Bringing HD Into Focus

Q&A With Fujinon's Thom Calabro

by George Winslow -- Multichannel News, 9/9/2009 4:27:51 PM

This August, Fujinon and NHK won an Engineering Emmy Award for "Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Development" for Fujinon's Precision Focus Assist technology. In this interview, Fujinon national sales manager, Broadcast & Communications Products Division Thom Calabro talked with HD Update contributor George Winslow about some of the work that led up to its third Engineering Emmy and some of the challenges facing lens-makers for the HD-production sector. An edited transcript follows:

  

MCN: How did your work on the Precision Focus Assist system come about and when did you start it?

Thom Calabro: The Emmys are given out to products that advance television in some way, and when you look at high-definition television, there are some issues with focusing. Even though we make very sharp lenses, the operator has to focus the lens and that can be rather difficult for HD.

So we looked for a way that we could assist the camera operator in achieving critical focus in a wide variety of situations and we did this in conjunction with NHK, which gave us the idea.

We started in 2000 and, I think, showed something at [the National Association of Broadcasters show] in 2001 and 2002, but it took a while before we started selling these lenses. The Precision Focus Assist is an auto assist system, not an automatic system and our goal was to assist the operator, not take over their job. But it took a while to get customers comfortable with the fact that you have a microprocessor telling the lens where to focus and for them to realize we were not there to get rid of the camera operator.

It also took a while, two or three years, before we got the software, not so much the hardware, right. We knew we had it when we were showing it to a rather high-end operator and after he used it for a little bit he said that "it works like a really good camera operator."

 

MCN: When you developed the system, what were the key issues you were trying to help them with in HD productions?

Thom Calabro: The shallow depth of focus in HD is No. 1; No. 2 is the viewfinder.

At best the operator is looking through a seven- to 10-inch viewfinder on a big camera and at worst a two- to 2.5-half inch screen inside an eyepiece on an ENG camera. Even with compression, that means the consumer who is watching the action on a 42-inch or 50-inch TV at home can see more than the operator.

One of the best uses for Precision Focus is in sports, where things aren't scripted and you never know where player or the ball or car is going to be. It is very beneficial in golf, for example, where it can be very difficult to follow the ball.

In golf, the camera and the lens is typically on the green looking back at the tee. Typically, operators would frame and focus the shot and when the ball was hit, they would follow it like they normally would. But when the ball hit the green, they have a problem. You have a small object coming directly at you and that's one of the hardest things to focus on. So when the ball hit the green, they can engage the precision focus and follow the ball until it stops and then they would release the precision focus. It is an assist. We are not taking over focus from the operator. We just wanted them to be able to use it when it was necessary.

 

MCN: How has the difficult economy impacted the demand for HD lenses? What areas have held up pretty well and what areas have been hardest hit?

TC: The high end and the low end seem to be doing better than the middle, where you have such categories as TV-station [electronic news-gathering].

Many of the high-end television shows that were done on film are now switching over to HD so there is a big need for high-end HD lenses. We've just come out with a line of PL-mount lenses that are extremely high end. They are doing well, not just for the high-end TV production market but also for theatrical films.

There are TV stations that are buying and replacing ENG cameras and lenses but they are going for more of lower end product, certainly price wise than what they did a few years ago.

At the same time, our lower-end product is much better in quality than it was just a few years ago.

The other challenge for us and everyone else has been the camera image size. As cameras have gotten cheater, a lot of them gone to smaller image sizes. Just a few years ago, 2/3-inch was the standard across the board. Then we saw half-inch, now we see 1/3-inch.

Typically, the smaller the image, the lower the cost of the camera, but that creates a real challenge for lens manufacturers because the smaller the image size, the smaller the pixel size. If you had a lens that had an error on a 2/3-inch camera, the error may not show up because that error that would go across only one pixel. Now, with the smaller image size, pixels are smaller and the same error will go across two pixels and it becomes possible to see the error on the screen.

So we've had to make our lenses for smaller image sizes better and better.

It is has been a challenge to get the price down. Customers have had the perception that there should be a 70/30 split for the cost of a camera and lens -- 70% for the camera, 30% for the lens. These days, it can be 50/50 and in some cases it is 40/60 with the lens costing more than the camera.

More of them need to realize that the image is not getting any better once it leaves the back of the lens and that they'd better get the best image possible from the glass. You can manipulate by the image and the color in various ways but you can't increase the resolution.

 

MCN: Any other areas where you're seeing some advances?

TC: We are working on different technologies to get higher quality lenses that are very robust and durable, to get them lighter and less costly.

One of the things we've done is work with aspheric technology. Aspherics allow us to bend the curvature of an element so that the light all winds up at the same point. That allows us to use fewer elements, and fewer elements means lower cost and a less complex product, a lighter product.

We did that in the past with SD lenses but when we went into HD, the aspherics we had weren't of sufficient quality to keep up with demands of HD. But now we've found a way to use them. We've reintroduced aspherics in one of our HD box lenses and I could see that technology getting into our ENG product as well, which is one way to lower the cost.