When less is more

H

Huy Vu

Veteran
For everyone who thinks 35mm is the end-all solution to your film-look problem, take a look at this. This is one way that a 35mm can hurt you.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc3Qfd6y3sw

It's actually a very well thought out story, well executed...except for the fact that they apparently didn't employ a focus puller and so almost every shot was soft or distractingly out of focus, especially when seen in HD. Also the extremely out of focus background didn't really add anything to it. This is probably the first project I've seen that I think could be much better simply by not using an adapter.
 
wow, Huy....you couldn't be more right....grainy and hairy too. i watched it without sound on purpose and the DOF gave me a claustrophobic feeling...hmm
 
I don't think it's so much a matter of using an adapter or not, the film suffers from both poor focusing AND poor depth of field choices (obviously influenced by f-stop settings on the taking lenses). Instead of 'poor' DoF choices, overuse of shallow DoF is probably more accurate; overuse of any effect can be very distracting...

Having an adapter that can support higher f-stops would allow for greater choices and more freedom in controlling the depth of field. If the adapter is incapable of delivering a deep enough depth of field without introducing unacceptable amounts of grain, then I agree, it should be removed and not used for the shot.

I'm hoping the SGBlade will allow me to stop down far enough on all my lenses to achieve much deeper depth of field than the LEX did. It was a pain having to remove the adapter every time I wanted deep focus without grain... Being able to support higher shutter speeds will be a big benefit as well...
 
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Actually the entire picture is very soft so its hard to tell if its a focus pulling problem or a misadjusted adapter in the first place. Also the Titles are very soft so its all compounded by probably bad compression. Hard to evaluate the problem.
 
In this case, it looks like only available light was used, leading to the lens being used wide open, hence very short DOF and soft pictures. In a situation like this an adapter is just a bad idea all around.
 
yeah, something looks wrong, like some of the shallowness was done in post or something was wrong with the adapter, like it could be a crappy diy adapter.. o
 
Leo Versola said:
I don't think it's so much a matter of using an adapter or not, the film suffers from both poor focusing AND poor depth of field choices (obviously influenced by f-stop settings on the taking lenses). Instead of 'poor' DoF choices, overuse of shallow DoF is probably more accurate; overuse of any effect can be very distracting...

Having an adapter that can support higher f-stops would allow for greater choices and more freedom in controlling the depth of field. If the adapter is incapable of delivering a deep enough depth of field without introducing unacceptable amounts of grain, then I agree, it should be removed and not used for the shot.

I'm hoping the SGBlade will allow me to stop down far enough on all my lenses to achieve much deeper depth of field than the LEX did. It was a pain having to remove the adapter every time I wanted deep focus without grain... Being able to support higher shutter speeds will be a big benefit as well...
Click to expand...

For some reason this theory doesn't make any sense to me. Depth of Field choices?

DOF shouldn't dictate how you shoot, the overall composition of a frame which is much more than just how a fore or background falls off. The very first shot is actually composed decently, the rest fall quite short (at least to me) and the adapter is just hurting it period because there's no telling if it's a bad adapter or just an inexperienced user.
 
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