The Sony ILME-FX6V Owners Club

[jmone]

I've now had two occasions when AF just suddenly stopped recognising people and just grabbed focus towards infinity.
- Shot 1: Night Time Dinner Celebration. Was working just fine fine as the dinner guests were walking around (or when panning/zooming) with a box getting drawn around and focus switching between subjects in the frame. The camera was setup in the corner of the room with the 28-135 High Base, wide focal length and with auto iris (but F4ish most of the time). At one point (during the speeches) all of a sudden all the focus boxes disappeared from the OSD and the FX6 was focused on a background light. The speakers were maybe 5m away. Thankfully I was behind the camera at the time so could manually rack focus.
- Shot 2: Daytime memorial celebration. It was lightly raining and overcast. All was working as expected while panning around and zomming in/out on the crowd. It was initially fine while filming the speakers during the formal part, then focus boxes all disappeared and focus drifted out towards infinity. The speakers were under a tent so in even more shadow and had some highlights from the sky behind them. 28-135, low base with auto iris ranging around 5.6-8 and it was fairly wide to get both the memorial plaque and the speakers (who were again around 5m away) in frame. Again, just jumped into MF.

The commonality is low light and the fact they were both long static shots (you know how speeches can go on!). Any thoughts on the cause / how to mitigate?

Thanks
Nathan

[jmone]

Another thing I'd like to improve for these situations is a better sound package for capturing directional audio from the speakers into the FX6 over a distance of say 5m. I was capturing audio with both the inbuilt FX6 Stereo Mic and a Rode NTG-1 attached on Body but there were some quite speakers where it is just not good enough.

I was thinking some sort of small / inconspicuous wireless tabletop Mic (not LAV) to be able to plop down on a table / lectern to better capture the speakers in such situations that would ideally be recorded as a track on the FX6..... or is there a better way of doing this (and no, not a boom pole operator )

[Doug Jensen]

Any thoughts on the cause / how to mitigate?
Nathan

It's kind of hard to offer any meaningful advice without being given any information about the camera's settings. Were you using "Face/Eye Only" or "Face/Eye Priority"? What were your other focus menu settings?

[jmone]

Hi Doug,

- AF Transition Speed: 4
- AF Subject Shift Sens: 3
- Focus Area: Flexible Spot
- Focus Area (AF-S): Flexible Spot
- Face / Eye Detection AF: Face/Eye Priority AF
- Push AF Mode: AF
- AF Assist: On

Thanks
Nathan

[Doug Jensen]

I would suggest using Face/Eye Only. That way if the camera loses track of the face(s) it will just stop focusing and remain focused at whatever point it was focused at when it lost the face -- rather than hunting for something else in the deep background. Chances are the person is still in the same general area, right? So it is better to just have focusing pause for a little bit until it picks up the face again and resumes tracking. As you have found, if the focus slips to some other object during Face/Eye Priority it will almost never come back to the face on its own.

Also, you might want to experiment using Wide for the focus area.

[jmone]

Thanks Doug. Makes sense. Will give that a go.

[Doug Jensen]

I think it should help. Let us know.

[jmone]

Doing a quick test now, it makes an interesting difference with the 28-135 Focus Ring when set to AF/MF. The FX6 will hold the focus at the plane as you said even when losing Eye Detection (great!).. and now I can also rack focus with the lens focus set to AF/MF without having to pull the focus ring into full MF mode (and avoid the audible click / vibration when doing so).

[jmone]

Another thing I'd like to improve for these situations is a better sound package for capturing directional audio from the speakers into the FX6 over a distance of say 5m. I was capturing audio with both the inbuilt FX6 Stereo Mic and a Rode NTG-1 attached on Body but there were some quite speakers where it is just not good enough.

I was thinking some sort of small / inconspicuous wireless tabletop Mic (not LAV) to be able to plop down on a table / lectern to better capture the speakers in such situations that would ideally be recorded as a track on the FX6..... or is there a better way of doing this (and no, not a boom pole operator )

How about the Sony MI Shoe ECM-W2BT ? Anyone used it with the FX6?

[did]

FX9 firmware V3.0 released today with many new features
http://www.xdcam-user.com/alisters-blog/
Seems Sony does not care about the FX6...

[Ben Scott]

What does the FX6 need a firmware update for?

[drboffa]

What does the FX6 need a firmware update for?

I would *really* appreciate it if the camera didn't turn Proxy recording off when switching in and out of S&Q mode; I know the camera won't do proxies in S&Q (which is fine), but it should at least revert to the user's choice (in my case, Proxies "on") when exiting S&Q mode.

[Ben Scott]

Fair enough. Wasn't aware of that. Have never used proxies.

[stewhem]

Also like to see tracking slightly improved.

[did]

What does the FX6 need a firmware update for?

The minim would be to have what exists already on FX3 and A7s3:
- Object AF tracking
- Bluetooth (usefull for remote devices)

What I would have in addition:
- Full sensor 3:2 readout format (for anamorphic). The sensor is 3:2, why read it in 16/9 only ?
- Ability to switch-OFF automatically the power after xx min without action (I had a bad experience with the camera accidentally left ON in its bag)

Forgot
- Compatibility with Ronin RS2. Still not clear for me if it's DJI or Sony fault. I asked to both, each says it's the other one.