shooting a film without a 35mm adapter

mpalmer12345 said:
The shallow depth of field look is vastly overrated. Seeing as the look has almost become a cliche by now, I've actually grown to dislike it as it is used in many movies, and am often yearning for a wide look that creatively incorporates the background into the story, rather than sloppily blurring it out.
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I'm starting to think the same thing.

Although it does lend itself to a filmic theatrical sort of look but most seems to be unmotivated shallowness for the sake if it.
 
dan said:
I don't think a tool becomes obsolete just because everyone uses it. Same could be said about film cameras, computers, computer programs, video cameras, cars, etc. When the same tool is available to all, the only difference one can make is oneself's skills and tallent.
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YOU nailed it.

All an adapter does is level the playing field and give you more options. If you don't have a production designer and a budget for locations or even TIME to really compose a shot to work with the environment, shallow focus becomes pretty valuable.

.
 
A good DP will compose a shot with flair, soft BKGD or not. Shallow depth of field shouldn't be an easy way out. Learn to work with what you've got setwise.
 
I think an adapter adds definitely sometihing to the image: Depth. You can zoom in with a 1/3" cam but the perspective will becom VERY flat. So you loose in a way what you wanted to create. What I don't like with adapters is when people start to abuse shallow DOF. Shooting with the lens wide open might be necessary to compensate the adpter's lightloss but it doen't necesarily help image- or storywise. Most Hollywood movies are shot around f 4.0 which creates nice depth but still gives your eye information about the background.

An other point you have to consider shooting with an adapter is lightning. You will need tons of it. You will need more time setting up a scene. You will spend more money on lightning, you will shoot less minutes a day. Sometimes it might be more economical to get a HPX500 with primes which gives you the shallowest DOF you can get with video without an adapter.

But on the other hand, I really like what Philip Bloom is doing with an adapter, for example. There are so many beautiful examples you can find on internet from people who shot with adapters.
 
I think there are a lot of people who think that just because they learned how to use selective focus their shots turn into beutiful shots creations because of that selectiv focus, well it doesn't unless there is a reason for the SDOF.

I also don't think you can really compare Citizen Kane with video cameras, there are sort of two different types of DOF. The movies I have seen that has been shot on digital cameras, Collateral, being the best examples will look weird with their infinite focus. This is especially visible in shots at night, where street lights are still in focus while other things are not in the midground/background.

Film just conceals those things in a nicer more natural way. Now, that said, I would still love to have an HVX with 35mm adaptor :)
 
There is great stuff done with the HVX 200 bare lens. And there is unwatchable stuff done with adapters. If you are not capable of doing something good without having to use the adapter as a coput then you are not creative enough.
 
About citisen Kane imagery I found this:
http://www.takegreatpictures.com/Articles/Details/params/object/9987/default.aspx
Most (if not all) major productions that "made it" on top at all times used one or another of the "latest" tools or technique. Shinning-steadicam, Twister-RC helicopter, etc.

Chaplin's times were crude of tech stuff, yet 5 of his films are among best 250 of all times ! ! ! Voila. A genius like that could shoot a masterpiece with an old shoe.

As for the use of one or another adapter or not, I think the right way to look at the problem is not the abuse but rather the missapropriate use.
A tool, (any tool) is just part of the arsenal to help one tell a story.
If you use it when you shoudn't, it cries for attention and takes away from the production instead of supporting it. Don't use canons to kill mosquitoes (Confucius)
Some of the best flicks I ever saw (shaped my life recently) were taken by average JB with an ordinary camcorder and posted on the net. They have no clue what a DP is, think a dolly is their kid's toy, they zoom-in and the focus desperately hunts while the major event takes place; yet those have meaning and reflect priceless realities of life. I would have gone nuts to see those shoots using an adapter though. No need for it.
My tux dedictuble 2c.
 
I agree with J.R. Making the bg/fg blurry just because you can isn't necessarily the best option always. It may also form a tendency to overlook creative blocking that can really help out a slow scene. The scenes from CK listed in the post above effectively make use of the bg/mg/fg and are classic. Besides, there are other ways to highlight (or lowlight?) your characters through inventive lighting techniques, sound manipulation, shot selection, etc. I'm also sure that if dv/hd cameras were available to the filmmakers of old, they'd have crazy fun shooting twenty different story lines, each playing out on a different plane of focus, in a single super-scene.

