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Autofocus question

Barbara

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When shooting video, what exactly is the difference between the Auto Focus (AF) and the Auto Focus Continuous (AFC) function?

If I understand correctly, with AF, you need to touch the screen to get the camera to focus. AFC, on the other hand will automatically focus (center of the screen?) when you begin to record.

With AF, does it focus where you touch the screen or at the center of the screen? Also, in either mode, does it continue to adjust the focus dynamically as you shoot? My assumption is that it does.

Sorry if these are dumb questions, but it's how I learn.
 
AF focuses where you tap as center of focus... for distance shots I first tap the sky in a cloudless area. Gets everything in focus.
 
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AF focuses where you tap as center of focus... for distance shots I first tap the sky in a cloudless area. Gets everything in focus.
Thanks for answering. The manual is rather fuzzy (Haha) about the difference between AF and AFC. The only thing I can find says "when turned on (AFC) the camera will automatically focus when you start recording". It doesn't clearly say if it will dynamically refocus as you continue to record.

I've been searching the forum and the web, but no clear answers.
 
When shooting video, what exactly is the difference between the Auto Focus (AF) and the Auto Focus Continuous (AFC) function?

If I understand correctly, with AF, you need to touch the screen to get the camera to focus. AFC, on the other hand will automatically focus (center of the screen?) when you begin to record.

With AF, does it focus where you touch the screen or at the center of the screen? Also, in either mode, does it continue to adjust the focus dynamically as you shoot? My assumption is that it does.

Sorry if these are dumb questions, but it's how I learn.
Barbara, you bring up some good questions.
I played around with afc in photo mode and ended up turning it off as it drove me nuts. So now for photo mode I either af (tap screen or center focus) or use manual focus. What works best is to af focus at a far away object then just about everything will be in focus. You can check this in manual focus and you will see you are close to infinity. I will refocus if I am looking at something particular in af or manual.

Not sure how afc works in video mode. If it stops after you start recording or not. I would think it would not afc while recording as it might make a mess of a video but will check it out next time I fly.
 
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I use AFC on my M2P all the time. It, as the name implies, focuses continuously. It doesn’t hunt for a focus as some have implied but rather when there is a big enough change it will automatically refocus. If I am flying low and close to objects it will refocus every minute or two but if I am 100 ft up or more it almost never tries to refocus. I have never noticed an adverse effect on the finished video but I am not very critical as some other photographic experts.
 
I use AFC on my M2P all the time. It, as the name implies, focuses continuously. It doesn’t hunt for a focus as some have implied but rather when there is a big enough change it will automatically refocus. If I am flying low and close to objects it will refocus every minute or two but if I am 100 ft up or more it almost never tries to refocus. I have never noticed an adverse effect on the finished video but I am not very critical as some other photographic experts.
That's how I thought it should work. Thanks for replying. Will experiment with it to see what I prefer.
 
Barbara, you bring up some good questions.
I played around with afc in photo mode and ended up turning it off as it drove me nuts. So now for photo mode I either af (tap screen or center focus) or use manual focus. What works best is to af focus at a far away object then just about everything will be in focus. You can check this in manual focus and you will see you are close to infinity. I will refocus if I am looking at something particular in af or manual.

Not sure how afc works in video mode. If it stops after you start recording or not. I would think it would not afc while recording as it might make a mess of a video but will check it out next time I fly.
Thanks for replying. The sense I get is that AFC is in fact continuous (refocusing as necessary) but doesn't always work that well. Guess I'll just have to try iy and see.
 
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Thanks for replying. The sense I get is that AFC is in fact continuous (refocusing as necessary) but doesn't always work that well. Guess I'll just have to try iy and see.
Auto Focus Continuous mode doesn't make much sense in aerial imagery with such wide lens, since most of the time the object is far enough to fall into infinity territory. In fact I've noticed M2P hunting for focus in far and wide landscapes when in this mode. For this reason I'm using standard focusing mode exclusively. AFC may be useful when filming up and close with Osmo Pocket, say a family gathering at barbecue, but I can't see a drone with a camera of this type benefiting from such feature.
 
AF focuses where you tap as center of focus... for distance shots I first tap the sky in a cloudless area. Gets everything in focus.
Taping the featureless sky to focus on infinity works only because ... there's nothing to focus on. Mavic camera analyses contrasting elements of image to determine sharpness. In this case it is searching for something to detect and stops at infinity. So, your method works most of the time in California, but not in Britain LOL ...
 
