DOF more dangerous than crack?

Attic6

Attic6

Well-known member
Let me name a few movies:
Starwars
Jaws
ET
The Gods Must Be Crazy
Psycho
Easy Rider

What do all these DP's have in common?
None of them ever said "Open stop!!! her f**king ear is also in focus!!!"
What does this mean?
Before the days of 35mm adapters and the HDSLR revolution everybody was happy to shoot at 4 or 5.6 or 8. Why, probably because it worked!!!
Some of the stuff shot today would never have been printed back in the "old days" of film.
Sure I love the soft shot of the lights as much as the next vimeo user here but come on. This in my humble opinion has turned in a massive pissing contest about who can make the ears disappear. Think for one moment about the que at the food line. The makeup lady can now very easily push in front of the hair stylist, why, because nobody can ever see what the hell she does on set any more. maybe she should only do the back half of the eyelashes because thats all that anybody wants to be in focus now days. (Imagine the poor set builder and art department.)
Maybe we should start thinking about composition again...
a 7d 35mm at 5.6 looks pretty.
a 5d 50mm at 1.2 looks like I forgot my glasses.
 
Totally agree. Just because you've got that large sensor to play with doesn't mean you have to be fully open all the time. Shallow depth of field (and where the focus lies in this) is used as an effect, to make you concentrate on a very specific bit of the image. Think about what you're shooting and whether you actually need to shoot at 1.4 when f8 would actually look nicer. Don't confuse shallow depth of field with "the film look"
 
what is funny is this is mostly with new enthusiasts; most of my regular clients tend to prefer keeping everything in focus and rarely use shallow DOF. one client even told me 'i'm paying for HD, every damn pixel better be sharp!' which i thought was pretty funny. i usually shoot 2.8-5.6 for my own stuff. there is a kid who did some misc work at a previous shoot who had a T2i and an f1.2 with a fat stack of filters and shot everything in bright sunlight wide open 1/48 at1080 24P. it was actually pretty irritating to watch.

in my opinion, f2.8 on a crop sensor is about the limits of sane shallow DOF for a useable shot at close range. for FF, i wouldnt go wider than f3.5. bokeh is one thing, but some people insist on having a ruined watercolor painting for a background
 
Agreed! DOF is used to help isolate a subject, not for its own sake. The ev doesn't need to be super defocused.
 
Totally agree!

I really noticed it when watching the digital re-release of Back to the Future. Very little use of shallow depth of field! This is one reason why I love the GH1, not only does the footage look great with the hacked camera but you can shoot with a lens wider in low light and not go crazy with the DoF.
 
I don't know, I think the shallow depth of field can look fantastic when used properly. The problem is where it is overused and yes that happens too much. I don't have a dof adaptor or a dslr so maybe I just like what I don't have. I have to work hard to get a shallow dof.

Having just moved from sx I get really paranoid shooting hd that the focus isn't going to be right on that little screen. It's a fine balance to choose the right dof and making sure what needs to be sharp is.

I haven't used a dof calculator shooting video. Does this mean i have to dig it out?
 
I agree with everything already said in this thread. HOWEVER, some of us are shooting our films with budgets of $0 so there isnt really any money to put towards getting a lot or really bright lights. Also shooting guerrilla style a lot doesnt allow you to set up lights and stuff. Therefore, being able to open up your lens to get the most out of the little light you have really helps. That being said i still do my best to keep away from being fully open and having my characters nose and ears be out of focus.
 
Shallow DOF is good to have but is overrated, over used, over crazed, and used to the extreme. Simple, basic, and a blend of shallow DOF here and there to convey the point is best... in my opinion.
 
Shallow DOF is a fad. It really annoys me to see all these videos and films where 7/8s of the frame is out of focus. Like come on. You don't NEED that damn 50mm 1.2 L lens from Canon for video. It's ridiculous.
 
I think many newbs use shallow dof to be trendy, and not really understand that focus is actually used to help tell the story. Unfortunately many of us have been kind of forced to over use the shallow look mainly because camera limitations. I have been guilty on many occasion when using a dof adapter in low light. Sometimes it's the only way to get that extra stop is to go wide open. And sadly using DLR's have presented their own unique problems, and shallow dof is sometimes the only way to fix them. (moire, aliasing).

But overall I do agree it becomes old seeing the cheap lens breathing when racking back and forth for no apparent reason other than because they can. some how they think filming their cat with a shallow dof cinematic. uhhh!
 
Teddy Danh said:
Shallow DOF is a fad. It really annoys me to see all these videos and films where 7/8s of the frame is out of focus. Like come on. You don't NEED that damn 50mm 1.2 L lens from Canon for video. It's ridiculous.
Click to expand...

Yes you do... Not for DOF purposes. But just because it's an amazing lens. :)
 
Every movie listed in the first post is a decade to three decades old. Shallow shots do seem to be more prevalent in more recent films.

