Low DOF trick on standard lens

soren k jensen

soren k jensen

Well-known member
Just read an ASC articel on 'Zodiac', and found this trick that I'll try to use with the HVX when not using a 35mm adapter:
'Chris Blauvelt, Savides’ 1st AC, notes, “We also played the focus to adjust where our focal range was carrying. In scenarios where we wanted to let a distracting background to go soft — like if Jake was sitting in a restaurant booth and the fabric of the booth was taking the attention away from him — we’d determine the depth of field and just focus some distance ahead of Jake, so his face would be at the outer edge of what was sharp. We did that pretty often. The DigiPrimes’ added depth of field was just something we had to get used to, but I certainly prefer reducing depth rather than having too little to play with.” '

url: http://www.ascmag.com/magazine_dynamic/April2007/Zodiac/page2.php
 
Yep, playing with where you place your subject within the focus area is a pretty common technique to make subtle compositional adjustments. I've done that quite a bit on features and it, among other things, keeps my ACs -very- busy!
 
The thing is, with the HVX original lens the trick will be very limited.
If you are close to your subject forget about it. The DOF on most situation will be very broad demanding quite physical separation between subjects before you can play with it.
I've tried a few times and it's very hard.

With cine lenses or adapters you'll have a much better range. The lens on the HVX was chosen to have deep broad focus in most situations.
 
alexdias said:
With cine lenses or adapters you'll have a much better range. The lens on the HVX was chosen to have deep broad focus in most situations.
Click to expand...

True enough Alex, I assume that he was talking about using a 35mm adapter & primes. It is a lot more difficult to do with the HVX's native lens, but it's certainly not impossible. You just need to be shooting fairly long and open. Zodiac, the film he cited was shot on a 2/3" chip camera with digiprimes and were working with a greater than 35mm DOF/less than 35mm FOV too.

BTW- the HVX lens wasn't particularly selected for it's deep focus ability. That is a matter of the physics between the 1/3 chip size and the focal length. Any lens with a similar focal length will have similar DOF on a 1/3" chip.
 
Paul Nordin said:
Zodiac, the film he cited was shot on a 2/3" chip camera with digiprimes and were working with a greater than 35mm DOF/less than 35mm FOV too.
Click to expand...

If I'm not mistaken - Zodiac was shot with the Genesis, which has a chip equal to the size of Super35mm film (significantly larger than a 2/3" chip).

So yeah - much easier to do on a larger chip camera.
But an interesting technique to keep in mind none the less.
 
If you are careful (and experiment a bit) with your HVX you can get a respectable shallow depth of field by: distance between the camera and subject (zoom in) AND distance between subject and background AND open your iris . . . light as appropriate.

This, of course, only works when (as stated in one of the posts above) you are able to have sufficient distance between the camera, subject, and background.
 
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