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Thanks everyone. I think I now understand why my last video came back fuzzy. Which is what prompted my question and search for answers. This forum, as always, has proved a valuable resource.

Will have to get out and experiment some more. Still new to my M2Z and there is so much more to it than the Spark. And the weather is not cooperating. We've had a few warm days, so we got some winter prep done around the house and planned a field trip for today to do some video. So of course, we have fog today..........
 
I think it would only matter in close up shots with a wide open aperture. Depth of field will be the shallowest at that point. Being as these are wide angle lenses, they will have a bigger depth of field than a telephoto.
 
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I think it would only matter in close up shots with a wide open aperture. Depth of field will be the shallowest at that point. Being as these are wide angle lenses, they will have a bigger depth of field than a telephoto.
I didn't mention that I'm flying the M2Z, so fixed aperture. Gives me one less thing to think about. I'm still learning this whole "manual " camera control thing as up till now, "Auto" has been my friend. However, I am striving to improve my work. Besides, I'm retired, what else do I have to do. ;)
 
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I didn't mention that I'm flying the M2Z, so fixed aperture. Gives me one less thing to think about. I'm still learning this whole "manual " camera control thing as up till now, "Auto" has been my friend. However, I am striving to improve my work. Besides, I'm retired, what else do I have to do. ;)
The aperature is fixed, sort of, but because of the zoom you have an aperature from 2.8 to 3.8.

Today we tested the afc in record mode. Now keep in mind we are using the smart controller and not the crystal sky. We tested this on the table and at the beach. The afc did not continously auto focus when recording video. It would only afc when the video was stopped.

While playing around I did find a bug when enabling afc. At times you could enable it but sometimes when you want to camera view the afc would turn off. To keep it locked on, I found that if you enable it and the went to another item like enable grid, it would stay on, the you could turn the grid off.

With afc on and not recording video if you did a tap focus offset from the center, when The afc kicked in it would af to to the center.

Your crystal sky which I am unfamiliar with may give different results. I am running the current version of sw for the ac, go 4, and SC.

One thing I noticed today was that the lady who tells you home point has been recorded decided to be silent even though the home point was recorded. Yes the volume was up.

In any case those are today's results.
 
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The aperature is fixed, sort of, but because of the zoom you have an aperature from 2.8 to 3.8.

Today we tested the afc in record mode. Now keep in mind we are using the smart controller and not the crystal sky. We tested this on the table and at the beach. The afc did not continously auto focus when recording video. It would only afc when the video was stopped.

While playing around I did find a bug when enabling afc. At times you could enable it but sometimes when you want to camera view the afc would turn off. To keep it locked on, I found that if you enable it and the went to another item like enable grid, it would stay on, the you could turn the grid off.

With afc on and not recording video if you did a tap focus offset from the center, when The afc kicked in it would af to to the center.

Your crystal sky which I am unfamiliar with may give different results. I am running the current version of sw for the ac, go 4, and SC.

One thing I noticed today was that the lady who tells you home point has been recorded decided to be silent even though the home point was recorded. Yes the volume was up.

In any case those are today's results.
Thank you for your observations. Your experience with the AFC being buggy seems to corroborate that of others I've read while prowling around the web. True, the CrystalSky does use it's own proprietary version of the Android GO 4 App, and may or may not be buggy, but I'll leave that for another day to explore.
For now I think I will just use the simple AF function.
 
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You can also trigger focus in AF mode by partial pressing the photo button on the remote. You can also add focus function to some of the programmable buttons.

I often find the image a bit out of focus on takeoff, probably due to focusing on a close object (tree, Blade of grass, etc) while on the ground.

If AF is off, then you have to dial in the focus on the screen.

I sure miss being able to press the left wheel in like on the P3 remote to change what the wheel controlled.
 
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You can also trigger focus in AF mode by partial pressing the photo button on the remote. You can also add focus function to some of the programmable buttons.

I often find the image a bit out of focus on takeoff, probably due to focusing on a close object (tree, Blade of grass, etc) while on the ground.

If AF is off, then you have to dial in the focus on the screen.

I sure miss being able to press the left wheel in like on the P3 remote to change what the wheel controlled.
Thanks DanMan. I know that partially depressing the shutter button in photo mode focuses the camera. Does it do so in video mode too? I'll have to try it.

Looking at the options available for the programmable buttons on the M2Z, I could wish for a number of functions that aren't in the list.
 
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