Zoom Focus Inconsistency

[Levi Agee]

I have an XL2 about five years old. Just recently I've notice that my "back focus" might be off. Whenever I zoom in to focus and then back out it goes soft. I can do it forty times and it will always unfocus.

I was talking to a DP professional at my university and he was telling me about some cameras having a Back Focus on manual lenses. But I have the auto-servo-20x.

Is there some menu feature or setting I need to tweak to keep it from going soft.

 

Thanks

[Michael Nash]

This an inherent design flaw in the XL's. With Canon's XL lenses there is no mechanical focus nor backfocus, so you can't reliably check or calibrate focus by zooming in. I don't know if XL users have found a reasonable workaround for this.

[Jack Barker]

If it truly is a backfocus issue, you need to call Canon, speak to them and probably send it in for recalibration, after they send you the boxes - yes, they do that. First though, go to the Canon XL2 page on the Canon website and make sure that you have registered your XL2 and join their Owner's Club. You get a few breaks for joining, but I don't remember quite what.

 

Here's the page:

 

http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controll...upportDetailAct

 

Look for a small rectangle on the right edge of the page that looks like this.

 

 

Click on it, window pops open, register, done.

 

Here are a couple of threads over at the DVInfo, XL2 Watchdog that are worth a read.

 

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?...t=xl2+backfocus

 

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=42110