What F stop are Hollywood movies generally shot at?

M

mattman1

Member
I want to emphasize GENERALLY. Obviously every movie is going to be different - as is every D.P. and director. But what is the normal aperture range for shooting an outdoor scene? What about an indoor scene?

The reason I ask is because I've been trying to shoot around 1.4 to 2.8 for that shallow DOF (which everybody raves about). But lately I've been thinking I don't really know what I'm doing and there are probably better options.
 
Most of the DPs that I've worked with on large commercial projects seem to spend most of their time between f4 and f5.6. I doubt there's been a single shoot I can think of where I didn't hear someone say the actual phrase "4/5.6 split" at one point.

But it's impossible to answer your question with any degree of certainty. Every DP has their own preference.
 
The only reason why lower F stops became so popular is because of the explosion in DOF love surrounding DSLR's. It's a nice look now and then, but in general it looks nothing like a typical feature film. I think Stephen is right in his assessment. We normally see far less DOF in normal movies then we might be conditioned to assume. I actually notice more and more just how deep the DOF is in most movies in my Top 10. Very long lenses are also used sparingly.

However, when you're working on lower budgets you don't always have the luxury of seeing more of the environment whether by FOV or DOF. We try to hide our small locations and lack of production design lol. It's a dead giveaway that you're a low budget movie...but it helps most of us get by with something decent to show.

One movie I can think of where the look was specifically utilizing wide open lenses is The Social Network where they were at F2.8 or less at all times pretty much. That gave the movie a very digital and milky look (along with the color / light) but that was what Fincher was going for. It suited the film, but definitely wouldn't look right for a lot of movies.
 
F/2.8-f/4 is very common.

If you're interested in the subject, subscribe to American Cinematographer. They always have interviews with top cinematographers on what they do, how they got certain shots, what their goals were and how they met them, etc.
 
It seems from most articles i've read in American Cinematographer (fantastic magazine, absolutely get a subscription to it), the majority of films shoot somewhere between f4 and f8.
 
KyleProhaska said:
However, when you're working on lower budgets you don't always have the luxury of seeing more of the environment whether by FOV or DOF. We try to hide our small locations and lack of production design lol. It's a dead giveaway that you're a low budget movie...but it helps most of us get by with something decent to show.
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I once was at a seminar for Wedding photographers and the presenter was trying to 'justify' shallow DoF, beyond the 'yuck' dreamy look... the example was 'suppose you had a bridal couple at some venue and there were trash cans in the background'... my thought was... 'move the couple, move yourself, buy why take a shot with trashcans in the background'... that's not to say a grab shot couldn't have unwanted detail in the background... but then having a shallow DoF is problematic for a 'grab shot'...

Anyway, for stills I have mostly shot at F/5.6 or F/8 on 35mm cameras.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
I once was at a seminar for Wedding photographers and the presenter was trying to 'justify' shallow DoF, beyond the 'yuck' dreamy look... the example was 'suppose you had a bridal couple at some venue and there were trash cans in the background'... my thought was... 'move the couple, move yourself, buy why take a shot with trashcans in the background'... that's not to say a grab shot couldn't have unwanted detail in the background... but then having a shallow DoF is problematic for a 'grab shot'...
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Now THAT'S funny.
 
I shoot 2.8 - 5.6. Though, sometimes, for dramatic effect, T1.3 on a 40mm MasterPrime at a cowboy framing med wide, just looks awesome.
 
T2.8/4 for interiors so I can utilize zooms. Exteriors, depending on the desired look, anywhere from the same up to 8 for long lens work. If a focus puller is going to have a hard time consistently hitting it, I'll pull ND as needed to get them to a safe stop. Shallow is nice but keeping the talent in focus is nicer.

For a desired effect, all rules out the window. As Timur says, Master Primes opened up are amazing. And conversely sometimes you want a deep focus look.
 
If Im shooting for doco or TVC I can be absolutely anywhere between T1.4 to T8. However for narrative, 99% of the time Im T4 - T5.6. Last two pieces I shot, I lit every shot for T5.6.
 
Nothing screams "cheap!" more than excessively shallow DOF. Obviously a lot of indies/no-budget guys shoot very shallow DOF to hide non-existent production design, or to combat DSLR aliasing. These are valid reasons (within budget/technical constraints). But the artsy effect is mostly lost on me. Generally, you want to show off the production design and render the spatial relationships in the frame, and this needs sufficiently deep focus.
 
I am resurrecting this ancient thread with a few questions:

1. Has this changed much in the past 6-7 years? With the advent of bigger budget TV, Netflix originals, and larger formats are we seeing an industry shift towards shallower DOF?

