Hi got a brand new C300 mark ii and to my surprise it has pretty harsh focus hunting in continues mode. Hopefully I am doing something wrong / have wrong setting. Tried with 24-105 (I) 18-135 and 35 f2 so far. Had a C100 mark ii before, DPAF was smooth, no hunting like this. Any idea? What settings are you using?
C300: Focus hunting C300 m2
- Thread starter Vino
- Start date
Vino,
Are you finding that is true straight out of the box? There are response settings you can work with under the focus menu - I usually leave it at 0 and sometimes bump it up to +1 and speed down to -3 for B-roll when I want a more organic looking rack focus.
I've also found it likes light and contrast despite it being a phase detection system.
But I'm constantly impressed with the DAF of the camera...might be a bigger issue to get checked out.
Are you finding that is true straight out of the box? There are response settings you can work with under the focus menu - I usually leave it at 0 and sometimes bump it up to +1 and speed down to -3 for B-roll when I want a more organic looking rack focus.
I've also found it likes light and contrast despite it being a phase detection system.
But I'm constantly impressed with the DAF of the camera...might be a bigger issue to get checked out.
puredrifting
Major Contributor
We played with the C300 MKII at Canon Hollwyood over the weekend for an all day class. You might have better luck with fine tuning the response and speed. We found that in adequate light, it works quite well and with fine tuning, the focus pulls begins to resemble a human doing the focusing. The face recognition hates hats and glasses, especially at off angles. We were surprised at how well it tracked focus on a person who was rotating away from camera, totally kept sharp focus on their face in full profile with one eye visible only. Macaholic is right on the money too, it is dependent on light and contrast as well as color spectrum. An underlit, gray or no color face against a gray wall with a gray shirt, it's not going to work. As other DVXers have posted samples, like JM Gardiner's footage from Rwanda a few weeks ago, the DPAF system is incredible, it sounds like you need to do some tweaking. Even Canon will tell you though that it is not infallible. In our testing, we set object tracking on a bottle, it worked flawlessly when we kept the bottle in frame. But if you take that bottle out past the 80% scan area for the AF tracking and then bring it back into frame, it doesn't find the object again. Still though, the DPAF in the C300 MKII is remarkably useful for many of us.
Thanks for the replies!
Hrm tested it out a bit more today. It felt better but still went hunting unexpectedly a few times, I think primarily when using Face AF (Prio) but tried all AF variants. And with and without LUT (does it matter?). Low light seems to affect more but it happened w good light too. Might have to check it more scientifically. Test more response settings. And maybe have to re-learn a bit...
Another thing: I cannot get it to magnify during recording. Firmware should be the latest (01.05.10). Read somewhere that MAGN has restrictions even under the new firmware, but cannot recall what restrictions and where I read it...
PS OOT: Love the color rendition of Clog3
Hrm tested it out a bit more today. It felt better but still went hunting unexpectedly a few times, I think primarily when using Face AF (Prio) but tried all AF variants. And with and without LUT (does it matter?). Low light seems to affect more but it happened w good light too. Might have to check it more scientifically. Test more response settings. And maybe have to re-learn a bit...
Another thing: I cannot get it to magnify during recording. Firmware should be the latest (01.05.10). Read somewhere that MAGN has restrictions even under the new firmware, but cannot recall what restrictions and where I read it...
PS OOT: Love the color rendition of Clog3
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Go to Assistance Functions, then Magnification, then I believe it's the first option. It will warn you about what you loose, but I believe it's just Face Detection and the ability to use Live View over the WiFi adapter. For me, I would only turn it on when manually focusing with a cinema lens, so I don't miss the face detection.
Thanks for the advice! Stupid of me not to check there.
But yes, the face detection is very useful. So I also skip MAGN during rec at the moment.
BTW I was using AF boosted MF today and I'm very pleased with the result. So that might be the way for me.
black film guild
Member
In my experience the #1 thing you need to worry about is making sure you have enough light.... If you are doing anything critical just manual focus and use the focus assist function. it is pretty awesome.