Catalina Vacation: a humbling video...focus?

Chris Light

Chris Light

Veteran
Man, I thought I had this camera figured out. Until it was recommended to me to use auto focus. Bad. But I knew what I was going to shoot, for the most part, as I've been to the island 7 or 8 times, but this was the first time with my A1. No tripod, slider, dolly, merlin, nothing. Just me ol' hands.

here's the example, http://www.vimeo.com/5905633 , but before watching, i can say that beyond using autofocus, I also experimented with "infinity"...can someone clear up what "infinity" focus is supposed to accomplish? It never looked focused to me, and in the video, some of the soft footgage was shot with "infinity", and some auto-focus. Yet some of it is sharp as a tack.

the main reason this is bothering me is because as a mostly r-n-g shooter, the scheduled tours required me to act so fast with the cam, that manual focus seemed too daunting, so i threw 'er into autofocus, or "infinity" at times hoping to get enough focused footage. not the case....just watch and look for the soft moments. also my first lenghty shoot that's 100% handheld, except when i found a table, chair, railing, or wall to rest the camera on.

sorry for the lengthy post...I just need clarification on auto-focus vs. "infinity", ie. benefits and pitfalls.

thanks.

Chris
www.vimeo.com/chrislight
 
Infinity focus is the extreme far limit of the focus ring. When you set your camera to infinity, objects which are sufficiently far away and further will be in focus. The physics of it are that when the incoming light rays are parallel, the lens set to infinity will produce a sharp image. Just how far the objects have to be depends on the camera and sensor size but it's usually about 50 or 60 metres. It does not in any way mean that everything at any distance will be in focus.

More info on Wikipedia
 
thanks andrew for the response...that helps quite a bit with distance and such. any thoughts on handheld usage when deep focus can be acheived? sometimes i just want to shoot in public and have everything in focus. autofocus is slow and seems far to jittery in 24f. or is that the nature of the beast with 24f? i appreciate some further thoughts.

thanks again
Chris
 
skinny! said:
thanks andrew for the response...that helps quite a bit with distance and such. any thoughts on handheld usage when deep focus can be acheived? sometimes i just want to shoot in public and have everything in focus...
Click to expand...

No worries, happy to help!
The typical way to keep everything in focus is to close up your aperture / iris. The smaller the aperture, the deeper the depth of field will be. The trade off is that you'll lose light. If you're shooting outdoors then it souldn't be too much of an issue, you just might have to turn your gain up a little. The further out you have your zoom (shorter focal length) then the deeper your depth of field will be as well.

-Andrew
 
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