+1
Video af makes things easier, not better.
I wonder how many folks hailing the arrival of a new kind of video af to a professional video body actually get paid to shoot video?
A fair enough point was made earlier, in that nobody knows how well it will work yet.
Interesting that those rushing to defend it can't possibly know if its worth defending.
I'm not a luddite, nor am I a stills shooter who doesn't understand that video is contiguous.
Whats also interesting is that dual pixel live view af seems to work best with stm lenses. Where are the stm fast primes or constant fast aperture zooms?
The ex1 example is pertinant. It has a half inch sensor. Vastly more forgiving than an s35 or 135 type sensor.
Here us the thing that non-video folk don't get, running and gunning isnt the same thing as spray and pray. Television, even warzone news reports, even zoo format yoof tv, its all produced. Surprisingly little is sincerely spontaneous. Even the hardest worked single man crew, in fact particularly the hardest worked stringer, has to set up. Plan to be where the story is. When the story is. Facing the right way. With a charged battery and memory space.
There is time to focus manually. Not everything that is shot will work, or will make the edit.
If you have an animated interview subject go a little wider with your lens, switch down your nd filter and clise your iris.
This is 101. And it may not always be the way it is done, but for now it is best.
If my work ever shells out for a new camera It may even be a c100. I may even spec a shorty forty (stm) and the dual pixel upgrade, and I promise I'll approach it with fresh eyes.
Eyes. Somebody made a point about ecf and video af..
Potentially a good idea, and not to fall into the trap of thinking that because domething is great for stills that it will be great for video, ECF worked great on my 3 for me.
Couple of problems though...
It didn't for everyone. Some folk just never managed to get it to register.
It required your eye close to the vf. 10 years ago folk shot video this way, standing back from an lcd is more common these days, and desirable for many situations.
Shooting video, even with a vf. Usually means one eye on the real world, one eye through the viewfinder, the eye at the viesfinder may flick down to check the vu display in the corner, or the filter wheel number top right during a take. Bang. Focus gone.
Its common for me to take my eye away entirely, say if I need to identify the source of an unwanted noise, to check my xlr is set to +48, to adjust the peaking level etc. even during a take, i'm looking around the frame at lots of things other than the subject? "Is that a reflected tripod leg in that glass door" "has the screen saver just came on in that vdu, thats not going to cut"
And with an mf lens, set up properly, focus is fine throughout.