Okay. But you also point out another use for the zoom. Particularly a fast zoom. That of obtaining focus. Being able to snap in and out for that can be useful.

Thanks go out to Mike Tiffee. I've revised this chart again at his suggestion, to reflect the Z1U's unique ability to crop the edges of a 16:9 picture down to 4:3 for playback on a standard 4:3 monitor.

See http://www.hdvinfo.net/articles/sony...compare.php#of

It's the infinitey rotating vs the limit-stops control.

There's a good reason why we get controls like this on consumer cameras: power consumption. The servos required to move the optical components are quite small because they're light and don't have to move far. But the external controls have to be human size, and that means big. So, if you want a physical focus control you need a much bigger servo bevcause it has to move the external control as well as the innards. Not only that, but it needs to have a torque limit so that it doesn't break your wrist if you try to stop the auto, and the barrel has to be stronger to accommodate all this. So they take the natural step of using small, light, low power servos, and making the manula control supply a guiding voltage to it, rather than shifting the components directly.

This way, it all gets cheap enough, light enough, simple enough, and sufficiently low power to run on the small batteries we're used to.

tom.

My old Hi-8 Sony camera had fully manual focus and zoom (complete with full focus barrel markings) as well as auto focus and auto zoom if you wanted to use them.

Theres no excuse for having these horrible focu rings. Older prosumer cameras had full manual controls with no problem at all, and the cameras were of a similar size to the current ones.

Infinate servo focus rings atc are nothing more than a dumbing down of cameras. It also keeps them seperate from the real pro cameras. It's nothing to do with how easy or difficult it is to do.