Shallow DOF jumped the shark?

[newfoundmass]

Most everything, honestly, has jumped the shark at this point. I was watching a toy YouTube channel over the weekend with my niece and it had more shallow DOF than a Zack Snyder film AND used slow motion when filming the toys. You think the 6 year olds watching were impressed?!

[zlfan]

horses for courses.

shallow dof is actually very beautiful, suitable for cinema. big features have designers, so the background typically is very nice. to blur those backgrounds, it is kind of wasting. if you look at the "in time" by roger deakins, actually most of the backgrounds are blurred, even though they were well designed and looked beautiful.

deep dof is mostly good for news to increase more background layers and information. now, a lot of news pieces look like cinema, with shallow dof everywhere. lol. 

 

[IronFilm]

5 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

No, no!😂 It should be a 2020 machine. Guy bought it in 2021. They get sold on ebay for 550 to 600 Euro in this configuration, with a 6 core I7 9570, Rtx 2070 card, 16gb ram, one ssd and the 17" 144Hz display. They guy offered it for a very good price and then discovered the seemingly little flaw with the display and decided to charge minus the amount for a new display and repair repair. It is not a very sturdy Laptop, not close to my older Schenker.

Whoops, I too hastily googled that in just half a second, this time I spent five seconds googling it:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/HP-Omen-17-Laptop-Review-High-end-gaming-with-some-small-limitations.432964.0.html

https://www.pcworld.com/article/398313/hp-omen-17-2019-review.html 

Ah ha, seems to be 2019 vintage? Still a great machine indeed!

[mercer]

When I bought my first DSLR... the t2i... the exciting part was the ability to use shallow depth of field to help hide our lack of production and art design on DIY films. Those original Canon DSLRs lacked detail on wide angle, infinity focused shots but close ups with shallow depth of field looked great. Unfortunately, wide angle shots became very popular due to skateboarding videos and people's desire to go handheld, so people wanted sharper, more detailed images.

With IBIS and AF in FF cameras, it makes sense why shallow DOF has become popular again. Like anything else, it's just another tool. I kinda miss tripod and slider shots if I'm being honest... I imagine they work great now with the great AF and motorized sliders that are available.

That said, I was recently watching footage from my friend's old HV20 and was floored by how great it looked in that old Canon "cinema" mode. What it lacked in DR, it made up for in color and atmosphere... and no color grading needed.

[Clark Nikolai]

16 minutes ago, mercer said:

When I bought my first DSLR... the t2i... the exciting part was the ability to use shallow depth of field to help hide our lack of production and art design on DIY films.

I read that the dark lighting on film noir films was for budget reasons initially. To cover up gaps in the budget in the sets by just not lighting some areas.

 

16 minutes ago, mercer said:

That said, I was recently watching footage from my friend's old HV20 and was floored by how great it looked in that old Canon "cinema" mode. What it lacked in DR, it made up for in color and atmosphere... and no color grading needed.

Ah, yes, The HV20 (and HDV) revolution. I did some great stuff with my two matching HV20s. The image still holds up. (Some of the tapes haven't though. They're starting to develop drop outs.)

[mercer]

23 minutes ago, Clark Nikolai said:

I read that the dark lighting on film noir films was for budget reasons initially. To cover up gaps in the budget in the sets by just not lighting some areas.

That makes sense! Form and function working together creating a new visual style.

You can grab shots from two different locations and match them in an edit.

You can even shoot one side of a conversation if you only have one actor available and get the other angle another day.

With shallow DOF, I can shoot inside a coffee house, on a crowded ferry and grab shots while I look like a tourist with a camera and nobody will come back and say that blurry counter is my coffee shop.

So as much as I understand that it can be overused, there's also a very practical reason to use it for me.

Just another tool. 

[mercer]

29 minutes ago, Clark Nikolai said:

Ah, yes, The HV20 (and HDV) revolution. I did some great stuff with my two matching HV20s. The image still holds up. (Some of the tapes haven't though. They're starting to develop drop outs.)

Especially in controlled areas that you can light a little and don't need a lot of dynamic range. The HD out of it is gorgeous. I've even seen a couple videos where people have been experimenting with its full hdmi and clean hdmi out to a ninja star to bypass the miniDV and get ProRes files... pretty cool idea.

I miss camcorders, but I don't miss tapes. 

[mercer]

Speaking of camcorders... here's a video I found shot with an XA10 in "cinema" mode with a monochrome filter applied...

 

[John Matthews]

To really make the best of those old camcorders, I think there needs to be real AI solutions for moiré and aliasing. Topaz does a good job with aliasing, but there are still no solutions for moiré. Maybe someone knows of one? With my current favorite small camcorder (VX-981), I have yet to any real problems other than the usual too low of bitrate with a lot of movement and lack of detail due to noise (for a 4k image but passable for 1080p). As long as the sensor is saturated, it makes a nice, deep DOF image with its 7.5x crop (in 4k), even at f/1.8. I imagine that Panasonic had all kinds of defraction compensation going on though. Most importantly for me, anyone in the family can pick up the camera and shoot because it's just so easy. 

