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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

The 'film look' is a Crock, Shallow depth-of-field is Banal and Rack focus is Lazy.

Eki Halkka said:
Well, none of the top ten films have FF35 @ f1.8 characteristics in daylight, that's for sure ;-)

Star wars new episodes were shot partly (EP I) or fully (EP III) on 2/3" HD video. Shrek was 3D animation. I haven't seen Dark Knight, but none of the rest of the films has a particularly shallow DOF in my recollection.
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They are all effects driven movies so they wouldn't have a lot of shallow DOF field usage. Maybe a lot of motion blur though ;0

Obviously XCU shots would...or close focused shots.

P.S. I do recommend DK as a film to watch though.
 
Gavin Greenwalt said:
One of the most compelling reasons to use a 35mm adapter is the opportunity to use a lens that doesn't suck. Even if you stop way down on a 35mm adapter it still looks much much better with almost no work.
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Mmm... you seem to forget that in the vast majority of cases you still have the lens that "sucks" picking up the image from the matte glass (the only exception i know of is P&S Technik Pro 35 which replaces the lens on a 2/3" camera).

Bzzzt, wrong answer, me sez. You can't save a "sucky" lens by adding a matte glass and another lens in front of it, at least as far as technical quality is concerned: in fact 35mm adapters invariably measurably lessen the technical image quality compared to built in lenses (or, using a regular lens on a 2/3" camera).

That loss in quality can often be visually pleasing, but that's another issue...
 
Shane Betts said:
...the whole bloody world's in focus. ...
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Actually it isn't. From a perceptual standpoint, less than 1 percent of our total visual field is in sharp focus. Only a very small point in our visual array is in sharp foveal focus - the rest of our (near and far) periphery gets progressively blurrier. We only think the world is in sharp focus; actually what we're really doing is knitting together a series of brief focused moments into a composite view of the world which we think is in sharp focus. So, again, we're actually swimming in a sea of blur (not quite a Photoshop Gaussian blur, say, but an indescribable indistinctness).
 
Joseph, what you say is true, but that only boosts the
argument for overall sharp focus in film. (at least when
one prefers this method over another). The reason being
that an entirely in focus image is still PERCEIVED by the
same eye, and all of its selectivity. The eye does not see
the entire screen or print as one big sharp image. It hunts,
and gathers info, just as it does in the "real world".
Your statement is more critical of selective focus than anything.
Why? Because that's not what the eye brain has to deal with on a
daily basis. Even though that might be the end product- a huge out
of focus area up on screen will not change no matter how
long you stare or squint. No matter how much you desire to see into its fuzzy depths.Whatever its powers, selective focus can be overused.
Can we say the same thing about critical sharpness?
 
Why can we not just do what we find visually appealing or appropriate? Why must we have people telling us right from wrong? For once, it would be nice for people to not act as if they know everything and tell us what's 'banal' or 'lazy.' If it works...if it looks good...I'm going to do it...be it a 4x3 frame with plenty of depth of field or 2.39:1 anamorphic with barely any.

I'm so sick of these borderline offensive articles that simply talk down to the reader by claiming their opinions are more valid. When it comes to something like 'shallow depth of field' or the 'film look' I don't care how many examples you can find of why it's 'lazy' and ot 'amateur,' anyone can counter with just as many to the contrary...no matter what side of the argument they're on.
 
Shane Betts said:
The point, I believe, is the ability to choose your tools as you wish/need. Shooting on a camera with a 2/3 sensor means that, should you want shallow DoF, tough - the whole bloody world's in focus.
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Not quite true. Certainly for anything up to about 80mm, a lot is in focus, but after that, especially when shooting wide open, you can get narrow depth of field with 2/3 inch cameras.
 
One point the author makes is that shallow DOF is lazy film making because it's forcing the audience to look at something.

Isn't that the POINT of film making? To selectively isolate parts of the world and present them in a visual language in order to direct the audience's experience?

By this logic film making in general is lazy and all movies should be released as interactive 3D video games where the viewer has to fly a camera around choosing their own vantage point.
 
Gavin, that is, more or less, the point, but there are many subtle,
and beautifully poetic ways to achieve this. Selective focus can be
one of them, but it is too often used solely on the basis of having
nothing more profound to say. It's too often a shotgun wedding.
 
I don't understand this thread.... seriously, I'm just... what's with the shallow DOF haters? Shallow DOF has / is often, generally, mostly, what adds intimacy and focus in a shot / scene. It's what allowed a story teller to tell the audience what is important. Yes, lots of pics have done it with deeper DOF, but generally, mostly... It's also the one thing that always differentiated video and film--after frame rate. When a layman compares video and film, often they can't describe why they like film, but usually it was because of shallow DOF.

