How to Increase Depth of field?

liextreme said:
and what exact lens would work the best? size make, and does it have to be made for HD?

No, the lenses don't have to be made for HD... the lenses you'd be using are made for 35mm film and will hold up to anything an HVX200 can do to them.

But what lens would work best? There's no simple answer to this question. A lot of people prefer Nikons because they're easy to find, most adapters can use them, and they can be found for cheap. But even so it's hard to find a good all-purpose lens that's worth a damn. You could buy one of those 28-200mm Tamrons for $200 or so, but they're slow and cheap, so you'll need a LOT of light. Unless you're shooting all daylight exteriors, you really need to get lenses that are f/2.8 or better. Most people have at least 3 lenses: a wide, a normal, and a portrait or telephoto. I know some great photographers who have done their entire body of work with just a 50mm lens... but you aren't going to want to shoot a movie that way.
 
Ive got an idea.. although it needs a bit of extra preparation and also some extra work in post..u could add a bluescreen in back of the subject.. shoot the interview.. then take a decent resolution photo of the office as a background (at a correct and natural looking angle).. and integrate that background into the footage with FCP or any other editor u may have, then u would have the correct framing of the background and u could add slight blur to it also.. the thing is, u need to have certain things in mind.. like quality for the bluescreen shot.. meaning... Well lit & shooting at least using the dv50 codec.

I also suggest you do some test shots of this first to see the result beforehand
 
hmm

hmm

I need to get that shallow Depth, when the person is 6 feet from the wall and I'm 6 feet away from him, now what adapotor would you guys recomend? I guess photo lenses don't count,
 
2mm adapter to increse Deapth of feild

2mm adapter to increse Deapth of feild

yeah the 2mm adapter by B+S techinc is great its just hard to find lenes...

but seriously you could shoot with a 1/4 inch Cdd video camera out side with the widest lens that you could stop down if you really wanted as much DOP as posible...

and shift tilt lenses like how they used them in six feet under thats another way to get extra Depth of Feild Look....


VP

www.vincentpascoe.com
 
Wait

Wait

a sec ...you want to DECREASE the DOP!....oh....

yeah redrock M2...or the Movie tube.......get at least a 50mm f/1.4...or if your really trying to get the long lens get ethier the 80-200m f/2.8 or a nice f/2.8 90mm macro.....
 
Will the long lens, make me stand further from the object?
Movie tube is to expansive for me, so I will go with the m2
now where can I go for lenses and how should I search, the photo lens won't work right?
 
I like that, 100mm
Focus_4_sm.jpg
http://www.redrockmicro.com/Focus_4_sm.jpg
 
For the M2, buy the older Nikon manual lenses. You can find them cheap on e-bay and they are excellent quality. Remember, people using Nikons thirty years ago were serious, hardcore photographers. All of the lenses that I've bought for my M2 are almost as good as my Canon "L" series lens for my DSLR (really good quality). And don't worry about getting anything with auto focus --- you won't be using it.

If you're getting primes, you're going to need a good range of lenses. My kit includes a 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 100mm, and 135. However, the 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm are my workhorses so you might want to get them first. The most I paid for any one lens was just unde $200. You might also check Adorama and B&H -- they both have a ton of used Nikon lenses in various conditions.

The one thing I would encourage you to do, is buy the fastest lenses you can afford. And really, nothing slower than 2.8 and then only on the longer lenses that you'll be using outdoors. From the 24mm to the 85mm, the slowest lense I'd buy would be an f2.0. The M2 loses a stop of light, so your ISO will go down to 160 on the HVX. Keep that in mind.
 
This is an interesting concept. I have the HVX and the M2 adapter, which is a good way to go. But as mentioned earlier, sometimes light, time, crew, or money limit the M2's usefulness.

I've been wanting to experiment with shooting a scene (still camera setup only) and then moving the actors out of frame and taking a blank shot of the background, with the focus remaining in the same place as I had it set when I shot the scene. I theoretically could then layer the two shots in After Effects (or even just FCP), apply a difference matte to matte the actors out of the background, and then paste the background with an artifical camera blur behind the actors.

I know it's not a perfect solution, but has anyone tried this before? I would be interested to find out just how bad it looked. Maybe it's something you could get away with in a bind, in a low-light situation where the background was largely obscured anyway.

In any case I think it would definitely beat breaking out a green screen. At least in this case your matte lines would be between two similar shots and not between a green screen and the background. And your lighting would be consistant because you wouldn't have to worry about reflection off of the screen. (And is it just me, or do spill supressors do a little more than they should?)

I would just be interested to know if anyone had tried this in the field. Some before and after frame grabs would be interesting. Maybe if I have some time over the holidays I'll have a go at it.

As for practical advise, the work and money required to make an M2 work would not be worth one interview. I reccommend taking our Japanese friend's advice and making the interview more interesting through angles and framing. Aragato.
 
You may also consider the use of lighting to enhance your subject. As the background falls into darkness so will our interest in it.
 
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