Mavic Tap to Focus?

[stealle]

Tap to focus seems great for still photography, but when shooting video with a drone that is almost constantly in motion shouldn't it constantly autofocus on the center of the FOV? It seems like that should be the default while allowing the user to tap different areas of the screen if one chooses to focus on something else.

I must be missing something. I picture myself having to tap the screen every 10 seconds as my elevation or distance from the subject I'm filming changes.

 

[LuvMyTJ]

The focus is only for the close stuff, once you get to a certain point it is all "infinity" focus like the P3, P4, etc. There are a few videos on Youtube showing how it works.

 

[rbarry12]

Tap to focus seems great for still photography, but when shooting video with a drone that is almost constantly in motion shouldn't it constantly autofocus on the center of the FOV? It seems like that should be the default while allowing the user to tap different areas of the screen if one chooses to focus on something else.

I must be missing something. I picture myself having to tap the screen every 10 seconds as my elevation or distance from the subject I'm filming changes.

Imagine the centre of the viewfinder capturing your target image but occasionally catching a tree much further behind. Look at amateur footage when a video camera is in auto focus mode at how annoying this is to watch while the focus is hunting (presented on a two dimensional screen, is there any other!) when it catches a distant object just off centre. Professionally shot film work is made with manual focus, and can be a two man job for the focus puller and the person shooting behind the camera. This is somewhat academic in the case of the Mavic, in that its depth of field wont be altered very much beyond 10 meters anyway, but useful for (very) close up shots. Even so, if infinity focus is reached at say 10 meters and beyond, any focus issues are still not going to show up too much at one third in front and two thirds behind your subject, at a given distance less than 10 meters, as they will remain in acceptable focus anyway.

 

[stealle]

Imagine the centre of the viewfinder capturing your target image but occasionally catching a tree much further behind. Look at amateur footage when a video camera is in auto focus mode at how annoying this is to watch while the focus is hunting (presented on a two dimensional screen, is there any other!) when it catches a distant object just off centre. Professionally shot film work is made with manual focus, and can be a two man job for the focus puller and the person shooting behind the camera. This is somewhat academic in the case of the Mavic, in that its depth of field wont be altered very much beyond 10 meters anyway, but useful for (very) close up shots. Even so, if infinity focus is reached at say 10 meters and beyond, any focus issues are still not going to show up too much at one third in front and two thirds behind your subject, at a given distance less than 10 meters, as they will remain in acceptable focus anyway.

I'm no pro, but I think I follow what you are saying. Which leads me to ask, if infinity focus is reached (as you say) 10 meters and beyond, does that mean the mavic (in its current/pre-production stage as seen in many YouTube videos) has a default focus of something less that 10 meters? Is that why there were initially so many "soft" videos before they realized it was tap to focus. If so, shouldn't the default focus setting be infinity since most videos footage from a drone will be greater than 10 meters from the subject?

 

[rbarry12]

I'm no pro, but I think I follow what you are saying. Which leads me to ask, if infinity focus is reached (as you say) 10 meters and beyond, does that mean the mavic (in its current/pre-production stage as seen in many YouTube videos) has a default focus of something less that 10 meters? Is that why there were initially so many "soft" videos before they realized it was tap to focus. If so, shouldn't the default focus setting be infinity since most videos footage from a drone will be greater than 10 meters from the subject?

That's a question I would like the answer to also. As there is no memory ( I assume) once the battery has been removed, would the camera revert to a shallow depth of field as witnessed by the footage released from the early rushes we've all seen.

 

[alanw2005]

The focus is only for the close stuff, once you get to a certain point it is all "infinity" focus like the P3, P4, etc. There are a few videos on Youtube showing how it works.

Several videos on the net testing the Mavic have awful, out of focus video.

 

[LuvMyTJ]

This video addresses the question...

 

[rbarry12]

This video addresses the question...

It was hard to tell the difference with that example given it was a shot of the phone displaying the image rather than the footage itself, but as you say it explains the principle of the lens. The second video of Ipnonedo(?) demonstrated a close up of a shoe that looked pin sharp at what must have been 0.5 of a metre away, and then the shoe removed from shot showing an out of focus boardwalk stretching away in the far distance. It would be good to see example footage of a subject shot at short to lengthening distances apart to see when the image reaches focus levels approaching a distance where infinity focus becomes acceptably sharp from and beyond that distance. I'm guessing at ten metres, but I'm sure there are those that could calculate this distance from the specification of the lens. This has been debated in a different thread with conflicting conclusions that put me in a circle of confusion! Seeing footage like that, at a decent quality such as Iphoneodo(?) started to show, would be very interesting . It would give us a benchmark as to when we may need to hit tap to focus from the distance measurements the screen displays on the phone. Some of us have better eyesight than others, and a 6 inch screen gives less visual focus information than a 52" 4k lcd tv can.
Big thanks to LuvMyTJ for finding the clip.

 

[Wfrank]

Imagine the centre of the viewfinder capturing your target image but occasionally catching a tree much further behind. Look at amateur footage when a video camera is in auto focus mode at how annoying this is to watch while the focus is hunting (presented on a two dimensional screen, is there any other!) when it catches a distant object just off centre. Professionally shot film work is made with manual focus, and can be a two man job for the focus puller and the person shooting behind the camera. This is somewhat academic in the case of the Mavic, in that its depth of field wont be altered very much beyond 10 meters anyway, but useful for (very) close up shots. Even so, if infinity focus is reached at say 10 meters and beyond, any focus issues are still not going to show up too much at one third in front and two thirds behind your subject, at a given distance less than 10 meters, as they will remain in acceptable focus anyway.

A lens has an optimal focus for infinity as any manual photographer would testify. There was a pseudo debate going on around here about the hyperfocale distance. The hyperfocale was of help for photographers in the old days before high resolution digital sensors. It is of very little use if you strive for pin sharp images today. So for the "10-meter discussion", I'd turn it around a bit: when cam is set to optimal infinity focus, it is probably also acceptable down to say 10 meters. Not the other way around.

 

[rbarry12]

A lens has an optimal focus for infinity as any manual photographer would testify. There was a pseudo debate going on around here about the hyperfocale distance. The hyperfocale was of help for photographers in the old days before high resolution digital sensors. It is of very little use if you strive for pin sharp images today. So for the "10-meter discussion", I'd turn it around a bit: when cam is set to optimal infinity focus, it is probably also acceptable down to say 10 meters. Not the other way around.

Sorry wfrankn not sure what you mean "not the other way around". Probably me , but could you explain.