And seriously, stop to think for a second... without shallow DOF, Red would not exist. It would be a cheap varicam instead of a cheap S35 film camera. Shallow DOF is what makes Red so special--the physical size (not pixel size) of the chip.

It's why any new DSLR that shoots video is so exciting. Even if it's pixel-vision codec or a cropped sensor, which is still the same size as S35, BTW.

and shallow DOF is what makes your family shots from your D5 look so much better then your P&S.

and... I think HVX & 35 adapter shooters have such shallow DOF is because, the damn adapter sucks so much light. No one really wants to shoot at f1.2. Going to the dentist would be more fun.

This bash on shallow DOF strikes me as pretentious and too-cool-for-school. Go ahead and make your indie pic on a DVX instead of a Red and see what the general feedback is on production quality. It won't be resolution, it will be... "it's pretty good, but I don't know, it doesn't really look like... you know.. a movie"

Oh, are there exceptions to the rule? Certainly, but who wants to bet that they really are the next (insert one of the handful).

Cheers,
Chris

(and BTW - I don't love super shallow DOF in every shot, I just don't understand the bashing)
 
2/3" like 16mm is capable of decently shallow DOF if handled properly. There are also many other compositional tools for separating a subject from background: Light and shadow, geometry, mass, color, action. Your eyes can provide the selective focus with the appropriate stimulus.
 
Bill Anderson said:
Gavin, that is, more or less, the point, but there are many subtle,
and beautifully poetic ways to achieve this. Selective focus can be
one of them, but it is too often used solely on the basis of having
nothing more profound to say. It's too often a shotgun wedding.
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Sometimes it's poetic but a lot of times I just find nontraditional methods to be nothing more than a director being 'clever'. A form of self indulgence which doesn't work better, but is different just to be different.

Don't get me wrong, I do like deep focus compositions, but I'm not really offended by 'lazy' film making since it's often just speaking cinematic short hand. It's functional. I would rather the cinematography be a it lazy instead of distracting from the story or emotion of the picture. The reason it's popular is because it works really really well. :D
 
Bill Anderson said:
Joseph, what you say is true, but that only boosts the argument for overall sharp focus in film.
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Bill, in this instance I wasn't favoring one way or other about the use of deep/shallow focus; I was just reminding us that blur, quantitatively, is the norm. :-) Actually, if we wanted to follow these arguments to their illogical extreme, we could also say that what the viewer's eye really sees (of the world) is a double-image, and inverted at that! Of course this is all pre-cognitive (before the brain does its 'corrective' work on what the eye takes in). :-)
 
Guys, guys, guys, I think you're missing one important element on your criticism. You have to understand the context the original article comes from. Its writer is a film school teacher, and just imagine the kind of effort he must see wasted every year by students who worry about achieving good DOF instead of good story, direction, acting, etc. They were his article's main target (I believe), to help them see that "cinema" does not necessarily equal shallow focus, and indeed some of the best movies in history go actively against it. It's a matter of history and current trends.

Now you're picking his criticism apart in a contemporary proffesional forum and feeling attacked.
I think you're all overreacting.

He had some good points though, the visual language has become simpler and nowadays you don't usually see the kind of rich multi-character in-depth composition and blocking that was more prevalent on the 4:3 days, just to name an example.
It's a valid observation and I find interesting that the new 3D wave might revitalize the use of deep focus, as the 3D effect doesn't work with blurry backgrounds.
 
Chris Pickle said:
I don't understand this thread.... seriously, I'm just... what's with the shallow DOF haters?
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I don't hate shallow DOF. I just don't think it's usually the most important aspect of and image or a camera, like many seem to do, especially beginners. And in my opinion, i can get "shallow ehough" DOF on a 2/3" camera in vast majority of cases, when shooting close to full aperture. Heck, quite often i get enough to separate the subject nicely from BG even with 1/3", when i set up the shot accordingly.

This said, i do use 35mm adapters when i think it suits the project (or rent Red + primes on higher budget jobs). Heck, i even built a DIY adapter for my home video camera for fun, and i use that rig occasionally for real, for the artsy indie-student look. Sometimes even FF35 @ f1.8 on a sunny day, if i feel like it... just not always ;-)
 
Interesting rant, but shallow DOF doesn't always constitutes lazy filmmaking or spoon-feeding the viewer. I mean, DOF is a tool. Like lighting. Should everything in frame--foreground, background, middle--be lit to identical levels so we can let the viewer decide (or guess) what is most important?

-Fran
 
Daniel García said:
It's a valid observation and I find interesting that the new 3D wave might revitalize the use of deep focus, as the 3D effect doesn't work with blurry backgrounds.
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Oh I hope not. I become painfully aware of the double image effect when everything is in sharp focus in 3D. When there is shallow DOF the double image effect is blended thanks to the defocusing. Deep focus + 3D gives me a headache.
 
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