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CDA-TEK AFX – LIDAR AF for Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera
  • 7 Replies sorted by
  • It is such a pitty that they did not include any way to move the focusing point out of center. Most often when you do focus pulls, it from one object on the left or right to another on the opposite side, so even one axis would help. One does not buy DSLR and all the lenses, to end up with all footage centered..

    I still dream about a small time-of-flight or AI stereo camera camera and micro-PC, in the rig, that analyses depthmap. Would be easy to track faces and things, one click on the touchscreen, and focus mobes smooth without hunting anywhere you want. And sticks.. .

  • Andrew Reid (EOSHD): At the moment, does the AFX LIDAR autofocus work on a centre portion of the frame? Or does it scan the entire scene and focus on the closest subject to the camera?

    CDA-TEK: It works on the central portion of the frame only. However, using the QuadLock functions, you can quickly lock four focus points by pointing the camera anywhere in the scene and then auto transition to them or manually focus to each target. When you manually focus, there is an option to prevent you overshooting the target position so there is a lot of flexibility there. We are keen to stress that the AFX is a suite of tools to help focusing tasks rather than just the headline feature of providing AF to camera/lens combos that don’t have it natively.

    https://www.eoshd.com/news/autofocus-in-the-dark-an-interview-with-cda-tek/

    This thing is very limiting now and not useful for most people at all.

  • I mean that whole sensor on people or object idea was much better ,never happened

  • @sammy

    In reality for good AF you need many things, 3D camera, algorithms, LIDAR can also help a little.

    But main thing is have tiny radio transmitters on talent and any other stuff.

    You will be surprised how weird and unreliable many depth algorithms are.

    Same is true for face and eye AF.

    Even if you do important static interview any current camera can ruin it with ease.

  • dang that seems really familiar... to a rig from 3 years ago lol

  • VK, true, not sure why they have not used that transmitters idea yet , it seems simple enough and would work much better than these things.Maybe someone has that already, the only company that had that in plans never came out with product.

  • @sammy

    Such products exist and used on pro sets, we had it even on PV mentioned. Do not remember the name.

    In reality it is very complex thing. Around 1000x more complex than their simple LIDAR approach.