[ND64]

A camera should be a tool for capturing the data with highest possible integrity, not a "machine artist". When you have the data with highest possible integrity, you have the choice to make it as trendy as it gets, or keep it as clinical as it is. 

 

[Clark Nikolai]

11 hours ago, mercer said:

 I've even seen a couple videos where people have been experimenting with its full hdmi and clean hdmi out to a ninja star to bypass the miniDV and get ProRes files... pretty cool idea.

Interesting. I have a Panasonic HDC-SD9 which has 3 CCDs but then compresses badly to MP4. I've been thinking of testing it with an external recorder and seeing what it gives. (It's a camcorder that had good potential but then in trying to be the world's smallest they did some bad compromises with the design. It could've been so good.)

 

 

11 hours ago, mercer said:

I miss camcorders, but I don't miss tapes. 

I miss the robustness and longevity of tapes, the ability to just pop another one in when you've filled the previous one, etc. Having said that some of my old tapes are developing drop outs so I guess longevity isn't even there (with miniDV/HDV that is, oxide particle tapes are still fine from the past.)

I remember some years ago running into a friend on a corner as he was shooting with his then new Panasonic HDC-SD7 which he had just got. He showed me that it records to a card and not a tape. I was suspicious of that because I knew that a file on a drive can get corrupt, accidentally deleted, etc but it's hard to accidentally tape over a tape. He said that "tape was dead and cards are the future". I didn't believe him but he was right.

 

[Chrille]

Just remember the ultimate ADHD Film was shot on XHA1

https://youtu.be/t2koYVqwzT4?si=I-D4pVCKAktGxSWa

[IronFilm]

40 minutes ago, Chrille said:

Just remember the ultimate ADHD Film

hahaha!

40 minutes ago, Chrille said:

was shot on XHA1

It was shot on a Canon XHA1??? Oh wow, I didn't realize that. 

But googling it, I see there is tonnes of info about it:

https://shotonwhat.com/crank-high-voltage-2009

https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/canon-xh-series-hdv-camcorders/143493-crank-2-shot-xh-a1.html

https://www.moviemaker.com/crank-high-voltage-canon-brandon-trost-jason-statham-20090417/

Yikes:

Quote

“As DP, I had as many as 25 cameras to govern on this film,” Trost explains. “We had three camera operators shooting, as well as Mark and Brian and myself. Outside of that we also had an AC for each camera. We never had a shot list. Instead it was ‘anything goes.’ Mark and Brian and I collaborated on seeing how many cool shots we could come up with in the heat of the moment, and that’s how we made the movie.

https://www.svconline.com/the-wire/canon-s-xh-a1-and-vixia-hf10-hd-camcorders-used-photograph-groundbreaking-action-movie-crank-high-voltage-390855 

Quote

“With cameras that small and mobile, there is really no limit,”? Taylor added. “You do not have to do traditional mounting. You just grab the camera and move. We had certain scenes where we were shooting a crash or an explosion and we literally put 16 cameras on it. We just set them up anywhere we thought something interesting might happen. I think we only broke two of them.”?

“Sometimes our actors did not even know how many cameras were trained on them,”? Trost confided. “We have one scene where Jason is fighting off a dozen other guys. Right as we are calling ‘Roll camera’ and about to call ‘Action,’ Jason yells out ‘Where is all the cameras?’ And I yelled back to him, ‘There are 12 of them out there, man, just go.’ ”?

https://cinematography.com/index.php?/forums/topic/31030-crank-2-shooting-on-xh-a1/

https://collider.com/crank-high-voltage-camera-news-collider-exclusive/

[majoraxis]

As 2/3" sensors cameras like the F23 were mentioned. It is possible to optically adapted B4 lens with a B4 to PL mount adapter like the Abakus 321 adapter to cover the super 16 sensor crop 4k mode of GH5, GH6, GH7 (you would use a PL to m4/3 to mount it on the GH). You could also shoot on a number of Blackmagic cameras with a Blackmagic B4 Optical Adapter... there was a company who was using the optics of the Blackmagic B4 mount as the optics of their B4 to m4/3 adapter. Or you could make one of your own out of the Blackmagic B4 mount a m4/3 adapter and spacers and step rings and drill press and screws, nut and washers are required.

The thing about 2/3 zoom lenses is because of the typical 10x to 12x zoom range you can have a dramatic depth of field decrease when zooming in with a constant aperture B4 lens.  The following video has a mix of a Broadcast zoom lens, Sony full frame and Canon aps-c shots. All of the slow motion and zooming is via a B4 broadcast zoom lens (I don't think I had the 2x internal extender engaged on the B4 lens on the USRA 12k in Super 16 crop mode.)  Sometimes you can see the vignetting, which I chose over less light as the 240fps really cuts the available light... and the 2x extender would have cut it in half again.

Thanks!

Mark

[John Matthews]

 

[PannySVHS]

Sun is out today. A known German saying goes: Sonne lacht, Blende acht.  28mm on S35 at f8. Means I can take my LX10 out and shoot some lovely 4K at f2.8 for same Dof and great look. High shutter galore ahead.:)