2. Are the F stops quoted for S35 I assume, and thus is shooting on FF, we should add one stop?

If we took f/4 as a baseline on S35, it would mean shooting f/5.6 as a default go to on FF and then adjust up or down a stop based on artistic intent if one wanted to keep with what is most common in Hollywood cinema?
 
1. I definitely have seen more stuff with shallow focus, not that I like it.

2. Hollywood of the second half of the 20th century had two main formats, "flat" and "scope," and neither was Super 35, which didn't become popular until the 21st century.

Flat. 21.95 x 11.86. This has a crop factor of 1.73. So if you're using full-frame, you would close down almost 2 f-stops to match it. I agree with many of the above who said f/4-f/5.6, maybe f/2.8 for a night scene, was popular in Hollywood. So to match that in full frame, you're looking at f/4 to f/11.

Scope. Which was their nickname for anamorphic. Which actually has an optical diagonal (45.5mm) almost identical to full frame. I don't know what f-stops that Hollywood used for scope, if it was any different from flat. I would think they would adjust it down a stop or two. But many anamorphic films seem to have shallower focus, so maybe they shot those at f/4 or f/5.6 too.
 
I've worked on several good sized shows over the past decade (24, Homeland, Prison Break) and several pretty massive features and I most often heard and hear DPs talking about t/4.0-5.6 neighborhood as the most desirable, most of the time. IMHO, for narrative, super shallow DOF is FINALLY getting played out, I find it rare now to see
many TV shows or features shot at such a shallow DOF, although there are, of course, exceptions to the rule.

FWIW, most zooms lenses look their best technically at t/4.0-t/7.1 or 8.0, primes, perhaps 3.5-4.0, lthough that has copy to copy variance. Almost universally, most lenses look their worse wide open, other than the diffraction artifacts when closed way down.
To me, ultra shallow DOF looks amatuer hour and is a signal for "our sets looks crappy, no production design, art direction, ugly, etc. so let's just turn it into mush for most shots". Ultra shallow DOF is beginning to just be something still photographers think is cool,
but some DPs, myself included, think it looks pretty amateurish, unless it is motivated by the subject. The 2007 feature, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" was photographed by Janusz Kaminski with a lot of ultra shallow DOF, possibly even tilt-shift lenses and for
the subject, it was perfect, because Janusz is an amazing DP and for the concept, it was just sublime.

The t-stop you work at can be a function of the environments you shoot in and how much light you can afford. I think a large factor in the recent popularity of super shallow DOF is producers being too cheap to bring in enough lighting, they like it when DPs shoot
wide open because it means smaller instruments, cheaper rates to not have to rent a lot of huge, high output instruments. I shot a couple of music/dance intructional videos last year and the year before and all were on white or light colored sets and that alone is
a big factor in how much light you need to use and what f-stop it's easy to get to. I like shooting a lot of movement at smaller t-stops simple for increased DOF, trying to track talent dancing or running while at a super wide open stop is a PITA and we are past the
DSLR era where a huge majority of shots were actually not in sharp focus because of the insanely shallow DOF.

I've shot my Fujinon XF16mm f/1.4 WR wide open on a documentary shoot, it was 4:00 AM at the start of a race that began in the dark, I had a small
on camera LED panel but everything around the subject was just a black void, so I cranked up the ISO to 5000 and ran the 16mm wide open and reduced the shutter speed to 1/24th instead of 180 degree 1/48th. I was amazed how much worse that lens, which is razor sharp
at f/2.0 or f/2.8, was at f/1.4. It's a documentary so a lot of not being able to make things look good is forgiven, it's much more important to get the shots you need to tell the story. But that was the only time I've shot at such a wide stop in recent memory, I always am trying for f/4.0 - 5.6
 
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For narrative work I typically shoot T/2.8-T/4 for interiors, T/2.8-T/8 for daytime exteriors. I own T/2.8 zooms, so if I owned primes I may shoot wider open at times.

One thing I don't do is try to maintain a consistent T-stop for a film. I never saw the point of that. Shoot what is best for each shot instead of maintaining consistency.


Roger Deakins said:
I like shooting at around 2 to 2.5 for interiors. For exteriors it will vary depending on the kind of weather. I like shooting sunlight at a deep stop, more like an 8.0 or 11.0.

I have to say that I do not ever fanatically stick to one stop for a scene even less for an entire film. I will light a scene and it will be consistently around 2.5 or 2.8 as that is how I have developed my eye, I suppose, but it just happens like that rather than being 'calculated'.
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