EOS M50 Focus Issue

[sterling1989]

Hi Everyone,

I'm having an odd issue with my new EOS M50 (EF-M 15-45mm). I bought the camera to shoot videos of myself seated ~ 5ft/1.5M away from the camera. When I'm seated at that distance, the footage (shot in manual mode, 25fps, f3.5, 1/60, iso 400) is blurry and out of focus, but when I move closer to the camera, my face is perfectly clear and auto-focused.

The strange thing is, even when I have someone manually focus my face with the dial, the footage is out of focus (despite it looking fine on the camera's live view). I've tried to clear settings, but nothing seems to work. This is extremely frustrating, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Waddizzle]

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@sterling1989 wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I'm having an odd issue with my new EOS M50 (EF-M 15-45mm). I bought the camera to shoot videos of myself seated ~ 5ft/1.5M away from the camera. When I'm seated at that distance, the footage (shot in manual mode, 25fps, f3.5, 1/60, iso 400) is blurry and out of focus, but when I move closer to the camera, my face is perfectly clear and auto-focused.

The strange thing is, even when I have someone manually focus my face with the dial, the footage is out of focus (despite it looking fine on the camera's live view). I've tried to clear settings, but nothing seems to work. This is extremely frustrating, so any help would be greatly appreciated!

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What are your camera AF settings?  

You may want to take a still photo of yourself holding a grey card to check focus and white balance before you begin.

[sterling1989]

Thanks for the reply, Waddizzle.

That's the crazy thing, when I take a photo, it's perfectly in focus! In video mode, when my face is within a meter, the auto-focus works fine, but seated a meter or so away, it's out of focus again (even when I use manual focus and it looks fine on the camera, the footage comes out unfocused). Very strange and frustrating!

My AF setting is still the default face-tracking.

[TheSaltyCodger]

Is that just what you are seeing on the larger computer screen, or if you call up the saved video in an editor like Adobe Premiere or Blackmagic Davinci Resolve, does it still look out of focus in the editi8ng stage as well?

[sterling1989]

I use Final Cut Pro, but yes, either in quicktime, VLC, or FCP, I'm still out of focus. This shouldn't be an issue with the player since I move closer to the camera in the same video and am perfectly in focus when I'm closer. 

[Waddizzle]

Your work flow is breaking down somewhere.  You can turn the flip screen toward yourself, and confirm focus and face tracking as you record.  What video mode and frame rate are you using?  I am not sure if Movie AF works in all video modes.

[theanimaster]

The issue is that your MOVIE SERVO AF is set to “OFF” in your main camera settings. Find the menu item in your camera menu settings (it changes all the time) and turn this to ON.

CAVEAT: For the M50, shooting in 4K makes tracking not as great and it will lose focus easily as 2-pixel focusing is not available in 4K shooting. If you switch to 2K you will find that tracking and focusing work great — the servos motors for tracking are enabled.