AF100 AUTOFOCUS in dark room?

[maciek8791]

Hello there,

I am used to work with heavy betacam gear (in the past). At the moment I shot only weddings, and I just sold my old camera - sony FX1. Since one year I am using canon dslr for almost everything - except for the party after the wedding. Here in Poland this party is very important and we have to shot everything (normally You start on 19:00 - 20:00 ad You have to work all the time until 1:00 - 2:00). Then You leave and they keep playing. For this I was using Fx1 up to now.

While my canon 60d is great for preparation, reception etc. it can't be used to shot the party after the wedding ; There is a lot of dances, people are playing, everything is moving fast and You have to mad to do it with DSLR - focusing is really hard and small DOF is something You do not want, because Your customers will want to see as many people as possible ; But the room is dark, so You have to open the iris (so dof becomes small). On the end You will get better result with camera like fx1, nx5, xha1 etc and most importany - You will not need to run everywhere with follow focus (believe me shooting a wedding for 4-5 hours is really a hard work, even with autofocus).

Now after selling my fx1 I have to select a new camera and I am moving towards the AF101 - so I will be able to say goodbye to canon, by mounting all my canon lenses with the adapter to AF101. This camera is great and it has everything I need.

But the question is - how is Autofocus working on AF101 ? Of course we are talking about panasonic lenses because AFAIK these are the only lenses with AF support. How about Autofocus performance in darker rooms? Is it fast? What do You do in these situations - are You trying to close the iris, pumping up the ISO, to keep dof as big as possible? I wonder what is Your experience with this problem because right now I have to choose between AF101 and some more traditional cameras like NX5 or new panasonic a130/a160 and this focus question is very, very important for me?

best regards
Maciej

 

[Barry_Green]

No autofocus system works well in the dark. To get great autofocus performance, you want three things:
1) a nice bright scene to point the camera at
2) a fast-focusing lens (right now that means the Lumix lenses with the "HD" logo on them, so the 14-140, the new 14-42 pancake, or the new 45-175 zoom)
3) the fastest frame rate you can get -- so, in Poland, that'd be 1080/50i or 720/50p

No matter what else you do, you'll just have to understand that there's drastically less depth of field on an AF101 than there would be on a 1/3" camera like the FX1 or AC130/160. Those cameras have sensors that are only about 1/16 as large as the AF101's, and that means that the depth of field will be much, much narrower on the AF101. If you keep to the wider-angle lenses, and stop those lenses down some, you can keep the depth of field deep enough to avoid some of the issues, but it's not going to be much different from your 60D -- the 60D's sensor is only a little bit bigger than the AF101's, so the DOF will be about the same between them. But, at least with the AF101 you can get autofocus.

 

[TomLenham]

I wouldn't do it - the Lumix lenses (you'll mainly want the 14-140 for wedding work) are very slow, so you won't be able to get enough light in it on a dark dance floor. Sounds to me like you'd be better off with a Canon XF300 or JVC 750.