Blackmagic Forum

Hi - Had my pocket camera for a day or so now and I'm not very impressed with the focus peaking. It seems extremely hit and miss and sometimes turning the camera off the on again improves things. It seems a lot better on well lit outdoor shots but quite poor on interiors even when exposed correctly.

Curious what everyone else's experience of it in general on the pocket camera / are there any settings that it works better on than others?

Yup, I noticed the same thing. I actually thought it wasn't turning on because nothing was visible. Playing with the focus a little lead to seeing the smallest amount of a green outline.

Corrupt Frame, Inc. wrote:Yup, I noticed the same thing. I actually thought it wasn't turning on because nothing was visible. Playing with the focus a little lead to seeing the smallest amount of a green outline.

They could really do with a screen icon to show it is activated. I used it in better lighting conditions today and it worked well. But not clever at low light for sure. Still getting over the fact there's no audio meters

Focus peaking relies on contrast in the image. It looks for sharp contrast changes that appear when an image is in focus.

Exposure impacts contrast so if you are shooting an under lit scenes you'll not have enough contrast for the peaking to detect.

adamroberts wrote:Focus peaking relies on contrast in the image. It looks for sharp contrast changes that appear when an image is in focus.

Exposure impacts contrast so if you are shooting an under lit scenes you'll not have enough contrast for the peaking to detect.

I get some of that, but I shot some low light stuff today and peaking wasn't showing at just under correct exposure.

However, when I knocked the lens down a couple of stops so there was even less light coming in, the peaking started working really well. Just don't see very consistent behaviour at times.

What lens were you shooting with?
Was the aperture wide open?

Most lenses are not sharp wide open and it could be that the image has no sharpe edges for focus peaking to detect.

I don't have my BMPCC with me at the mo. I'll try some tests when I get a moment.

adamroberts wrote:What lens were you shooting with?
Was the aperture wide open?

Most lenses are not sharp wide open and it could be that the image has no sharpe edges for focus peaking to detect.

I don't have my BMPCC with me at the mo. I'll try some tests when I get a moment.

Hey Adam, thanks for prompting me to think about that a moment. I was testing with a 50mm Canon FD F1.4, I suspect you're correct about the slight softness on the lens. At this point I may bow to your wisdom and experience and try another couple of lenses tomorrow

Have you also tried focus magnification?

One thing I found on the Pocket Cam was that switching from FILM mode to VIDEO mode helped provide more accuracy with focus peaking. Obviously this is due to the increased contrast in the image.

Mac Jaeger wrote:Have you also tried focus magnification?

Yes - that's very useful at times. Kind of used to it coming from a GH2 though

stephenmick wrote:One thing I found on the Pocket Cam was that switching from FILM mode to VIDEO mode helped provide more accuracy with focus peaking. Obviously this is due to the increased contrast in the image.

Thanks for the tip. I guess I'll mostly be shooting in film. I wonder if the peaking software works from the sensor image or the film/video mode. If it's only kicking in after the mode processing then that would be an explanation.

I'll try quite a sharp panny lens today and see how that works out.