newbie question about focus, backfocus, olpf and soft focus

[RedVa]

Hi all,

I've been shooting some tests with a newly received Red and, with nothing else to compare it to, I'm having trouble determining if what I'm seeing is a problem, and if it's a problem whether it's a problem with my lenses, backfocus, camera settings, RedAler! settings, all of these, some of these, or none of these.

For the record, I'm using:

- Red One with Build 13
- Super 16 Optar Illumina primes
- Red LCD
- 2K mode

Focus seems much softer than what I'm used to with video cameras... but I know that's because there's no in-camera sharpening.

The question is, how do I know if this is truly out of focus? How do I do tests?

I'm used to S16 film workflow and HVX200 workflow, but this is all new to me.

Thanks!

[Bret Weeks]

One could go on for hours. It's assuredly not RedAlert!. Might be those Optars.

Might find yourself a local AC to give you a hand taping out the lenses.

With 4 cameras in our shop, I can tell you we've not had to move the back focus on the new PL mount from the factory setting. When we did think we had a problem with an older zoom, we tried shifting the mount, but moved it back to "factory" because it was dead on.

You can probably eliminate camera settings, software settings and back focus. That leaves either the lenses or the operator.

Another thing you might give a try is stopping down and using a wider lens.

[Ido Karilla]

One thing that I can think of is that the RED camera does not do sharpening at all, like other video cameras do.

Ido.

[Steve Sherrick]

Besides possible lens issues, I'd explore the following.

1. Charts. Get yourself some really good charts, light them correctly and then do some tests to see if the focus is truly off or if other factors are causing an interpretation of the footage to be out of focus.

2. Play around with sharpening in REDCINE and RED Alert

3. Play around with curves to see if that is contributing to an interpretation of things being a bit soft.

4. Rent a good lens and try it out to compare to the lens you have.

5. Do some tests to compare 4K and 2K.

Once you get through those tests you should have an idea of where you are with your setup.

[Brie]

Once you have eliminated the possibility of the lens or back focus - it's really up to sharpening.
Try outputting a Tiff and playing with unsharp mask in Photoshop.
Or try outputting with differing OLPF compensation settings.

The real problem with this is :
1. Very hard to discount backfocus/lens issues when you don't have a viewfinder to test through.
2. How much sharpening is too much?

If anyone has any theories on how much sharpening is correct to see when the image was actually out of focus (due to the focus puller), as opposed to the "natural" soft look of the file I'd really appreciate it.

_____________
Brie Walsh
Data Wrangler