I don't think shallow DOF is a "fad" and I haven't seen any gorgeously shot feature films that made me think "jesus, focus the dang camera, stop that sh*t down" or whatever.

Saw "Run Lola Run" recently; Twyker used depth of field levels to suggest things like tension and intimacy, and used it to isolate characters. When I'm shooting, I'm eyeballing the whole frame and making decisions on what is in focus, and how sharp/soft framing or BG elements are.

Much like choices of using deep vs. shallow space, angled vs. straight compositional elements, warm vs. cool colors, etc etc ETC to enhance changes in intensity or clarify character traits, DOF is anther tool, especially when used to make certain shots stand out in a deeper-focused segment or entire film.

We see a ton of overly soft DOF stuff here because there's hundreds of kids shooting with a 50 1.8 (which alone is silly, the 50 is too long to be your only lens on a small sensor cam, it's a knee-jerk purchase based on decades of the 50's status as "normal" lens on a full frame SLR - a 28 feels about right to me) who can't afford lights and have no idea how to shoot outdoors. Personally, between the cinema and netflix and VOD I can't recall an instance - in a film by a solid director with a solid DP - of thinking the DOF was extreme or overused.

Got no clue why this is an "issue" with anyone.
 
Michael Carter said:
Got no clue why this is an "issue" with anyone.
Click to expand...

Yea, exactly... Just don't use it if you don't like it. You don't sound smart and experienced for calling out sallow DOF... you just comes off sounding pretentious and elitist. As if you're above everyone who uses shallow DOF for some reason.

Is it over used? In what context? Real movies?... nope. Internet "test" videos? Yea, probably. But who cares. It's not a fad though.

Just because allot of people have access to a look that use to be considered rare does not mean it's instantly for armatures and overused. ... and just because you're going to shoot everything in deep focus now doesn't mean it's going to be any better.
 
From my tests, it seems that the depth of field on the DSLR's is paper thin no matter what you do, so why not just open the aperture up to 2.8 and have a ball? It's really pretty shocking how paper thin the in-focus plane is on these cameras once you do tests on things like cat's fur and textured surfaces, and it does not widen by closing the aperture. You may achieve a bit of widening of the plane at an insane aperture like 22, but through the 1.8-5.6 zone, which are the only apertures useable in natural indoor scenarios or even very cloudy days, the depth of field is literally stuck at looking very blurry. It's not that the focus plane widens a bit, it doesn't, it's just that the surrounding blur looks less extreme with higher apertures - think of it like a photoshop effect. Photoshop can blur a picture, or even part of a picture, in different increments, but if a picture doesn't have a wide focus plane to begin with, it can't make depth of field sharper. That's essentially what depth of field is. So when the time comes you need to do a interview or video in the middle of a grocery store or coffee shop, shoot something walking down the sidewalk at night, or just whatever normal purpose comes up, sometimes you just have to have insanely open apertures and whatever baggage comes with them; the focus plane, at it's sharpest point, will still be only paper-thin no matter wether it's at an apeture of 1.8 or wether it's at an apeture of 22. 18MP on theses cameras gives the illusion that there can truly be more in focus than only a centimeter worth of material, but on 1080P videos, you realize that the truth is very far from that.

One thing I'm trying to learn are ways to naturally have a less severe effect at the open apertures, getting the light in is essential for the picture's exposure but I don't think anyone wants a depth of field that is just too extreme. With the 50mm I have, the focus plane is literally paper thin, the eyes will be in perfect focus but everything else, the entire nose, all the hair, everything will basically be in a minimal or quite moderate blur. Does a 75mm prime fix this, for example? Standing farther away but having the same shot? I'm mostly talking about chest-and-up head shots and interview material. Or like I was saying, does it only minimze the blur "aesthetic", not actually widening the exact focus plane? The focus plane where everything is in perfect focus is more important than what goes on around it, as details that are blurred will be beyond the viewer's main interest wether they're majorly blurred or just minimally blurred. And when the details that you want to be sharp are minimally blurred, it makes the video look low quality like something's wrong with the camera, instead of the blur being perceived as a depth of field; that's why so far, I think the DSLR's have a major downside in this department. But I'm not exactly sure how other video or film camers work to actually know if it's worse.

You can really see what I'm talking about in this example (look at the flower's stem in both photos, both are out of focus completely):

F32 - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...s_at_f32.jpg/800px-Jonquil_flowers_at_f32.jpg
F5 - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...ers_at_f5.jpg/800px-Jonquil_flowers_at_f5.jpg

If that were a person's face, an obese person's stomach, or any other object that is thick in nature and requires the entire object to be in crystal clear, sharp focus, it would simply be impossible. Why is this? Is this one aspect that is truly flawed in photography, the fact that the focus plane does not widen at it's crystal sharp point no matter what aperture you have? Why isn't this problem fixed through engineering, or given to us as another option that we can change with some number?

But I ask again, do different focal perceptions effect this at all, or again, do focal perceptions only have an effect on how severe the surrounding blur is, instead of widening the sharp plane itself?
 
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