Luis, PLEASE understand that post wasn't directed at you personally! You are and always have been fully "relaxed"! :)
I was just responding to the things I've heard a hundred times on various boards. In fact this post is a rewrite of one I already had to write over on DVXUser. And like I ended the one on DVXUser -- if the HVX lens controls are not up to snuff, if they're bogus servos like on the other cameras, I'll be the first to leap off the HVX bandwagon and throw it in the trash. I expect *more* control, *better* control. I expect it to be fully usable.
However, I just can't fathom how having the focus ring "stop" makes any bit of difference at all, in any real situation. I just don't get it. I think somehow people are stuck in a mindset that says "no hard stops = no control; hard stops = real focus". That's not the way it has to be. And I've used dozens of broadcast lenses with hard stops. I demand focus control at least as good as a hard-stop lens. But the HVX won't have hard stops. So? I mean, what does it matter?
In the old-school way of working, yes, it matters, because you can't see where the lens is positioned, you get no feedback. So you'd want to focus by "feel". But you don't have to do that with the DVX or HVX, because it tells you right in the VF or LCD where the lens is. That's "new school". There's no need to rely on "going by feel", because you get discrete, distinct feedback, with far more precise feedback related to lens position than you'd ever get with any "hard-stop" lens. And if you want to slam the ring to infinity and freeze it there, you can push the "push to infinity" button. Not EXACTLY the same thing as slamming a real ring to the hard stop, but at some point you have to recognize that "a difference that makes no difference IS no difference."
I fully recognize that it's different. I'm just trying to understand why it's inferior. If you can do everything that you could with the other system, but with more precision, with more feedback, and also a couple of goodies like optical image stabilization and the option to use autofocus -- how is that not good enough? It's different, yes, but I think there's enough bonuses to make it at least as good.
Do we wish it was interchangeable? Of course we do. Who wouldn't want more options? But does that make the existing option bad? Not by a country mile, I say.
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