Jay60p

Auto Focus. All the youtubers are consumed with auto focus performance. Every review is praising or dissing AF
for every new camera. Everyone has videos of people jumping in & out of frame and watching the focus change to this & that. Is it tracking?? Is it twitchy, is it slow, is it focusing on the wrong subject etc etc. and the stupid AI algorithms are driving us camera owners crazy if it doesn't quite perform right. The first few months I had a new mirrorless I would end up watching every shot for signs of AF error, I become sensitized to every background twitch & focus shift, I was alternately disappointed or elated depending on the AutoFocus results.

Finally during a brief period of sanity I turned off the AF and went totally manual focus. I planned what my shots were going to do AHEAD OF TIME and set the focus WITH THE FOCUS RING! I stopped watching the shots for AF and could pay attention to everything else.  No more focus wobbles, jumps, twitches & tracking errors, just … calm.  Then I had a shot where two people were talking and one suddenly walked past the camera left while still talking. I followed him a ways and then panned back. Hey, he went out of focus! The other person said a few words and the shot ended. Later I watched this shot and sure enough he moved out of focus. But, it didn’t bother me. I realized if the focus had tried to follow him and then jump back to the other person it would have been quite distracting to me, but having a subject naturally move out of focus as he moved through the scene made me realize that happens in the movies all the time and no-one cares.  
So relax, turn off that AF.  Let the background trees stay out of focus when Camera Conspiracies jumps out of the shot. Manual Focus rules.

Auto Focus. All the youtubers are consumed with auto focus performance. Every review is praising or dissing AF
for every new camera. Everyone has videos of people jumping in & out of frame and watching the focus change to this & that. Is it tracking?? Is it twitchy, is it slow, is it focusing on the wrong subject etc etc. and the stupid AI algorithms are driving us camera owners crazy if it doesn't quite perform right. The first few months I had a new mirrorless I would end up watching every shot for signs of AF error, I become sensitized to every background twitch & focus shift, I was alternately disappointed or elated depending on the AutoFocus results.

Finally during a brief period of sanity I turned off the AF and went totally manual focus. I planned what my shots were going to do AHEAD OF TIME and set the focus WITH THE FOCUS RING! I stopped watching the shots for AF and could pay attention to everything else.  No more focus wobbles, jumps, twitches & tracking errors, just … calm.  Then I had a shot where two people were talking and one suddenly walked past the camera left while still talking. I followed him a ways and then panned back. Hey, he went out of focus! The other person said a few words and the shot ended. Later I watched this shot and sure enough he moved out of focus. But, it didn’t bother me. I realized if the focus had tried to follow him and then jump back to the other person it would have been quite distracting to me, but having a subject naturally move out of focus as he moved through the scene made me realize that happens in the movies all the time and no-one cares.  
So relax, turn off that AF.  Let the background trees stay out of focus when Camera Conspiracies jumps out of the shot. Manual Focus rules.

Auto Focus. All the youtubers are consumed with auto focus performance. Every review is praising or dissing AF
for every new camera. Everyone has videos of people jumping in & out of frame and watching the focus change to this & that. Is it tracking?? Is it twitchy, is it slow, is it focusing on the wrong subject etc etc. and the stupid AI algorithms are driving us camera owners crazy if it doesn't quite perform right. The first few months I had a new mirrorless I would end up watching every shot for signs of AF error, I become sensitized to every background twitch & focus shift, I was alternately disappointed or elated depending on the AutoFocus results.

Finally during a brief period of sanity I turned off the AF and went totally manual focus. I planned what my shots were going to do AHEAD OF TIME and set the focus WITH THE FOCUS RING! I stopped watching the shots for AF and could pay attention to everything else.  No more focus wobbles, jumps, twitches & tracking errors, just … calm.  Then I had a shot where two people were talking and one suddenly walked past the camera left while still talking. I followed him a ways and then panned back. Hey, he went out of focus! The other person said a few words and the shot ended. Later I watched this shot and sure enough he moved out of focus. But, it didn’t bother me. I realized if the focus had tried to follow him and then jump back to the other person it would have been quite distracting to me, but having a subject naturally move out of focus as he moved through the scene made me realize that happens in the movies all the time and no-one cares.  
So relax, turn off that AF.  Let the background trees stay out of focus when Camera Conspiracies jumps out of the shot. Manual Focus rules.

(best part of the Exiftool site:)
What People are Saying about ExifTool
"In my experience, nothing but nothing is as complete, powerful, and flexible as Phil Harvey's exiftool ... I've never seen anything that's in the same ballpark for power." - dpreview forum
"... it is the mother of all EXIF utilities; the BFG of meta-data extraction; the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster of EXIF tools ... This thing will suck the last bit of metadata out of whatever image file you throw at it!" - Open Photography Forums
"... it is total fucking gibberish to me." - Reddit Linux Questions
 

For the low budget videographers among us: a ZOOM LENS report.
On the X-T3 the Fuji zooms have problems with video shooting, including exposure stepping
and focus-by-wire jumpyness that is not a problem with stills.
So I thought I'd report on a recent Nikon zoom I found to work around these issues.
 
