I recently shot some footage with my hfs100 and noticed a haze or blurring around edges of parts with high contrast and white in the frame..

How it was shot..

1-shot on a tripod
2-well lit scene using several 1000 watt fluorescent 55K softboxes
3-shot in 1080i full auto except for exposure compensate which was locked.

Here are two pictures extracted to show the problem.. When full to wide angle the subjects appear sharp and in focus. However (I think this is cause) when zooming in on the subject with high contrast and white in the scene I see a "haze" around the edges and over the subjects. Making it look out of focus. I know the object is in focus so appears there is some other anomaly causing this blurry haze.. I "THINK" this only happens when zoomed in. So perhaps the solution is to walk the camera closer.

Has anyone seen this phenomena, know what causes this and how to avoid it?

Thanks..\

here is scene at medium to wide angle focal length.. No hazing/blur issue..
http://www.mscwar.com/members/sniperx/blur2.jpeg

and here is the blur/hazing problem same scene..
http://www.mscwar.com/members/sniperx/blur1.jpeg

Do you have anything attached to the lens like a filter or an accessory lens?

It looks like what I get when I try to zoom in with a wide-angle attachment.

Apart from accessories, I think you may be overlighting your scene. I think Canon actually warns you somewhere that you sometimes are likely to get some blur when the lens is stopped down all the way. Try cutting the lighting, using an ND filter, or using AV manually to set your aperture slightly larger and see what happens.

I've seen image softening like that, but it was purely down to some stupid camera-work on my part, namely using maximum zoom with a wide-angle attached. The lenses get softer in the middle, and that'll be exasperated further with a narrow aperture. Therefore I think both Kin and Rainer might be onto something.