Anamorphic Adapter and Movement

D

dehilster

Member
Ok, I bought the DVX100a to shoot my documentary. I want to shoot in 16:9 and know I need an anamorphic adapter to get the quality for film I want. (I agonized over whether to buy the XL2 and now maybe will regret it wanting to shoot on 16:9).

I bought the DVX Book by Barry Green and read and watched the DVD. I can see how to do focusing and find it manageable. (Great book and DVD by the way!)

My question is what do I do for shots where people are moving into or out of the focal plane? Do I simply have to focus on both places in the beginning and end of the shot, calculate, and do a manual focus change?
 
Re: Anamorphic Adapter and Movement

Yep. That's called "pulling focus" or a "rack focus", and yes that's exactly what you need to do. Fortunately the DVX makes it infinitely easier to do this than just about any prosumer camera out there, because you can use the MF00-MF99 readout to determine your start and end points, and then just transition between them.
 
Re: Anamorphic Adapter and Movement

The man himself! Great book and DVD. It was invalueable. Thanks for the answer.

I plan to use the autofocus method and chart for doing my focus. That seems like the easiest way to do it. Do you think I can rely on that method pretty much throughout my shoot?
 
Re: Anamorphic Adapter and Movement

I would be hesitant to rely on it exclusively, I'd still want to have a production monitor on hand to check the focus. Autofocus is a tricky beast, so make sure you're definitely getting it in focus. It's vital to zoom all the way in and open the iris up all the way before letting autofocus do its job. Then you switch back to manual, zoom out, stop down to your shooting stop, switch focus to what the chart says you should be using, and it should look razor sharp in the viewfinder and the monitor.
 
Re: Anamorphic Adapter and Movement

One more question...

Is a laptop computer good enough for a monitor to check focusing?
 
Re: Anamorphic Adapter and Movement

If using something like Vegas, which is able to display the full pixel resolution of the frame in the capture window, then yes.

With DV Rack, soon it will be.  Right now it's not, but they've hinted that they will be updating the program to provide full high-resolution monitor capabilities (perhaps at a slower frame rate, but hey, who cares, give us the pixels!)
 
Re: Anamorphic Adapter and Movement

What about the Toshisba 1048x600 pixel DVD portable player (SD-P2700)? That has enough pixels. Would that work?
 
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