The focus switch on the Kodak Zi6
The Kodak Zi6 pocket video camera has a switch on its upper-right corner that selects its focal length. It appears to have two settings: Distance, indicated by mountains, and macro, indicated by a flower.
That appearance is wrong. The switch is not binary; it actually selects within a range.
This is useful for things that are close to the camera, but not macro close. For an example, I took pictures of my keyboard. Fully macro was unusably blurry; fully distance looked like this:
whereas moving the switch a little bit up from distance mode got me this:
Neither photo has been adjusted at all. Both photos were taken freehand, but I can vouch for their sharpness-accuracy: What you see in the first photo is focal blur, not motion blur.
So, if you have a Kodak Zi6 (or, perhaps, one of their other cameras, especially in the same family) and you want to take a photo or video of something close but not macro close, adjust that focus switch a little bit.
January 31st, 2010 at 09:32:07
Thanks for figuring this out. I was just about to throw my zi6 in the dumpster. I took videos that were perfect during Christmas and now they were terrible. I thought it was just the lens. Once I read this article, I saw my switch was moved slightly. I fixed it and tested it and the video was back to great quality. You just saved me a couple hundred bucks.
Thanks,
Matt