Shooting Advice

[Take1Media]

I mainly shoot local market TV commercials for car dealers. I just got my 300 camera and shot outside today with good sunlight,etc. I shot this with scene file Cineg at 720 24p avci100. Imported the footage and its looks real soft. Almost out of focus but its not. Any advice on what frame rate and settings might help achieve a more crisp look?

 

[Mark Smith]

Check your back focus. That is an important setting for a crisp look.

 

[Spotlight Media]

I 2nd that... back focus most likely. I do a back focus before almost every shoot.

 

[nedcam]

I would suggest, if you haven't already reformatted the cards, play the footage back from the camera's SDI out into a HD monitor to see if it is soft. When I first started with P2, being a shooter and not much of an editor, I had Final Cut sequence settings that were not correct for the specs of the footage I was importing and it did look soft, but wasn't in reality. What a relief, so try that and there's a strong possibility your footage is crisp. Perhaps go to the Final Cut forum on dvxuser and creativecow, describe your camera settings and ask what the FCP settings need to be for your new sequence BEFORE importing, assuming you're using FCP. Call some post gurus you know. I've been using the Vivid setting, with some tweaks, 99% of the time.

Lastly, I am afraid to adjust back focus UNLESS something seems amiss. What I mean is once I have set my back focus and really snugged the lever down, unless I have changed lenses or gone through temperature extremes the back focus should not be off. The first thing I do at the beginning of every shoot is I check (checking is not adjusting) it with my back focus chart, ONLY indoors using my HD monitor. I'd never do it with just the viewfinder and I find outdoors, unless you've created a dark tent, it's really hard to discern on a monitor even with a Hoodman. When I say check it I mean I am doing that by eye on the monitor, I have not loosened or adjusted it. I would only loosen the back focus lever if I felt it was off.

The way I was trained is ONCE you have it set under ideal conditions do not loosen that lever. Just visually check that it has tracked through the range. If you loosened the back focus lever you have to start all over (go indoors with the chart and monitor) to be absolutely sure you're right on. And if you had a HD monitor at the time of your shoot, and the detail wasn't set too high, if the footage was soft you should have seen it then. So there's a good chance nothing is wrong with the footage and it was your sequence settings that have messed you up, hopefully.

Let us know how it ends up. Post mortems are educational.

 

[Take1Media]

Thank you guys for taking the time to help - it seems i got my back focus set , i am just having a hard time getting an accurate focus thru the viewfinder and lcd. Any suggestions besides the focus bar?