Depth of Field

A

Antoine_Fabi

Well-known member
"As for the depth of field problem, I don't understand why so many people bring this up. The depth of field of a 2/3" CCD camera shooting at T/2.8 is like the look of shooting 35mm at T/5.6. Is that the end of the world??? What, deep focus is verbotten in filmmaking from now on? Shallow focus is the only accepted look for movies to have? Much of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was shot at T/11, especially outdoors. In fact, most of Douglas Slocombe's photography is deep focus. And Super-16 has a similar depth of field to HD, so does that make Super-
I just finished shooting a 35mm anamorphic feature and there were days where I'd have killed for some more depth of field! Sure, the deeper focus of a 2/3" CCD can occasionally be a problem, especially when you are forced to use shorter focal lengths, but too little depth of field in 35mm shooting can also lead to problems. So having a format will a little more depth of field can be helpful sometimes and a problem other times. It's a wash."

written by David Mullen jul 12  2004
Cinematography.com Forums

...may i say... i agree 100%
Let's enjoy our 1/3" CCDs.
 
Re: Depth of Field

A 1/3'' ccd is really about 1/4 of an inch in size. That's MUCH, MUCH smaller than 35mm. An sdx900 with an open iris at full telephoto will definitely provide reasonable depth of field, but we're shooting with dvx's here.

People want their footage to look like film, and the dvx already has the frame rate and already emulates the gamma characteristics. All that's missing is are dynamic range, detail, and depth of focus. So of course we're going to complain about those things.

The Royal Tenenbaums seemed to have very very deep depth of field and it looked great. Still, depth of field can assist greatly with storytelling (the shifting focus emulates the shifting focus of an eye, as a panning camera emulates a turning head, i guess...). Depth of field alone doesn't make a movie great, but it can make it better and more visually interesting.
 
Re: Depth of Field

If you are worried sick about depht of field and rent a mini 35 plus some 35 prime lenses, be sure you have a lot more money to spend on other areas. Spending this sort of money to have a propper lighting setup and/or spending it with production design will certainly do much more for you than depht of field.
 
Re: Depth of Field

If you don't own a race car, don't expect to be able to race with your car. Our cars go pretty fast, faster than most people's cars, ESPECIALLY for the cost, and I know mine takes me where I want to go!
 
Re: Depth of Field

I realize this is a touchy subject but I do need to post a question regarding it.

I am curious about production techniques to limit the DOF of this camera, if possible, because I use my DVX-100a on a lot of industrial work.

We were shooting interviews in various Home Depots last week and the producer somewhat freaked out when he realized we couldn't kick the background out of focus, to suit his expectations.

I moved the camera as far from the subject as possible while maintaining the framing we needed. (I was not at the fullest telephoto length though because it was physically impossibly to move the camera any further away) I put a ND filter in to try to get the F-stop down to the 2.8 area but couldn't quite do that given our lighting. And, we still had a tremendous DOF meaning that people walking by 20 feet behind our subject were still pretty sharp.

I am curious, what else I could have done?

Again, I really do love this camera and I am not trying to cast any negativity here about it. I am just wanting to learn more about how to shoot with it so I can deliver to my clients what they are wanting from me.

Thanks.
 
Re: Depth of Field

There are limits to the shallow DOF effect you can get with the DVX. Read the DOF tutorial for the techniques that can be used, but basically you want to use Z99, f/2.8, and get as close to the subject as you can and separate the subject from the background as much as possible... that's about all you can do.
 
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