CX350 Focus ring out of alignment?

I

Inger

Member
On my unit, i found that the if i focus on infinity or anything fair away, then i turn the ring to its extreme, everything is blurry! i would of thought it would of stopped and the farthest distant of focus, but instead its not focusing on anything and image is useless.
is there calibration needed?
Rob
 
The focus ring is designed to go past the infinity mark. This is so that motorized autofocus does not constantly bump up against the end of the focus track and put wear and stress on the mechanical components. It also allows for some shift due to temperature change.

To infinity and beyond!
 
Panasonic cameras have always been able to focus "past infinity". Seems odd, but when you look at the number scale (MF00-MF99), infinity is at MF95. The range from 96 to 99 is "past infinity".

Perhaps the range is extended to accommodate extreme temperature variations, or add-on lenses.
 
In cases where you just want to get to infinity accurately and in a hurry, previous PannyCams have had an infinity button which works even in manual focus mode. I assume the 350 has this option as well.

Possibly a new remote controller will emerge similar to my older Manfrotto remotes. It has the option to set a focus range and has electronically controlled stops for both min and max limits. For example, I can set limits at say 85-95 and have a nice ergonomic finger wheel which can go between limits with pretty good control. The sensitivity can be adjusted in cam. Obviously the controller market will need to mature some, but may offer this as a future option. Mine can be pan-bar attached or on most any shoulder riggy with handlebars. This unit does aperture control also. It would be a great starting point for a future 350 design. Not sure how the new Panny LANC single input would weigh into this, but you might imagine the single input could be split using a Y-cable with the other signal coming from zoom-start-stop hardware. I think the folks that have been unhappy about the 350 controller market want this option to split the controls. I even wonder if the existing, older, Panny dedicated controls could be hacked and adapted to the new cam via a clever adapter. Hoping so.

Grant

Manfrotto has dicontinued these:

https://www.manfrotto.com.br/focus-iris-control-for-panasonic.html
 
Have any of you experienced this auto focus issue? I normally have the camera set to manual focus. I remapped button 6, the iris button on the handgrip, to be a the same as the Push Auto button on the side of the camera. I use button 6 when hand holding the camera in a run & gun situation and need to do a quick focus., I zoom in, press button 6, the camera locks in the focus. I let go of button 6 and the camera remains in the auto focus mode for an additional 5-6 seconds. The camera does not immediately switch back to the manual focus mode. If I slightly change the framing the camera looses focus.
 
I have been finding that I am fighting with the focus on my unit. i am in manual, and when i roll the focus ring, it might hit the mark and it might not. it also seems to hit the mark, then it rolls back. It seems like it is in auto focus but im in manual.
sorry i had it on private, please take a look.

*** Never mind, i found that the MF ASSIST was on the the SW MODE. all good.
 
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ggrantly said:
In cases where you just want to get to infinity accurately and in a hurry, previous PannyCams have had an infinity button which works even in manual focus mode. I assume the 350 has this option as well.
Click to expand...
Yes, the CX350 has an auto/manual focus switch on the side of the camera that also has a third position setting the focus to infinity.

ggrantly said:
Possibly a new remote controller will emerge similar to my older Manfrotto remotes. It has the option to set a focus range and has electronically controlled stops for both min and max limits. For example, I can set limits at say 85-95 and have a nice ergonomic finger wheel which can go between limits with pretty good control. The sensitivity can be adjusted in cam. Obviously the controller market will need to mature some, but may offer this as a future option. Mine can be pan-bar attached or on most any shoulder riggy with handlebars. This unit does aperture control also. It would be a great starting point for a future 350 design. Not sure how the new Panny LANC single input would weigh into this, but you might imagine the single input could be split using a Y-cable with the other signal coming from zoom-start-stop hardware. I think the folks that have been unhappy about the 350 controller market want this option to split the controls. I even wonder if the existing, older, Panny dedicated controls could be hacked and adapted to the new cam via a clever adapter. Hoping so.
Click to expand...
The previous Panasonic focus control remotes used a simple variable resistance mechanism to trigger focus changes, so 20K ohms of resistance might indicate infinity focus, 10K ohms might be the middle of the focus range, etc. (I forget the exact numbers, but that is the general idea). This made it very easy to set the kind of focus stops you are describing, because the remote is essentially just restricting the resistance range to whatever endpoints you set.

With the standard LANC protocol, this kind of thing is much more difficult. LANC is a digital protocol, so essentially the remote sends commands to the camera like Zoom Out or Focus Far. And the camera responds by zooming out a step or adjusting the focus distance a step. In order to achieve a continuous zoom or focus change, the controller just keeps sending the same command to the camera until you release the button/rocker (or whatever control you are using) on the remote. There are also different zoom speed commands and I believe some cameras may implement different focus speed commands as well (although variable focus speeds is far less common than variable zoom speeds). In any case, these zoom or focus speed commands control how fast the zoom or focus motors of the camera turn in response to a command. So a Zoom In Slow command will result in a slower zoom step than Zoom In Fast, for example.

But the key point is that all of these commands are relative to the current zoom or focus position and just tell the camera to zoom or focus more in some direction. So there is no indication of where you are in the focus range and there are no LANC commands that say go to a particular focus distance, or focus to infinity. Now in theory, I suppose Panasonic could invent their own proprietary LANC commands to use for this, but these obviously wouldn't be supported by any current LANC remotes, and would require development of new remotes that could send these custom commands.

The takeaway from all this is that there is a significant difference in how the old 2-port Panasonic remotes worked compared to the current digital LANC remotes. Which probably helps explain why there haven't been a bunch of Panasonic to LANC remote adapters released to-date. While it would certainly be possible to build such an adapter from a technical standpoint, it's entirely possible that the cost of such an adapter would be about the same as the cost of a new LANC remote (keep in mind that an adapter like this would have been useful for people switching between different camera brands even before Panasonic decided to switch to LANC).

Note that the serial nature of the LANC protocol also makes it tricky to use a simple Y-cable with two LANC remotes. Because both remotes could send commands at the same time which would cause problems. Manfrotto actually made a small LANC combiner box (model 521SB) that let you plug in two LANC remotes and it would serialize the inputs from both into a single cable to the camera. But sadly, it has been discontinued:
https://www.manfrotto.com.br/remote-control-splitter-box.html
 
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