The Nikkor AF 28-85 f3.5-4.5 (1986-1999) is a great manual zoom/manual aperture ring
lens to use on the X-T3. It is extremely affordable, I picked up a clean one in a local camera
shop for $50, and mounted it with the $20 fotodiox adapter. It is a full frame SLR lens.
 
It is PARFOCAL, the focus does not stray as you zoom in & out.
I found the change in brightness as you zoom to be often unnoticeable unless you are watching
for it, this really surprised me. f3.5 to 4.5 is less than a stop of change, about 2/3rds of a stop?
 
And most important, the zoom ring is smooth. Often these Nikon zooms are slightly sticky,
especially when trying to turn the zoom ring very slowly for a cinematic shot.
The focus ring has a good amount of smooth travel for easy manual focus.
 
Finally, the sharpness of this lens is excellent, compares to the 18-55 fuji kit lens.
With some pixel peeping I can see a little CA color fringing at the edges, which you
would expect for a vintage lens without in-camera digital corrections.
There is a glowing review of this lens by Ken Rockwell online.
 
I have another Nikon zoom which is not usable (24-85mm F2.8-4) from 2001,
due to a sticky zoom ring, plus a manual focus ring which has a very short travel and is
difficult for fine focusing at distances nearing infinity.
Some zooms may have become sticky over years of continous use,
keep in mind when looking in ebay etc.
 
Vintage SLR zooms are often very parfocal, I also have two Canon FD zooms that
hold focus as well, 35-70 f4 and 70-210 f4. I used the 35-70 for 30 years on my SLR
and the zoom ring is still smooth.
 
So for $70 you can get an excellent Nikkor 3:1 full frame zoom, especially if you don't have
$3000-4000 for an excellent Fujinon 3:1 Cinema zoom.
I am posting here rather than in the LENS forum because the Sony & Panasonic camera zooms
may not have the same issues as Fuji.

A better test of resolution would use the same lens on all three cameras, at the same aperture,
on a tripod with careful manual focusing at a high viewfinder magnification. 
Maybe a SLR prime with a fotodiox adapter for each camera mount.
He used a Fuji zoom for the X-T4, a Tamron zoom for the Sony, and a Nikkor zoom for the Z6.
Still enjoyed this comparison, better than most. There are a lot of variables to try to control.

For the low budget videographers among us: a ZOOM LENS report.
On the X-T3 the Fuji zooms have problems with video shooting, including exposure stepping
and focus-by-wire jumpyness that is not a problem with stills.
So I thought I'd report on a recent Nikon zoom I found to work around these issues.
 
The Nikkor AF 28-85 f3.5-4.5 (1986-1999) is a great manual zoom/manual aperture ring
lens to use on the X-T3. It is extremely affordable, I picked up a clean one in a local camera
shop for $50, and mounted it with the $20 fotodiox adapter. It is a full frame SLR lens.
 
It is PARFOCAL, the focus does not stray as you zoom in & out.
I found the change in brightness as you zoom to be often unnoticeable unless you are watching
for it, this really surprised me. f3.5 to 4.5 is less than a stop of change, about 2/3rds of a stop?
 
And most important, the zoom ring is smooth. Often these Nikon zooms are slightly sticky,
especially when trying to turn the zoom ring very slowly for a cinematic shot.
The focus ring has a good amount of smooth travel for easy manual focus.
 
Finally, the sharpness of this lens is excellent, compares to the 18-55 fuji kit lens.
With some pixel peeping I can see a little CA color fringing at the edges, which you
would expect for a vintage lens without in-camera digital corrections.
There is a glowing review of this lens by Ken Rockwell online.
 
I have another Nikon zoom which is not usable (24-85mm F2.8-4) from 2001,
due to a sticky zoom ring, plus a manual focus ring which has a very short travel and is
difficult for fine focusing at distances nearing infinity.
Some zooms may have become sticky over years of continous use,
keep in mind when looking in ebay etc.
 
Vintage SLR zooms are often very parfocal, I also have two Canon FD zooms that
hold focus as well, 35-70 f4 and 70-210 f4. I used the 35-70 for 30 years on my SLR
and the zoom ring is still smooth.
 
So for $70 you can get an excellent Nikkor 3:1 full frame zoom, especially if you don't have
$3000-4000 for an excellent Fujinon 3:1 Cinema zoom.
I am posting here rather than in the LENS forum because the Sony & Panasonic camera zooms
may not have the same issues as Fuji.

Correction, I meant "Better Quality" mode.
And I just tested the longGOP at 29.97 HEVC 400mbps, and that also plays back smoothly in "Better Quality" full resolution
mode, a compression I've never used before. So no problems with 29.97 HEVC at any compression.
It's the 59.94 fps HEVC that needs the "Better Performance" mode in the FCPX viewer.
 

