Sony TD10 soft right eye on lens f1.8 scenes?

I have observed this as well. At first I thought it was due to the compression method: right eye computed from delta left eye. However, when I examined L/R output during live preview on a 3D TV, it was clear the right eye was soft: focus is not correct for right eye. Design issue or defective units? It's harder to see this issue when watching 3D material. When examining L/R material in 2D, it's very clear the right eye is not in focus. It does not happen all the time, so it would be helpful to hear if others have seen the occasional unfocused right eye issue before sending the camera in for service.

A workaround is to use unsharp mask / sharpen on the right eye in post (even better, a 'super resolution' based method, such as with vReveal). In a quick test, vReveal did a pretty good job deinterlacing, denoising, and sharpening soft right eye TD10 footage (denoising was pretty fast (around 10fps), but not quite as good as Neat Video (slower)). vReveal also does a decent job of real-time image stabilization in post (heavily GPU acclerated). http://www.vreveal.com/ ($50).

Due to the nature of how the brain combines L/R images, it's hard to see when watching in stereo 3D (especially for the casual user). Clearly wide apertures require more accurate focus as the depth of field is narrow. However I have seen this issue when filming with a decent amount of light (floods and on camera). Example: http://youtu.be/cCN9oLpwv4w?t=5m15s ("pure direct" and "Volume" is soft in right eye). There are sections which are more pronounced. Examine at 1080p (anaglyph is fine, even without glasses).

Here you can't read "Network" in the right eye but can in the left (stop at 5:21): http://youtu.be/cCN9oLpwv4w?t=5m21s
http://youtu.be/cCN9oLpwv4w?t=5m33s (stop at 5:33): note large "YAMAHA" is barely readable in right eye.

Unfortunate that it only has a 90-day warranty (1 year for parts). How long for the repair (where is the service center)? I'll send mine in as well- it's now having trouble getting through autocalibration (on a tripod).

Cool, thanks for the tip (tried reset- no change).

John- with auto calibration- be sure you have lots of light. I had to take mine outside in the daylight because my room lighting was not adequate to complete that test. There is a scale that needs to be above the half way for auto calibration to work as I recall.

Thanks for the tip Don. It worked in my office in the past (same light conditions), now it only works in very bright light. It needs more than just bright light- apparently also needs high contrast and perhaps variable depth objects.

Very informative. Leaves me to wonder if the initial factory calibration was bad. Did Sony say they would fix it?

I concur. My first auto calibration succeeded indoors at night in a well lit room with 20+ feet of objects at varying depth. That same scene didn't work several months later when the TD10 asked for another calibration. I picked a different scene that happened to be better lit, and it worked.

Les- thanks for being the pioneer on this!

Even though I can do service, I would not attempt to repair something that came defective.

If there is still an opportunity, you should escalate it further with Sony.

Insist on talking to the most senior person at corporate about this, and then escalate it until they either get you a new camera or a commitment to repair.

If Sony's reply is continued complete refusal, you can have another service company correct the problem, and make clear that you are going to sue Sony for failing to repair, and let other users know about their failure.

Sony has refused service in the past. Example: millions of projection TVs shipped between 2004 and 2008 had bad optical blocks. There was a class action lawsuit. Today Sony does accommodate customers that still have these TVs, as part of the settlement.

I have worked on a Sony camcorder focus problem that was due to a bad motor inside the lens. Not an easy repair.

At least the tech could have swapped the lens and perhaps the motor control board and redone the calibration. At this point we do not know if your camcorder is uniquely bad, or if there is something wrong that needs a recall.

Nowadays TD10's also have this big problem?

On my TD10, I use manual focus sometimes at night, when the auto-focus seems slow.

I've also used manual focus when recording the critters inside an aquarium, from the outside that is.

At other times, the 3D-auto-focus is fine.

The manual focus works ok for my use in those situations when the auto-focus was not optimum.

les-d

I am surprised you haven't contacted Sony repair on this issue. The fix is likely simple as these things are usually all electronic. The TD10 has a service connection on the bottom that an authorized Sony service center can access with special diagnostics and calibration software. Unless you dropped it and broke something, that's all it will take to align the two cameras and the repair cost if out of warranty, might be 1 hour bench time.

I have used Sony's service in the past and they are quite good. I've used three levels of service, consumer, industrial, and broadcast. I hope your camcorder is not out of warranty, but if it isn't, you should contact them immediately. In my experience, consumer product repair is not that expensive. My experience with industrial product repair is that they often have a blanket complete overhaul for a reasonable price. They go through and bring everything except scratches on the body up to new specs for a flat rate. e.g. One of my small DVCAM's that retail for $3800 had a flat rate overhaul of $450 plus shipping. That comes with a 1 year new product warranty. Hard deal to beat!

One word about Sony repair. They do require you to make all recommended repairs. They don't do partial repair. If you decline, there will be a charge for diagnostics and return shipping.

