Z7 MAJOR problem?

[Marshall Levy]

Originally Posted by Scott Brooks

The only thing I would add is that if someone has no issues with their lens ... great for them. But I'm assuming that at this point with cameras being sent in it's more important for those of us who actually DO have a problem to make it known ... and mine most certainly does.

True....we've been trying to figure out, at least for now, if it's based on certain runs, batches, resellers, or whatever else, but it's very sporadic at this point for both the Z7U and Z7E as well as place of and time of purchase. I'll know more Wed/Thurs of next week. As of this particular post, I've got about 25 with the problem and two without...I question the two without.

[Bruce Reynolds]

I've been working with Dominic at Sony in New Jersery since the 2nd week in march, I got one of the 1st cameras and my friend got 2 and we both have trouble with CF card glitzes and auto focus, SN on my camera 100110 his was close to this, Sony asked me to send my camera in so I did--here's my post --Marshall keep up the good work and maybe we can get this fixed
Sony finally had me send them my Z7U

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

After posting video from my CF card for Sony to see and also sending m2t clips to Dominic he had me ship my camera to him on thursday. They tried with their cameras to duplicate my CF card promblem---on short clips digital glitzes in the last of a clip or the 1st of a clip -- but theirs worked fine, which is a good thing, at least I know recording short clips does work-- and also the auto focus promblem. I went outside and recorded a lot of short clips--35of which 23 were bad ones, and also I recorded the auto focus promblem all on the CF card and sent camera, CF unit to them to test. When I find something out I will post it on this forum.

[Laurence Kingston]

Originally Posted by Marshall Levy

I'm back again!

So, here's the story....

The camera records great footage, but the current issue is a concern. I've seen it on all of my cameras and I have four of them.

Zoom in on objects that have a similar focal distance with regards to where they are....makes sense....focus on the center object at full telephoto and zoom out. The left-most area will appear blurred. Zoom back in and pan to any of these objects and they are in focus.

The concept is simple and if you don't understand, think of it this way - if you film a wedding and zoom into a bride/groom in the center aisle, then zoom out, the left side will be out of focus whereas the center and right will be in focus. But, if you zoom back in, the focus is intact. That's a serious problem.

Here's a link for the non-believers or whatever....

http://rapidshare.com/files/108111585/test002.wmv.html - I am not leaving this link up for too long.
http://www.vimeo.com/908039

It's 89 seconds long. Can't be more obvious. Consistent on ALL cameras.

April 19th and I can't see footage from either of these links. The Vimeo is protected and the rapidshare won't let me enter all the digits to the access codes.

[Marshall Levy]

try the vimeo link again. by default they're protected....

[Chris Hurd]

What if I hosted the video. Then we won't have these access problems. Marshall, I'm sending you an email with our FTP upload account info now. The address I have for you is at comcast dot net. If that's not the right one then please contact me, chris at dvinfo dot net.

[Chris Hurd]

1. Download the file www.dvinfo.net/media/sony/test002.wmx

2. Re-name the file extension from .wmx to .wmv

3. Open locally with any .wmv-capable media player.

[Ian Campbell]

New test:

First, I wonder how well the Z7U does its back flange set up. I've tried to get good focus AFTER repeatedly doing the back flange setup - both manually and in auto. What is the best way to do the black flange setup?

The problem I'm finding is the camera (I have two of them) can't hold the focus from telephoto to wide without going soft. Even though the cam has back focus adjustment -- it still seems to have back focus problems.

Once I finish testing, I will throw some pics up if they prove to be conclusive. But what I'm finding is that if I focus on a small object (approx. 8 ft. from camera) and use expanded focus to get a really sharp image at tele, it looks quite soft when zooming out. Note: I set my camera’s distance read out to feel instead of metres.

