infinity mode/lock

[Joshua Nall]

I don’t know a lot about camcorders since I spend most of my time on still photography, but I’m in the market for a compact camcorder that allows you to set the focus at infinity. I’ve experimented with a few cameras before, one is a Sony with a focus ring and a button on the side to switch between manual and auto. This is a nice camera and has a good manual focus, but it is rather large and uses mini DVs. I also have used another little cheap camera that uses a touch screen menu and this camera is hard to manually focus and will not stay at infinity. What I want is a small camera that uses SD cards but has an easy quick sure way to set it at infinity…a focus ring, or an infinity mode maybe, where you can put it at infinity and it will stay there.

I don’t need anything fancy. I spent several hours reading spec sheets, and the only cameras I can find that aren’t expensive and specifically say they have an infinity mode is some of the canon FS cameras. FS100, FS21, and FS300. If I remember these are standard definition, which is ok, because I don’t plan on selling video, and don’t have an HD TV. I don’t mind buying used if an older camera is what I need, would love to find something around 200 dollars since video will not be a priority. Does anyone have experience with using the infinity focus mode on these cameras or other cameras with an infinity focus mode/lock. Are they easy to set and do they stay at infinity?

I don’t mind buying an HD camera, but do they even make HD cameras with a good infinity focus lock that aren’t thousands of dollars? Like I said I would buy a used camera if it does what I’m wanting. I read some other threads here after searching and most of the talk was about higher end video cameras. What do some of you who aren’t using the thousand dollar cameras use?

 

[Shane Adams]

Back in the "tape" days you had to look for a button that literally said "infinity".....with today's ever-changing technology that's gone 100% digital, without tapes, everything has infinity mode. Most camcorders are touchscreens, within which you must scroll the menu until you find "focus", then choose manual (most camcorders are on 'auto focus' by defualt). Once you're in manual mode, you should be able to keep hitting the manual button while seeing various symbols. On the old tape camcorders, infinity was a mountain. On most of today's models, it's a figure 8.

Important to note, that many camcorders will not only set themselves to "auto" focus by default, but will automatically default BACK to auto focus after a certain amount of time........if you plan to shoot on manual, set it before you plan to record, and make sure it's STILL set to manual before the action starts.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Some of the newer touchscreen-menu camcorders have one or two custom buttons that you can assign to one of the touchscreen functions. I just bought a consumer camera that has this, though I haven't tried assigning the button functions yet. In theory, you could have one button assigned to set the focus to infinity, and the other take the camera back into autofocus mode.

 

[Joshua Nall]

Thanks for the replies. I guess my problem is you really can't know by reading most spec sheets exactly how involved it would be to set it to infinity. Setting the little JVC I have now is so time consuming that I have completely quit using it, you actually had to look at the screen and focus until the horizon was in focus..... and you could actually go past infinity... a real pain. Then when you had it at infinity, just going down the road it would seem to loose it... so, maybe it was defaulting back to auto. I need to put my hands on some and try them out. A camera with a button you could have assigned to some basic settings, one being focus set to infinity, would be nice.

 

[Skip Talbot]

My Sony HDR-XR500 has a knob under the lens that sets the focus. You can spin it to infinity and it stays there while the camera is on. I believe some of the Canons have a focus ring around the lens that works well too. Go to Best Buy and play with the camcorders and see which ones work the way you want, then leave and buy it online.

 

[Dan Robinson]

Canon (I don't know about the other companies) has PDFs of their camera user manuals posted on their web site (just Google whatever model you're looking at), so you can browse through those to see if a particular model does what you need.

 

[Nathan Edwards]

Anyone had experience with the Panasonic SD-9 HD camcorders? I've got one and whilst I can set it to manual focus, it seems like there is no way to lock this and zooming in and out changes whats in focus. I don't see anything regarding infinity lock in the menu screens so I'm not convinced that all camcorders, including mine, do this. Then again, this is 3 year old tech now. The manual focus implementation in this particular model is atrocious anyway with buttons on the side being used to focus it.. I wish I'd bought something with a focus ring when I looking a few years back and bought this one but perhaps I'm just missing something!

 

[Joshua Nall]

It's a headache for sure, trying to make since of it all. I tried out some newer consumer display cameras, sony and canon, the other day and all of them manual focused and showed a little symbol on the screen. I assume as long as that symbol is there, a mountain or 8, it's supposed to be focused to infinity. How long it stays there or if it really is there when zooming.... I don't know, hard to tell in a store. I personally ended up buying a used camera that said it had auto focus, manual focus, and an infinity mode. As far as I know all of the Canon FS series standard definition cameras say this. Could just be how the specs are written though. For 100 bucks, I figured I could chance it. We'll see what it has when I get it. The higher end cameras with the focus ring are nice. I have a sony, but I don't like it cause it's so large, and video is not especially important to me at this point.... just as long as it's not BLURY