Locking focus?

M

MichaelA

Well-known member
Hi all;

Got a question. I've gone through the manuals and Barry's book but not finding an answer (which may be the answer itself...). Can the focus be locked? Here's the projected scenario... time lapse during ocean sunrise. It's dark, and I don't have a darn thing to focus on. The infinity button takes it out to around 95%... I suppose Panasonic expects you to fine tune the last little bit. If you can see anything. Workaround? set focus during the day and "lock it". Then place the camera for the actual shoot later at the right time. In my 35mm SLR days... the OLD days before fly by wire focus, you could get away with this as described above by simply taping the focus ring on the lens. With a fly by wire focus ring I can't seem to find if the lens will "park" itself in the last setting. (I know some of my Canon's don't. It's a real pain. They seem to go into a "park" setting not respective of the last focus pull). Some initial tests indicate it doesn't, but this in empirical and I can't confirm it. Hence the question if there is a "lock" function of some type that I haven't been able to find. Plan "B" would be to establish a pre sunup focus by grabbing something as far away as possible that can be focused on in manual, don't touch it, set up the shoot, and hope that works.
 
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I’m going to take a guess but I’m thinking on a power up, the DVX goes to a default focus (electronic/mechanical) setting, then looks to see what’s happening with the afc or manual setting protocols. The best work around is to arrange the shot for an infinity setting, this way you have a blind night setting. Let’s us know how it goes!
 
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From my experience the DVX "remember" the last focus setting. If you set a focus (ie. on the LCD is indicated 29m) and you power down, at power up the focus remain at the same value.
 
Did a bunch of tests.... yes, it seems to remember the last focus setting - but not exactly! It will generally reboot within the general range, actually pretty close to the previous setting, but not quite the same as a true "lock." The range indicator will fluctuate a few feet. Perhaps the variation could be chalked up to temperature variation or something. And maybe for my purposes inconsequential if I'm focusing on infinity. But it seems like infinity aint what it used to be! (there is actually a frustrating "range" of infinity....) I'm going to try a few time lapse tests this weekend weather permitting and see if it works out. BTW, I started messing with time lapses about a year ago and promised to post up a "recipe" of basic settings if I got it figured out that may be helpful as a starting point for those still climbing up the learning curve to maybe have something of a starting or reference point to work from. Still will in a separate post, but want to validate what I've learned first and make sure it's really working....
 
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