Critiquing blurry video clip with metadata (GH5 shooting MP4, 4k)

[littlefish]

Hi, I recently discovered exiftool (on Mac) to help critique video shots from a GH5 in 4k MP4, 10bit, 422. Awesome command line tool!

Much of the metadata is common sense to me AND super helpful. But with a few clips where everything in the scene from far away to closeup is varying degrees of blurry, I'm baffled.

One particular clip (freeze frame attached) was shot down a city street with pedestrian traffic on a bright sunshiny day. There was very little wind to speak of. I'm pretty sure I had it set and focused close to infinity. But how can I verify the distance I focused (even if it's rough) with all the great metadata that exiftool provides? I did shoot it on a tripod, completely manual, with a budget Panasonic Lumix lens, 14-140mm, F3.5-5.6. shutter is 1/125th, aperture 14, ISO 200, focal length is 55.0m, focal length in 35mm format 119mm. Sharpness, saturation and contrast is set to normal.

What metadata should I be looking for to see where I was actually focusing? Hyperfocal Distance is 15.56m (don't know what that means and was not able to find anything on the forum or website).

Thanks ahead of time for any tips

[Hubert]

aperture 14

I think what you're seeing in the background is diffraction blur. Opinions vary, but Micro Four Thirds lenses are increasingly affected by this at apertures smaller than around f/8 - f/11.

What metadata should I be looking for to see where I was actually focusing?

As far as I'm aware there's no way to determine the original focus distance from the metadata returned by Panasonic cameras or lenses. I certainly can't on my GX9, which is your GH5's baby brother.

Hyperfocal Distance is 15.56m (don't know what that means and was not able to find anything on the forum or website).

Hyperfocal Distance is a Composite tag calculated by Exiftool from the Focal Length, Aperture and Circle of Confusion (which is in itself a Composite tag calculated from other Composite tags...):

https://exiftool.org/TagNames/Composite.html

In an ideal world, with the lens focussed at infinity, anything further away than the Hyperfocal Distance should be in focus. So in your image, anything closer than 15.56 metres won't be in focus. Not sure how close the dudes in the foreground are but that could be an issue too.

Understanding Hyperfocal Distance is probably outside the bounds of this forum, but a Google search turns up lots of explanations. You can also search Google for site:exiftool.org hyperfocal and you'll find this thread among others:

https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php?topic=7852.0

Cheers,

H


EDIT Just to clarify, the Panasonic Tags page does list Focus Distance:

https://exiftool.org/TagNames/Panasonic.html#FocusInfo

But this appears only to be returned by top-notch Leica kit, and not standard Panasonic gear.

[littlefish]

Thank you Hubert! Most helpful. I did additional tests with this same budget Panasonic lens and my better quality, Lumix 12-35mm F2.8. Everything was shot at F13 (before I read your post). I was trying to compare apples to apples with both set to 35mm. It was a hazy day, but I find my very crude tests both helpful and baffling. I'm not even sure how to describe it, but getting on different scenes both good results and not so good results from both lenses. Most are recovered to varying degrees with some colour grading and a very slight setting on the sharpen filter in my video editor. I will do some tests this weekend regarding your helpful tip about MFTs and keeping my f-stop smaller than f11. Again, thanks so much for posting!!