How to make sure picture is sharp?????

[gstarza]

I'm working on a documentary consisting of interviews. One one camera I'm shooting hand-held for cu's and the other camera is locked off and set up to do a master, full-length portrait. In the past, I've had problems with the master shot. When the subject talked with his hands, the focus racked to the hands and stayed fixed there, leaving the eyes blurred for a while. To remedy this, I zoomed in on the eyes, focused, and then zoomed out to the composition I wanted and turned off the autofocus. I'd put the camera at F6.8, 1/60, and low gain. However, the footage still looks not 100% sharp when I review it in imovie. My question is this: what's the best way to make sure the shot has good foucus without stopping down?

thanks,
gstarza

 

[Barry_Green]

A few things: first of all, definitely disable autofocus. Second, imovie may or may not be displaying the full resolution; ask around for Quicktime full-resolution tips, there's something about a draft mode and a full-quality mode.

Third, you're doing it basically right -- zoom in, focus, zoom out. For even more accuracy you can open up the f-stop when you zoom in, to get pinpoint focus. However, not all cameras will always hold focus when zooming back out. It may be that your camera needs a back-focus adjustment. Check it on a monitor -- if you're able to get a better focus at the zoomed-out position than you can through the zoom-in, focus, zoom-out method, then your camera may need a trip to the repair shop for examination.