Try this to check your Z7's: Shoot object 8' from camera. I shot with iris open at 2.0 (tele). MANUAL focus on object at telephoto and then zoom out. After going wide (either all the way or at least past half way out) change the focus in 1/2 foot increments starting at 2.5' then 3.0', 3.5' etc. Upon playback you might find that an object located 8' from camera MIGHT look better focused when the camera focus is set to 13' or 22' for example. This is what I'm finding. I've found this to be the case with the V1U camcorder -- but it was a fixed lens camera. Why is this happening with the HVR-Z7U's?

Another way to show this problem is to zoom out from tele about 1/3 to ½ way toward wide. At this point try to obtain the BEST focus you can (you might need a good monitor to do this effectively) and then zoom back to tele. If you cameras are like my two you will see that the image is soft.

Any feedback would be helpful to me and others with this issue (and Sony I hope).

Ian

[Andy B. Turner]

Ian,

I don't own the camera, but at NAB I was doing this exact same test and finding the same issue on the demo camera there. I asked asked about it until they got an "engineer" who did a few back focus tests only to continue to have the problem. He finally took the lens off and reset it. He said the the lens had not been tightened down completely and that at times he has seen them come just a bit loose and not completely tight all the way. It never appeared to be loose to me, but this fixed the problem completely. I dont think this is related to the other lens issues, but perhaps this might be of help for yours.
Andy

[Arnaud Keil]

Ian I have the same issue, please post stills from the memorystick to show your issue.

In my case, I sent the camera back to a Sony tech. He said all was ok.

Sony don't want to accept that issue for the moment.

Yesterday I installed a Fujinon 17x5.5 on my Z7 and all was ok after having set the real back focus ring on the Fujinon lens.

[Steve Gerhart]

macro shifts the lens groups in lens and may interfere with proper back-focus adjustment

[Ian Campbell]

Thanks for the suggestion of turning off Marco. This is one of the first things I did after noticing the issue. The back focus problem is there if marco is left to its default "on" or turned off.

Thanks again . . .

Ian

[Steve Gerhart]

Carefully inspect the lens-mounting flange and lens, then a check must be made on the rear element of a lens for any mis alignment to the camera focal plane

[Greg Hartzell]

I don't understand why people are trying to make this problem out as a back focus problem, my understanding of back focus doesn't have anything to do with the problem described by the users on this thread. Mounting the lens correctly doesn't have anything to do with an anomaly that renders part of the frame softer than other parts of the frame. To me, this describes a lens that is fundamentally malfunctioning and isn't up to spec.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from Bruce's and Marshall's description, zooming out full wide doesn't exhibit any noticeable anomaly, that it is in the range of 70-80% tele. Also, doing the back focus flange adjustment as per described by the manual in camera doesn't fix the problem. That would eliminate the possibility of a back focus issue, and thus we have a lens that isn't working the way any of us would expect it too.

As for me, this issue is the only thing that is holding me back from buying this cam and I am not really interested in any other cameras at the moment. I would greatly appreciate any update on this. Thanks in advance.

[Brad Hunka]

We've had our Z7U for a little over a month now but had not come across this problem yet since we haven't really stretched it's legs yet. We've got a shoot booked next week where we were are needing to employ narrow DOF. So this issue makes me a bit nervous.

I've been keeping my eye on this thread the last couple of days and finally got around to doing the test myself. Below is are links to the stills including an enhanced comparison of the left, center and right areas of the frame.

http://img88.imageshack.us/my.php?im...camtestpi7.jpg
http://img370.imageshack.us/my.php?i...comparesg1.jpg

I guess you can count me in as one of the problem cases. I'll be talking to my local reseller but I would appreciate being kept in the loop on any response from Sony.

Thank you Bruce and Marshall for spearheading this issue for us.

[Bruce G. Cleveland]

My prediction is that Sony is going to say this is normal for the lens and they will not do anything about it. Marshall has been working 25/7 on some of these issues and I appreciate it, but I would be pleasantly surprised if Sony even agrees there are any issues or problems.

Bruce