Shallow DOF Video Footage W/ Anamorphic DVX100A

redcap

redcap

Well-known member
At the end of a shoot I was doing a few months ago a PA I was working with wanted to play around with a camera and get some "shakey cam footage."

I said what the hell and gave him a few pointers and he came out with this. Of course I didn't have anywhere to put it in (for the project) but it came out looking really neat. He was standing about 3 or 4 feet away and zoomed in pretty close, if I remember correctly.

A little bit of background - I was using the panasonic anamorphic adaptor, was on scene setting 6 (24pa) had OIS off, auto focus off, auto iris off. Not sure about the exposure settings, however. I don't remember if I had turned all the lights off, or if I had left the softbox on or not. I might have, but most of the light was coming through the window.

Here it is : note - no color correction or anything applied. Those first few frames had an ND filter on it, ignore them...

http://www.redcapmedia.com/movies/shallow_dof.mov
 
Um ...I don't think the file works...I'm getting an error message when opening it in QT. Even if I download it i'm getting an error message.

Check the file

Pete
 
Links works here on OS X 10.3.9, QT7. Looks like good "shakey cam" to me : )
Care to elaborate what shutter speed was used in this example?
 
Here's some screen caps if the movie doesn't work. QT isn't behaving today. Thank you QuickTime.

dof1.jpg

dof2.jpg

dof3.jpg

dof4.jpg
 
thisiswells said:
Links works here on OS X 10.3.9, QT7. Looks like good "shakey cam" to me : )
Care to elaborate what shutter speed was used in this example?
Click to expand...

I want to say i/24, but I could be wrong - nonetheless its slower than normal. I was pretty ignorant about my camera back then; learning mostly through trial and error.
 
Thanks for the post Redcap. Unfortunately this is not the best example because your background is overexposed and we are not seeing a clean separation between background and foreground...
 
The grabs look pretty good, however, I think you could achieve a sharper image using the stretch mode. With the Anamorphic, it doesn't seem like you have a sharp focus on these.
Here is an example of a shot very similar to yours. IT was shot in Squeeze mode, and was actually softened in post.
look.jpg


I am not saying "My grab is better than your grab".
I am saying that the anamorphic adapter does not do well when trying to achieve shallow focus. Personally I use squeeze for any tight shots, and when available, I will use the anamorphic for wide shots with deep Dof. That is where it really makes a difference. In close ups, and head shots, even perfectly focused Anamorphic footage is very hard to discern from stretched or uprezzed letterbox footage.
 
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