Yes. I've used a stock Mac Mini i5, 8GB ram for a year editing 4K60p H265 HEVC 10bit 200mb/s in Final Cut Pro without transcoding.
For a single track of video the playback is smooth with the viewer's "View Quality" setting at "Better Performance". This slightly reduces
the resolution of the playback display but at 4K is still a great picture to edit with. And as soon as you stop or pause playback it refreshes to full res.
Set at "Better Quality" you get full resolution playback in the viewer, but the frame rate drops to maybe 15fps. Still, playback does not stall and the
audio keeps up in sync without dropouts.
Adding an effect may stall playback, but color adjustments (curves & color wheels) and audio equalization usually will not.
If you are stacking layers of shots for keying, superimpositions, etc then you would want to transcode from H265.
You need the latest Mac OS, Catalina for the correct handling of H265, the previous Mojave had a problem that crushed the blacks & whites of HEVC.

Excellent. Thank you.

Vario Switar continued:
And now for the limitations to this setup...
1) The 18mm wide view is about equivalent to a 30mm APS-C lens, or about 55mm FF 35mm equivalent, since this 18mm is not covering the entire sensor. So it's more like a "normal to telephoto" zoom.
2) Closest focus is about 5 feet.
3) The live view in the finder shows the image circle surrounded by black and is hard to judge the true edges of the (to be) cropped 1080 frame.
You'd probably want to mask off the cropped image on the LCD with tape.
5) I don't actually use it mounted as in the pictures above. I put the camera on an aluminum plate that sets the camera farther back, and has an
adjustable lens supporting screw that comes up under & just before the zoom ring that makes the setup much more stable and balanced.
I mainly made that plate for supporting long Canon FD zoom lenses.
 
The advantages of this setup (for 2K) over still camera zoom lenses is the constant aperture throughout the zoom,
the lack of exposure stepping and focus shifting because the lens is not electronically focused & zoomed "by wire",
and the nearly 5:1 zoom ratio (X-T3 kit lens is 3:1) . And for me it was a free left-over from my Bolex days.
It's so cool to be able to use that lens again.
 

I have used the 1.18 crop to advantage with a C mount adapter, for 2K.
Using a Vario-Switar zoom 18-86 f2.5 from a Bolex 16mm camera, you can shoot 4K60p and edit in a 1080 60p timeline in Final Cut Pro
well within the image circle (set "Spacial Conform" to NONE). I usually reduce the scale to about 0.84 before is see vignetting, to get the widest view.
This is a H16 RX lens, but I find no focus problems from the RX adjustment for the Bolex viewfinder prism. Its very sharp at mid apertures throughout the
nearly 5:1 zoom range. The version of this lens I have is one of the early ones without the electric eye & automatic aperture so it has a smaller projection
coming off the side with the Bolex trigger, so it is not a problem mounting this on the X-T3.

I have used the 1.18 crop to advantage with a C mount adapter, for 2K.
Using a Vario-Switar zoom 18-86 f2.5 from a Bolex 16mm camera, you can shoot 4K60p and edit in a 1080 60p timeline in Final Cut Pro
well within the image circle (set "Spacial Conform" to NONE). I usually reduce the scale to about 0.84 before is see vignetting, to get the widest view.
This is a H16 RX lens, but I find no focus problems from the RX adjustment for the Bolex viewfinder prism. Its very sharp at mid apertures throughout the
nearly 5:1 zoom range. The version of this lens I have is one of the early ones without the electric eye & automatic aperture so it has a smaller projection
coming off the side with the Bolex trigger, so it is not a problem mounting this on the X-T3.

I have used the 1.18 crop to advantage with a C mount adapter, for 2K.
Using a Vario-Switar zoom 18-86 f2.5 from a Bolex 16mm camera, you can shoot 4K60p and edit in a 1080 60p timeline in Final Cut Pro
well within the image circle (set "Spacial Conform" to NONE). I usually reduce the scale to about 0.84 before is see vignetting, to get the widest view.
This is a H16 RX lens, but I find no focus problems from the RX adjustment for the Bolex viewfinder prism. Its very sharp at mid apertures throughout the
nearly 5:1 zoom range. The version of this lens I have is one of the early ones without the electric eye & automatic aperture so it has a smaller projection
coming off the side with the Bolex trigger, so it is not a problem mounting this on the X-T3.

I'm happy to report the "crushed blacks" problem with X-T3 H265 files on 2018 Mac Mini (with T2) has been fixed in OSX Catalina. 
I am back to editing HEVC from X-T3 natively in Final Cut Pro.  I am using a stock Mac Mini i5 with only 8GB memory and get smooth playback with the viewer set to "better performance".
In Catalina the scopes show the lowest black levels being set at Zero IRE or above, whereas in Mojave the blacks were actually going down to about -10 IRE and but getting cut off at Zero IRE. (This was only a problem on Macs with T2 chip?)
No need to transcode to ProRes and reset the black levels manually anymore!