Defocusing to avoid aliasing/moire - bad idea?

E

eolian

Member
I did some tests where instead of having my wide angle lenses bang on focus, I put the focus a little closer on the plane. This seems to do a pretty good job of avoiding moire and aliasing. To my eyes, the softness isn't terrible, but I figured a possibility is to sharpen it a bit in post. The resulting footage has less moire/aliasing and seems only slightly less sharp compared to a well focused shot.

Being new to this, I'm not sure if this is a terrible idea, so wanted to hear your thoughts.


All of the wide shots here were defocussed. If normal focus is at infinity, I'm putting the focus at around 2 meters (6.5 feet) on a 17-35 lens, D600.

https://vimeo.com/55347446

http://youtu.be/r1vMjHJIWQI
(same thing on youtube)
 
I think this probably goes on a lot. Looked fine to me. Most people are watching 360p or 720p video on their 1080p and higher displays anyway, so all video looks a little soft. It just looks like that to me: watching a Vimeo 720p encode on a 1200p display.

Frankly, I'd rather have soft video then aliased/moire video.
 
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