RG> G'day Keith,

 RG> 16 Oct 96 22:32, Keith Richardson wrote to Bill Grimsley:

 BG>> deep field of view.  Ultrasonic was even worse, particularly
 BG>> when trying to videotape from within a car, where the bloody
 BG>> thing kept focussing on the windscreen instead of what you
 BG>> really wanted to film...

 KR> i had a play with one of the new canon hi-8s today, bloody fantastic
 KR> focus system.

 RG> It may be a bloody fantastic focus system, but it has fuck-all to do
 RG> with it being hi-8. Hi-8 is a _tape_and_recording specifcation only.
 RG> Unrelated to the lenses or focusing system. 

err, i actually know that rod, i have owned a hi-8 camera for the past
couple of years, it seemed to be reasonable to describe it as such in order
to identify the camera somewhat. if i could remember the model number it
would have used that, but i dont, so i used a more generic term, come to
that it doesnt have to be canon, other manufacturers may have similar
technology, but it was a canon hi-8 that i saw it on so i described it as
such, sorry if it offends your technical sensitivities.

 KR> the camera looks at your eye position in the
 KR> viewfinder, and uses that to pick the part of the scene to focus on.
 KR> theres a little box superimposed in the viewfinder showing the area
 KR> being used, and it really does follow the eye. at less than $2k duty

 RG> I've heard of this focussing system, but never personally seen one.
 RG> They really do work huh?

extremely well in the shop at least, i set it up with 3 planes of focus in
the viewfinder, and could shift between them just by looking. it wasn't
instantaneous, but it was probably as fast as good manual focussing.
@EOT:

--- WinPoint 0.2.07 Alpha