What I would want on a camera!

Noel Evans

Noel Evans

Mod V3 New and Improved
Staff member
I just thought of this, Camera's are electronic devices. Why cant there be programmable focal points. Rather than pull a focus, why cant we store in focal points hit a button on the camera goes to point one then hit it again to point two and so on something like the user bit files on a dvx.

That would make life easier. Apart from the other goodies of course. But this would set a camera apart from a pack of competitors.
 
That could be a blessing or a hinderance. I think it might be cool to have a "sticky" focus ring, one that locks into a pre-determined setting, but have a "shift" button to release the setting. And this setting could be bypassed for run & gun shooting where focus is improvised by the DP.

It might be nice to be able to pull up those focal settings and control them with a remote, so as not to interfere with the shot.
 
The Canon XL2 already has a focus range pre-set or a zoom range pre-set. It doesn't work for multiple focus (or zoom) points, but it's pretty handy.
 
The Sony FX1/Z1 have a similar feature. But on the Sonys it's not limited to focus, you can also have it transition focal lengths and white balance settings and iris too.
 
The XL2 can do preset with zoom as well as focus but th focus preset moves way to fast for a slow walking scene where you need a slow focus pull.
 
Seeing as this is in the Red category, I wouldn't hold out much hope. (Who here plans on putting an AF lens on their RED?)

However in general, I would like at least to have "hard stops" built into a servo focus unit like the HVX. Maybe define "Focal Point 1" and "Focal Point 2" and put a light effect curve onto the full focus ring. Then you can just concentrate on hitting your marks and let the computer soften and smooth/average/filter your moves.
 
im.thatoneguy said:
Seeing as this is in the Red category, I wouldn't hold out much hope. (Who here plans on putting an AF lens on their RED?)
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Probably almost nobody. However, we don't know what the RED lens system will be like. It could be predominantly manual focus but with logic to support programmable focus points.

I'm guessing they wouldn't just make a new set of lenses exactly like existing ones. That would just be making things for the hell of it, which doesn't fit with what we've heard from them so far.
 
Actually that's exactly what they're doing. Making things exactly like the existing ones. The only thing the Red is really bringing to the table is lower price.

There is a question of demand. In the professional film/video market, there is no demand for auto-focus. Using an autofocus lens like a manual lens (which is how it would be use 95% of the time), is a pain in the ass, no chance we would be subjected to such misfortune from a supposedly professional product.
 
im.thatoneguy said:
Actually that's exactly what they're doing. Making things exactly like the existing ones. The only thing the Red is really bringing to the table is lower price.
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I'm going to have to disagree, maybe even call you out. ;)

We don't even know the price, so we can't say anything about that. What we do know are things like

4k camera
RAW format
proprietary solid-state media
single sensor
proprietary RED format
1080 and 720 at completely variable framerates

These are all new (or very close to new) things. The RED lens system is just another item on that list of things no one else has done yet.

im.thatoneguy said:
There is a question of demand. In the professional film/video market, there is no demand for auto-focus. Using an autofocus lens like a manual lens (which is how it would be use 95% of the time), is a pain in the ass, no chance we would be subjected to such misfortune from a supposedly professional product.
Click to expand...

I'm not going to argue about what is or is not a pain in the ass when using current equipment, but I will repeat my point from above that what RED is doing is not current equipment. So even if they fail miserably at it, it is possible that they are attempting to do something completely different from everything we have now.

And I wasn't talking about an AF lens. That implies intelligent focusing. What I meant was that the RED lens system might be manual, but with a user-programmable servo. Perhaps the user would set a focus point, assign a button to it, and then re-use this focus point during the take. But that's just one way it might work.

Or it might not work at all like that. Maybe RED has no intention of doing anything of the kind. But (it is worth repeating) we don't know.
 
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