Autofocus

A

Anatole Sloan

Member
I know that the Red doesn't have autofocus, but it seems to me that they're missing out on a huge market in the sports sector by not having this feature.
-Is there any way to add it on after
-How much does this affect its ability to be used in this sort of thing
Cheers
Anatole
 
icon1.gif
Autofocus
I know that the Red doesn't have autofocus, but it seems to me that they're missing out on a huge market in the sports sector by not having this feature.
-Is there any way to add it on after
Click to expand...

Take a look at the red for ENG/EFP thread, it will give you most answers.

Don't know about adding auto features on at a later date. But sure would love to know if it would be possible though? Maybe someone at red could answer.

Michael
 
I think that the absence of autofocus on the Red is less a decicision they have made directly, but one made indirectly through the decision to design the camera primarily to be used with PL mount lenses, which do not have the ability to be controled by a camera.

That said, PL mount and other ciné lenses are often controled remotely by external folow focus devices, and there is no reason a 3rd party developer could not make a range-finder to automate this if there was a demand for it. I believe such ideas have already been discussed on other threads.

Personaly I am not a big fan of auto focus (or auto exposure for that matter, but then I'm a bit of a control freak, and don't like machines making decisions for me!) but occasionally a one-touch 'push auto' button for focus can be useful.

Nick
 
Anything with an active auto focus can be added later. *

A passive systems would need to analyse the image data and I'm not sure how easily that could be done right now.

Rosco

* I was thinking a high powered Ladar for college sports so I could "tackle" the USC quarterbacks on demand.
 
Do the Cooke PL mount lenses with /i technology not have autofocus built in? Adding the /i feature into Red would certainly make it one of the most favoured digital cameras on the market, not sure if they'd be given access to the lense technology by Cooke, but I don't see why not. At the end of the day they want their lenses to be the most widely used, so if there is a camera with over 1000 users then that's a fairly large market to aim at. In terms of the average user here owning brand new cooke's is out of the question but renting them isn't, the value of renting out a camera that can interact with the best Cookes in the business would also be alot higher and would make early reservations worth even more.
 
Homersapien said:
Do the Cooke PL mount lenses with /i technology not have autofocus built in?
Click to expand...
No.
The I is for "information" and only relays iris and focus data & DOF data to the AC.

The best autofocus in the world is a good 1st AC.
 
Stuart has mentioned on another thread that the Red's USB port can be used to read information from other devices, and store that as meta-data with the footage. Presumably a USB interface could be made which reads lens data from Cooke /i lenses.

This would certainly be a useful option – for access to lens data during post, not anything to do with auto-focus of course.

Nick
 
Homersapien said:
At the end of the day they want their lenses to be the most widely used, so if there is a camera with over 1000 users then that's a fairly large market to aim at. .
Click to expand...

Hi,

Cooke aren't aiming for a large market, they can only build 100+ sets a year, with a long waiting list already.

Stephen
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top