Canon Autofocus - is my Scarlet working correctly?

[Andrew M.]

Guys, did you try different mode of operations you can set in the focus menu?
You have 12 different combinations of focus modes there.

[Michael Gyori]

It seems impossible to get Mark's results! Everytime I half press the record in 'single' focus mode the focus goes through the entire range of the lens before finding focus, making it unuseable during a recorded shot. I'm giving it good contrasted targets in the centre focus square. Doesn't matter. I don't understand how Mark got his results. I tested this with a Canon 24-70L.

[Marc Berger]

It seems impossible to get Mark's results! Everytime I half press the record in 'single' focus mode the focus goes through the entire range of the lens before finding focus, making it unuseable during a recorded shot. I'm giving it good contrasted targets in the centre focus square. Doesn't matter. I don't understand how Mark got his results. I tested this with a Canon 24-70L.

I get the same results like Mark Toia with my Scarlet. I shoot with 16-35 IS and 70-200 2,8 IS (both version 2). Focus mode set to Single shot, smallest focus area. Sometimes it is pumping a little bit.

[stu aull]

Welcome to My World Mike!
;)
I confess to just dinking around with mine, tho it looks like Mark -

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthr...DEO&highlight=

is doing the same in HIS amazing vid. And what really puzzles me was his shots have NONE of the wild iris-pumping mine goes thru to snap in the focus. I mean, with Mark's, you can actual record and USE the shot at the focus-pull point! Is this an Epic Thing? Can't imagine Scarlet's being Dumbed Down on a feature like this?!
So I thought maybe his was a MANUAL iris lens?? That would at least account for the clean exposures during focus. But Googled specs show the (current) 85f1.2 is NOT manual iris....

so that buggers that part of the theory (?).

So is there some special set of focus parameters one needs to set to achieve Mark's performance?
My programming via Side handle menu:
-one shot: Single/Autofocus
-tightest center point selected: Spot

don't see anything else to tweak....

I am completely ready to engage in what ever practice and/or perseverance to get me to Mark's level, but, damn, he is making it look so...easy! I mean, this IS _auto_ focus, right?
aak!

Will be curious to see what RED sez. Will certainly be asking their reaction to Mark's video if they say mine is performing "like its supposed to".

Thanks for comments and discussion folks-
Stu Aull
S-X #00199
Alaska

[Jeremiah Kuehne]

Yes, the Rebels do that from my experience..not usably, however. It creates a lot of blur then suddenly becomes sharp.

Does your Rebel actually do that during motion capture? I certainly never got that out of my 60D. :-(

[Sam Gordon]

That test is very impressive. I'll have to play around with the settings and see if I can achieve something similar. Usable, fast autofocus would be a real bonus. But I imagine there are some hard limitations to the edge detection system used in the Scarlet.

[stu aull]

The Word From Red:

"Hello Stu,
Thank you for contacting RED SUPPORT.
Your description on the Lens iris behavior when using one-touch autofocus is standard operation, but this will only happen when the camera is NOT in recording. When it is in recording, neither the iris or any other user setting are changed. The apparent change in exposure, iris, etc. is sometime visible when the camera is looking for optimal focus spots, especially when the focus window is much darker than the ambient (e.g. black tire in daytime bright sunshine).
Autofocus in general is something that is still being fine tuned, rest assured it is being constantly improved on each firmware release.
Hope this helps.
Felipe Mozqueda
RED Digital Cinema"

So. Did I mention _I_ was NOT recording while diddling/whining? And Obv Mark WAS.
Now for some more testing...

Stu Aull
S-X #00199
Alaska

[jimhare]

Is the key setting a smaller focus area? Mark very clearly said this is what he did to get his results. Maybe it defaults to the whole lens and if you make it tiny it works better.

[Sam Edwards]

My Scarlet works great!

[Maik Müller Menendez]

Havn't been able to reproduce Mark's results, not coming even near to that performance. It looks like a different camera. I've played around with a few lenses and made some deeper tests with a 24-105L and a 35L, but i always get pumping, even when recording. The only thing that comes in mind is the back-focus, could it be that this has to be adjusted/calibrated correctly to make AF work better? I don't want to mess it up, thats why i'm asking before i do some experiments here. Other than that i'm out of ideas.

It could be interesting to hear what lenses you guys use, especially those who are saying that AF works fine. ;)

The good thing about this is, my manual focus-skills got a bit better (thanks to the nice focus-tools) and i'm finally considering to buy some AF-less Zeiss-lenses. ;)