Not everyone is fond of a shallow focal depth

B

beckspace

Active member
We had an area 51, didn't we?

Well, is my first entry here, and is not exactly technical.

Is about the Full Focus new alien camera that the Wachowski’s family is using for Speed Racer.

If you don't know, is a camera that can maintain everything in focus, from wide close-ups to infinity without the lens distortion of a small ccd.

They call it revolutionary.

To me revolutionary is the REDone, of course. I myself have a M2 with Nikon lens. We can have tilt-focus, we can choose any lens for each necessity, that's great.

But now, I can see clients already asking 'and that speed racer look?'

Focus is part of movie grammar, but their concept eliminates defocus, everything is crisp clear. Defocus meant to be invisible as it is in our naked eye (of course there are exceptions), focus is a way to highlight elements and shadowing others.

To me it was never about style, it is language. And that’s the problem

Not that I telling this is new, from John Ford to Syn City, deep focus can be done with a small aperture, lens filters or composition in the post. But I think the Wachowskis caught something different here… I don’t know. But I think is not only a question of taste, getting rid of the defocus changes the grammar of a film… or not, I’m really don’t know what to think. Do you?
 
I think both (deep and shallow dof) have their place as creative choices.... We can start another shallow depth of field vs citizen kane discussion like always, but in the end they are creative options.

As far as my personal choice, I like shallow depth of field.... I blame crap video cameras, digital cameras, and old disposable cameras.

Everything in focus is 'cluttered' to me. The human eye is by far nothing like deep depth of field. Our eyes are more like photography lens's with a lens baby attached.

But then again, I can think of many times I wanted or chose deep depth over shallow.

BTW I think Speed Racer is going to have more problems then it's dof choices.
 
Since I just got a 35mm adapter, I'm of course loving the shallow DoF I can get shooting lenses wide open. Once the novelty begins to wear off, though, I think it's good to strike a balance between the two ends of the spectrum. Like Prodigy said, controlling your DoF is a creative tool, and it's up to you to decide how much or how little is right for the shot and for the work as a whole.

I think it's a slight misnomer to say that shallow DoF can become a crutch for lazy filmmaking, if only because if you're following characters as they move around then certainly pulling focus on a shallow aperture can be tough.

By the same token, with everything in focus, you have to rely on other techniques to guide the audience's eye: lighting, blocking, dialogue, set design, camera movement, sound cues, color, you name it...

Both looks can be done well or done poorly. I do think it's funny that many established directors switching to digital praise its deep focus - everyone from Michael Mann to David Lynch have talked about it. And meanwhile, here we are, trying to get rid of all that :) But actually, it's not getting rid of it, it's just giving ourselves the option. That's what really counts.
 
When I first found out about the 35mm adapters I was so excited to finally have the option when a shot called for it. As I watched some of the videos posted I absolutely loved what I saw. I could finally achive on a video camera what can be achived on a film camera! I soon found though that over use and over emphasis on shallow DoF could be as disappointing as not having any. But I wouldn't worry that shallow depth of field is on it way out.

Sometimes I try to watch something for cinematography, editing or some other technical thing and I find myself having to rewind and watch it again because I got sucked into what ever was happening on the screen and not the technical thing I was trying to pay attention to. That usually means they did it right.
 
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Oedipax said:
Both looks can be done well or done poorly. I do think it's funny that many established directors switching to digital praise its deep focus - everyone from Michael Mann to David Lynch have talked about it. And meanwhile, here we are, trying to get rid of all that :) But actually, it's not getting rid of it, it's just giving ourselves the option. That's what really counts.
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I think Michael Mann and Lynch had too many ‘shallow focusing’ problems in their lives to give praise to small ccds. Like trying close-ups with a deep focus (nothing can be closer than 5 meters, @f16, 50mm). They are enjoying their freedom as we with our adapters

And yes, sometimes I ask myself if what we do is not like using the ‘flare filter’ in photoshop. Kidding, but the shallower dof was not the only thing that made me buy a M2

My quest is always to the image be natural looking; and the optics of the naked HVX don’t feel natural to me, that dimension of space that 1/3 ccd gives (‘natural looking’ = our eyes). The natural look is the responsible for 35mm to be so accepted

I don’t like Eyes Wide Shut very much, but the party sequence at the beginning is to me the great reference of what ‘natural look’ means, even with so much noise. And it was made with deep focusing

Another example of ‘natural look’: Pixar movies. And they use deep focus a lot. They are a good example since they are out of our physical optical limitations. They do what looks ‘right’, much more than style.

We don’t know how this camera behaves, but if it is Hollywood standard (i.e. the image looks like 35mm), our eyes will accept the total absence of defocus naturally. Our brain abstracts defocus all the time anyway. What can I say; we don’t have to use eyeglasses in our dreams, there is no defocus there, if have, we abstract there too. But the sense of depth can be weird, too unreal for 2D.

[FONT=&quot]Well. we’ll have to wait and see [/FONT]
 
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