Super 8 Focus Issue, Help! (Zenit Quarz 1xB C-2)

[John Walbolt]

Hey everyone,

this is my first post on these forums, so let me know if I need to repost this somewhere else.

I'm practicing my Super-8 skills in prep for a short film I'm making. I just recorded what was supposed to be my final test shots to get the settings right, and basically everything was out of focus! What's weird is I specifically measured distance this time (mostly around 1.5 meters) and previously I had shot random stuff in focus without even using the focus ring correctly (at the time I though the numbers were feet, not meters).

So, if anyone has an idea what could have gone wrong please take a look at this short clip I made below. The first 33 seconds are the latest clip, with the focus ring used and measured. The later half of the clip is an earlier roll I filmed on with the same aperture but very inaccurate focus setting (even though it's in focus).

Both rolls were 500T film.

Thanks for any help.

 

 

[Dom Jaeger]

This is a reflex camera, isn't it? Did it look in focus through the viewfinder? Providing you've adjusted the eyepiece diopter to your eye, the reflex viewfinder should be more reliable than the focus scale, which may have slipped or been incorrectly fitted by someone trying to clean the lens.

The trick with cine zooms is to focus when you're zoomed all the way in, then pull back out to the view you want, and the image should stay in focus. If it doesn't stay in focus, then something is wrong with the lens setting.

[John Walbolt]

The thing that's weird to me, is at time you see the camera flicker into focus. Can that just be from the eye piece being slightly off?