Funny, I just noticed that J.R.'s avatar of chris walken has the bg blurred. But that's from a 35mm cam.
 
jimpatro said:
A good DP will compose a shot with flair, soft BKGD or not. Shallow depth of field shouldn't be an easy way out. Learn to work with what you've got setwise.
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It's a tool, and like any other tool it can be overused or misused. Being a "good" DP has little to do with shooting a very low budget project and needing to shoot good looking footage. I can't tell you how many times I walked into an ugly location and had to set up a shot that itself wasn't ugly.

The one thing I see continually overused in regard to the adapter is the "rack focus." Every second of "test footage" I've ever seen with an adapter was filled with rack focus shots and more often than not I see shorts also filled with rack focus shots.

Personally, I detest the 1/3" chip "look," and would much rather not have to see every inch of uncontrollable mess in the background (or foreground) at all times on the low budget stuff I generally work on.

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Here is the trailer for a low budget feature I DPed last year, shot with HVX, and some super 16mm film (the hand crank part with the flashes, tho in the trailer I fake some of them in post) with no adapter, should give you an idea how it look.

Link
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtp2UPfaENM

R. Che
Cinematographer
Image Flare Films
604.505.2588
 
Stu Maschwitz has posted a link on his ProLost blog to the trailer for a film shot without an adaptor (and on a Canon HV20 to boot) called White Red Panic. He posted it as an example of great images that can be obtained without shallow depth of field. Check it out and reach your own conclusion:

http://prolost.blogspot.com/2008/07/go-naked-pt-2.html

Kevin
 
I think that there's too much emphasis placed upon the DOF aspect to fillmmaking and people use it like a band-aid to cover up bad production element.. like, if you have to keep the DOF shallow to hide production design flaws then that's setting up limits and controls to your shoot from the offset.


coupled with this is the fact that most people are using still lens which breath a whole bunch and aren't designed to capture a process but a split second event. When all of this is added to the softening of the image.. the 1/2 stop of light loss... set-up time and all of that, it kind of becomes a bit less interesting.


I've been able to pull some great DOF with my 1.6x teleconverter without a lot of this hoopla. Sure, there's a place and a time for an adapter. I want one for sure for a music video shoot I'm doing.. but there's no reason that you have to have one for a feature... and if you are using it to cover up problems, then that's just not a good solution at all.
 
Given how many people seem to want the look of shallow dof, I wonder how hard it would be to build variable depths of field into the camera itself, maybe even in software. Even if it were only a 3-point switch, say, with max, med, and min depths of field, max being unmodified. Imagine if the HVX2xxx had this feature, saving people $3000 in add-on equipment. Is this totally unfeasible?
 
I have been working on a documentary film with two HVX200 cameras over the last year. I have not used a 35mm converter, but believe I have been able to achieve a very nice film like look without it. I shot in 720p/24FPS with a cine gamma setting and occasionally used a filter - either a 4 or 8 star filter whenever I didn't have highlights to worry about. You can take a look at a sample of the results at this site:
http://www.lighthousetc.com/Site/Video_Production.html and view the "Talent Factory" trailer. Let me know what you think.
 
Lighthouse-

I like the "look" of your documentary. In the scene where the main character is being interviewed with bleachers in the background I think you have achieved the 35mm effect. Your main character is in focus, and you can see the background and tell what it is, but it is not the primary part of the scene.
 
John,

yes.. That's the one. I love it, but at times I even think that I need the 2.0 for that reach out and touch someone quality. I bought it used from a dvxuser and its really been paying off. For almost all of my concert shooting I now leave it on the cam and use it as my main talent cam.. I can be a really good distance back now without compromising my final shot. I also love that century uses the bayonnet mount on the HVX. Makes it so easy to take on and off and not have to worry about the front of lens.


I highly recommend it... especially if you can get it used. 850 new is kind of steep.. but tis nice. My next thing I'm going to get is a set of diopters then I'll have a fish, tele and diopters.. I think that the .75 zoom through is too heavy and not that much of a difference to justify 1350 for that. The .6 just kind of sucks since I had to zoom in to get away from the soft edges. So far the tele and the fisheye are MONEy.;
 
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