Are Cinematographers allowed to be creative?

[DS Williams]

I agree with the latter statement but I'm not sure about the former...why do you think 35mm adapters have hurt independent film? The whole push for those adapters sprang out of a desire to have the compositional tool of shallow DOF. That some didn't understand it or used it as a "look" is going to be a byproduct of it's wide availability. That doesn't take away from the excitement I had the first time I shot with a dvx/adapter rig and was taken back to my early days in filmschool. If anything, it reminded me of the *discipline* of focus since shooting a 1/3" camera allows a lot of laziness in an operator.

Also, doesn't the DIY adapter movement have some claim to have influenced another crazy DIY'er, Jim Jannard? I would say that the spirit of RED was heavily influenced by the democratization of filmmaking equipment over the last 10 years...and the adapter craze was a big part of that. It's one of the reasons we all get excited by "S35 Single CMOS".

Agreed. The adapters provide the opportunity to create incredible, filmic images, finding themselves in the right DP's hands of course. I just hold fast to the notion that DOF is a creative tool, not one to show off in every shot. And it does take a certain amount of discipline once you are provided with shallow DOF. Man indie shooters accustomed to small sensor cameras have gotten all too used to deep DOF. It's all a balance act. That's where the art aspect comes in. Shallow DOF creates immense creative opportunities as far as which area of the composition should recieve the viewers attention, ect. So perhaps these new adapters are allowing indies to create images with the same end characteristics as film, so in the end their experience coping with shallow DOF will only firther lend itself to their careers in film or larger format digital cameras.