially if you want to do a crop and rescale in post.

Jochen
 
magic focus = distance info of each pixel?

magic focus = distance info of each pixel?

Not sure if I get this right, but if the magic focus can tell if a pixel is sharp or not, then you have distance information in respect of each pixel and object in the scene? This would give you z-pixel information for keying without greenscreen:):ninja:
 
goffb said:
Not sure if I get this right, but if the magic focus can tell if a pixel is sharp or not, then you have distance information in respect of each pixel and object in the scene? This would give you z-pixel information for keying without greenscreen:):ninja:
Click to expand...

The magic focus assist can certainly tell you what's in focus and what isn't, but that in no way means it can tell how far an object is from the lens (or focal plane), although if you have a lens with Cooke i technology, you do have the focus info from the lens. However, I don't see how that would allow you to key without green screen.

Cheers,
Damien
 
Hi Damien,

I saw an Ultimatte demmo a few years ago where they were able to pull a key of a girl with flowing hair. The backgroung was the moving branches of a tree, so what Brian is takling about has already been done. Don't know if it was ever released as a product.

Stephen
 
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