Barry, excellent, thanks just what I was wanting to know. It seemed strange to me that they'd gone all out to make a movie makers video camera and left out the ability to accurately pull focus.

Cheers
Aaron

Well, Aaron, they sort of did leave out that ability, until Century made it happen for them.

I chatted with the Panasonic reps at NAB when the camera was still a wooden mockup, and noted that the focus ring didn't have gearing to dovetail to a follow focus. The rep got said it would add to the cost of the camera. I suggested that the contoured molding of the provided ring could just be molded into the shape of a .32 pitch gear instead of little nubbies. He got annoyed. I gave up.

I've used the Century setup, it works nicely.

I think Adam Wilt is on Vacation. I'm just wondering how fast a mac has to be to perform 2-3 pulldown on 24pa footage.

"It seemed strange to me that they'd gone all out to make a movie makers video camera and left out the ability to accurately pull focus"

Check out this page:
http://www.flickerfactory.com/egpdownloads/DVX100_Focus_Chart.pdf

It's Evin's focus chart for the DVX, which translates lens position into distance. The marks are completely repeatable, which again shows that the DVX has an actual mechanical manual focus ring. It's too bad they didn't put the option in the menu to have the readout in MF00-MF99 as well as meters or feet/inches, but I actually find the MF00-MF99 completely usable, it's a bit easier to remember that your rack focus is from 82 to 51 rather than trying to remember 14' 7" down to 3'11". But it would have been nice to have distance markings as an option.

Barry, I guess Panasonic could update the firmware to achieve that, but I think the main issue is if you add a wide, tele or ana lense, these numbers would all be wrong. Hence the generic "percentage" numbering system.

Yes, that's an excellent point! With the anamorphic adapter attached, the focus points definitely change. I guess there was a good reason after all for going with the percentage system...

And also with +1 to +4 diopter 72 mm lenses for closeup work. Hoya makes a set which I plan to try out soon.

All things 24p explained (by Adam Wilt)
 

Adam Wilt has done an excellent two part series on 24p with focus on the DVX100 for DV Magazine:

Part 1:

http://dv.com/columns/columns_item.j...l+Difficulties

Part 2:

See current issue of DV Mag - will post link when available

also see http://www.adamwilt.com/24p

In addition, the focus numbers which appear in the LCD and viewfinder are also repeatable... and a LOT easier to remember and note than actual feet and inches...

The focus distance charts are now here

http://www.eric-petersen.com/more/mo...vx100focus.htm