P2 HD soft focus
by Michele Novak on Feb 1, 2012 at 11:56:10 pm
I'm shooting HD w/a Panasonic HPX500P, Fuji XA17x7.6 lens,SDI out to a Panasonic monitor,BL-LH1710P. Looks great while recording! P2 store transfer to LaCie hard drives.When viewed in Final Cut,7.0.3,some images are soft. Any ideas? Michele
Re: P2 HD soft focus by Shane Ross on Feb 2, 2012 at 8:19:05 am
[Michele Novak]".When viewed in Final Cut,7.0.3,some images are soft. Any ideas?"
Got that Panasonic monitor connected to the system? Via a capture card? If not, you are seeing a lower res option than normal. The FCP Canvas and Viewer aren't good placed to judge the quality of your image.
Re: P2 HD soft focus by Shane Ross on Feb 2, 2012 at 10:08:37 pm
SYSTEM: Final Cut Pro.
Capture card...well, there are many options. AJA, BlackMagic Design, MOTU, Matrox. Video capture cards that send a video signal out to an HDTV or broadcast monitor. You can't do this without a card, unless you are working with DV.
Output from FCP via a capture card to an HDTV will show you what your footage really looks like.
Re: P2 HD soft focus by Dave Felder on Feb 3, 2012 at 7:40:22 pm
I don't know if this is you're problem, but I'll share what happened to me:
The focus ring on the HPX500 is easy to accidentally move when you're zooming. I had a very accomplished, experienced camera man do this on a shoot and about half our footage looked soft.
In our case, the person being recorded was soft, and the background was sharp. It was an outdoor shoot, in bright sunlight. It was next to impossible to see the issue on an external Marshall monitor. We checked, then double checked the backfocus on the lens and it was perfect. I did a little research and found several cameramen who said they've had similar problems.
IOW, be careful when you zoom not to touch your focus ring.
Re: P2 HD soft focus by Michele Novak on Feb 3, 2012 at 10:52:18 pm
Thats a good point,so I tried to duplicate this and found that I had to hold my hand in an awkward position to make this happen. Also we were in the studio w/o glare on the monitor.
Re: P2 HD soft focus by Steve Eisen on Feb 4, 2012 at 12:09:58 am
[Dave Felder]"The focus ring on the HPX500 is easy to accidentally move when you're zooming"
I have to say, I have never had a problem with my HPX500 or any other full size camera I have owned or used where my hand on the focus ring made the camera go out of focus by accident.
Steve Eisen
Eisen Video Productions
Vice President
Chicago Final Cut Pro Users Group
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