Infinite Focus

treborx

treborx

Member
I'm a sucker for clarity, I like all or most of my shots in sharp focus, From a object 3 inches in front of the camera to infinity. Reason is that I use alot of steadi-cam shots and I'm always moving. Right now I'm doing it the way I would with my old VHS cameras. Setup camera at my starting point and zoom in on the farthest away target manual focus and zoom back out and start recording. For the most part I keep focus, but I do see slight changes in some objects losing focus when moving around and they are really noticable on a big screen. I understand the theory with film cameras, smaller aperture, pump in more lighting etc... But I'm lost with the video aspect. For example I want to setup my camera at point A and focus my target shot on point B which is 1 mile away and I want to be able to physically move my camera towards point B with cars and people walking in front of the camera while staying in focus on point B and everything in between. I hope that makes sense. Sorry if this was explained before, I tried searching but came up with no results, and the whole DOF tutorial went over my head. I'm just a wannabe techie!!

Thanks!
Rob
 
If you know how to do it with film, you know how to do it with video. Film or video doesn't matter, it's the lens that's controlling depth-of-field. Same principles apply. Get the widest-angle lens you can, and the smallest aperture. At 4.5mm and f/14, everything from about 1" to infinity should be sharply in focus.
 
Scottdvx100 said:
Try to set focus on at the Hyperfocal Distance and see if that includes B. This point to infinity will be in focus.

Info on:
http://www.vividlight.com/articles/2314.htm

There's probably calculators online that take into account 1/3 chips but the article doesn't cover video sizes.
Click to expand...

Thanks Scott for the informative article and Barry for your genius. Another reason why I bring this up is this is part of a review someone emailed me after watching one of my projects "too many times you did not lock the exposure in your camera and quite a few times the camera would re-adjust values when filming. That is a big no-no in filmmaking, so watch out for it next time." I emailed him back to ask how I do that and he never replied. How do you lock the settings?

Thanks Again,
Rob
 
Barry_Green said:
Just choose manual iris control instead of auto-iris control.
Click to expand...


Thanks a whole buch Barry, You're right it's not that much different from a film camera. I did some testing and results were just what I was looking for. Thank god because it looks like for now on I'll be running the camera on all my projects. I just can't seem to find a camera man that know's more then me, and that's really pathetic!!. (Now don't get mad) But you can be expecting a few more questions in the future! lol!!

Thanks Again,
Rob
 
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