So Don it sounds, you never had this focus issue with your TD10, right?

relaxman- No! I own two TD10's and both exhibit perfect focus on both left and right eye renderings. Focus is an issue in low light, however, using auto focus as sony uses an image analyzer to determine focus. When that issue presents itself, I switch the cam to manual focus. ( I love that little knob/button for control over everything I need to "get the shot"


Les-d: Go to my YT channel at www.youtube.com/user/DonLandis and look at the first video Kellie Pickler concert. I shot the entire concert from one location all handheld in a tightly packed crowd. Observe, the full zoom shots of her, especially her hair strands in 3D. The camera settings were auto everything except exposure which I had to ride the control throughout the half hour due to the damn spot lights. In the beginning the spots caught me off guard so I had to shoot and switch the intelligent auto off, then select exposure and correct to fix the blowout I was getting on her face. That is the reason why early in the show her face complexion is so pasty. About 3 minutes into it I was riding the manual exposure for the remainder of the show. Focus remained in auto.
I think you will admit that properly shot full zoom with the TD10 can get stunning results in a less than ideal shooting environment. There are plenty of shots in full wide to compare.

Here's what I would like you to do for me. Can you shoot a scene you believe is defective because of the one cam lens being out of focus when the other is in focus. Render the clip in SBS output and post a frame grab. This can all be done in Vegas. I'd like to see this. I must admit I haven't seen all the posts on this topic, and as such, have never seen anyone post an example of this out of focus problem. If you have already done this, please point me to it. The fact that seeing is believing and that Sony could not find anything wrong, makes me doubt the problem exists.

Ok less-d, now you are insulting me and I'm sure many others here. Have you ever seen me compare the video quality of my broadcast cameras with my TD10? For that matter, have you ever seen me compare my TD10 to my Bloggie3D? No! Not in the way you just compared $55k+ 3D system with the TD10.
If you know cameras and lenses you should be able to appreciate the differences beginning with the front piece of glass all the way to the size and number of imagers. Plus all the big boy stuff comes at a price and that is not just in $$$ either. You should know where the sacrifices are in the smaller packages. The amount of detail in an image in a full wide shot in a much larger imager and much larger diameter and quality of glass has obvious advantages.
I once had an intern working for me who was running at the mouth one day about how an FX1 HD cam far out performs my broadcast cams because it is HD So, I said to him show me. Lets take my Z1U HD recording and compare to my 3 2/3" chip set with broadcast glass camera in SD wide screen. ( I don't own any broadcast HDCAMS ) We pulled both into Vegas and and they looked identical on the HD monitor. Now, I said, blow both wide shots up 2X and recrop to wide screen. His jaw dropped, The Z1U HD was all fuzzy around the edges of each subject. The broadcast SD cam still looked sharp and details were still present. I told him to do it again only this time take a quarter of the original frame. Now the broadcast cam began to exhibit the same degradation that the HD footage had at 2X blowup. If we had the HD Cine Alta I'm sure it would run rings around my SD broadcast cam. But the smaller glass and imagers really showed losses with these small consumer cameras. So don't feed me that BS about Screw you Sony. There is a right tool for every job and the smart producer will match the proper tool as budget and conditions warrant.

As for your aching back... My solution to this is the big stuff needs to have grips allocated in the budget. I budgeted for a grip on all my broadcast EFP shoots.
Today, I'm not doing broadcast level work so as an amateur, I focus more attention to maximizing the image quality to what I can carry for a day of aggressive shooting. I spend far more time compressing weight and physical size than I do worrying over image quality.
You know the old saying: Speed, cost, quality; choose any two. You need all three- Dream on! Your competitor will get the job.

Have fun with your Red Scarlets. Glad those days are over for me. Looking forward to seeing your finished work. Seriously!

Although my TD10's is a fantastic piece of equipment and its focus is adequate for my use thus far, I can vouch for Sony's complete indifference to reply in a reasonable manner to problems they have created, unless they get sued, or someone has a special "IN," with them, such as the one Don has nurtured. No wonder that Sony consumer products lost $billions last year. I hope Don can get some progress going on this focus issue.

Don, I made a still frame of the image les-d mentioned a few months ago, which is still on youtube. Attached below. Notice how the words Yamaha and other words there are blurry. I am going to check this more closely on my own TD10 using similar settings too.

My image below was down-rez'd by AVSforum policy to 1280x720. The blur is visible there.

The original 1920x1080 frame capture can be downloaded by anyone at the following link. Blur is more definitive there since its 1080p

http://st7.us/td10_right_blurry_yam1920.jpg

Thanks Richard. That clearly shows there is a focus problem. Whether it's as he believes, a tracking link between the two cameras, or other possibilities such as fogging over or dirty right lens, or Back Flange calibration remains to be seen. None of these would be user fixable except fog. To eliminate the back flange adjustment as a root cause we would need the same shot done at full wide, medium zoom and close up. If the dirty right lens is condensate or dew buildup that is user fixable by allowing ther camera to adjust to it's environment for a few hours. The fogging of a lens element would eventually evaporate when a cold camera comes to room temperature regardless of humidity. Have lots of experience with this issue shooting in the Keys after keeping my cameras in an air conditioned hotel room all night. The flange back or Back Flange calibration is mechanical and has nothing to do with the electronics so this is a tare down to get to that part of the lens set. Only on Broadcast cameras is this adjustment external and field adjustable.

-- just trying to think of all possibilities that could cause what we see.

Anyway, thanks again for doing that example of his problem.

While I don't really have any insider connections at Sony, I do get to see the engineers at CES and NAB. If I find any of them and can communicate ( would help if I spoke Japanese ) I'll see if they can lend some explanation to this. NAB is at end of April.