Pulling Focus
 

I recently received my redrock follow (which is a very well made piece of equipment) and I threw it on the V1U and I noticed that this cam does not have repeatable focus marks. If I focus on an object then set a mark on the focus wheel, then focus back and forth (but not going past infinity or minimal focus distance) and stop on that mark again, it is no longer in focus. I used to own a z1u and this problem did not occur so much. Do I have a defective V1U? Or do these cameras just blow at pulling focus? Anyone have this problem with their V1?

What are your settings? Have you disabled "focus macro"? Maybe that helps.

Yeah the first thing i did was try it with and without focus macro. It still sucks

I don't think the traditional focus pulling method would ever work on this cam because it's not a mechanical fixed linkage. It's servo controlled and will vary in speed and duration based on how hard or fast you turn the ring.

My understanding is that in acknowledgement of this, that's exactly what the shot transition function is for. It's detailed quite nicely on page 52 of the manual.

Shot transition works that way on the FX1 too, and works pretty nice.

Can someone tell me what the difference is between the 'check' and 'exec' functions on the shot transition. To me they both seem to do exactly the same thing when you need to execute the transition whilst recording.

Check allows you to check your settings, but still modify the A or B setting. Execute does just that...executes the setting. Your settings are no longer individually adjustable without more or less starting again.
this is a common question though, because they seem quite similar.

I haven't found it that useful. Shot Transition takes too long to change. And you'd better hope the exposure doesn't change while you're setting it up because you have to reset it everytime it does.

The way I do racks is either manually or find the object it wants to auto focus on then manually focus on the other object and press the instant auto focus button to change. Only works in one direction though.

This is probably a dumb question, but could there ever exist a LanC controller that could execute these buttons/functions because I find when I'm executing a transition that involves a close zoom that by pushing the button on the camcorder I'm shifting the frame slightly. I wish I could execute this command without actually physically touching the camcorder.

But I suppose this sort of thing doesn't exist. How do you guys compensate?

If you're shooting run n' gun, yes...transitions take too long. If you're shooting anything else, they're faster than setting up a measure/mark system. The usefulness of this feature (as with any feature) is entirely measured by your perspective and experience. Doccos on a run n' gun probably won't find it useful at all. Filmmakers, shooting for commercial work, or creating dramatic pieces will call for it all the time.

A person can't adjustfocus, zoom, exposure, shutter, and gain at one shot. Shot transitions do all of that.

My complaint is that the mininum time is WAY too long to be usefull in my application. A 3 second rack is painfully slow in an action setting. I wish Sony would consider a firmware update to allow much faster transistions. If so, I would use that feature a lot.

Chris