Fields of Depth trick?

[Tasty Fish Lips]

this is the original question:

how is it you fake a large field of depth on a video camera - ive simply forgotten something as basic as this...
I recall that the person filmed must be far away from the background, but thats about all I remember

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">First, what is "field of depth"? I've heard of depth of field, but not "field of depth".

Second, if depth of field is what was meant, video already has a large depth of field, as Nigel just mentioned. You wouldn't need to "fake a large field of depth".

Maybe the original question needs to be re-worded.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ May 04, 2005 12:30 PM: Message edited by: Tasty Fish Lips ]</font>

[Bnew]

So just to clarify: would a good way to get a narrow DoF be to use a tele conv lens and zoom right in from far away?

[Patriarch]

sorry - my bad

what I want is the person I film to be in focus, but the background all blurry

[eddie123456789]

you need to shoot with a wide aperature, and focus on the person in the foreground.

How you get this is up to you and the equipment you are using.

A wide aperature is usually used to compensate because there isnt so much light.

If you have manual settings on your camera, then open up the aperature (this means *reducing* the f stop number) and try.

Alternatively you can try "fooling" your video camera to give you this wide aperature.
You may be able to change settings such as shutter speed, or the ambient lighting (make it more gloomy - even if that means having a small localised light on the actors face - force the camera to take a light reading of the gloom) - if you increase the shutter speed or dim the lighting the camera may compensate the reduced amount of light by opening up the aperature.

You might find you can get a different depth of field if you use the zoom to frame your shot - a zoom lens has more glass in it, and hence less light gets through, hence the aperature may open up to compensate.

remember that the depth of field effect is an attribute of the lens, and not the electronics.

good luck.

<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ May 10, 2005 10:36 AM: Message edited by: eddie123456789 ]</font>