Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
How do cinematographers focus on an object and blur the background?
- Thread starter waloshin
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Lol...sorry not trying to be an ass but its kind of a weird way to ask this. Its called Depth of Field which in turn correlates to the F/stop of the lens but the cinematographer uses his or herselfs skills with a focus puller (both a tool and a position).
Any still camera that costs over $500, or any video camera that costs over $1000 (more or less) will have a lens that doesn't need to focus on everything (infinity) and can produce those results.
I do own a Nikon D40 so I know that there are focus points in the view finder, but I have never used a professional quality video camera to know how that works.
The D40 is a professional quality camera! What happens is the lens focuses on something at a certain distance away, and everything that isn't at that distance (either too close or too far) is out of focus.
It's like an eye. Put your hand in front of your face. Now focus on the computer screen. Notice how your hand isn't really clear. Now focus on your hand. Notice how the computer screen isn't really clear? Expensive lens' do the same thing.
It's a little more complicated than that. Depth of field has just as much to do with the imaging sensor as it does with the lens.
Things that help you get a shallow depth of field:
* Large aperture (smaller f-stop numbers)
-so if you're in the sun this requires a faster shutter, or filters
* Larger image sensor (depends on your camera type)
* Long distance between background, subject, and camera
- and if you do that, you'll find you'll need a longer zoom lens
* Large aperture (smaller f-stop numbers)
-so if you're in the sun this requires a faster shutter, or filters
* Larger image sensor (depends on your camera type)
* Long distance between background, subject, and camera
- and if you do that, you'll find you'll need a longer zoom lens
How so? With the exception of 3CCD vs CMOS, and perhaps sensitivity to light, all sensors are about the same. an iPhone sensor with a high-end lens isn't going to be much different (relatively speaking, of course) from a D90.... is it?
It is also the size of the sensor, that is important. The iPhone 4s has a much smaller sensor than the D90:
from DIGITAL CAMERA SENSOR SIZES
But my understanding is that the size of the sensor doesn't change whether or not an image is in focus, just whether or not what's cropped into focus. A sensor is, in its most basic sense, just a collection of light sensing receptors...
Of course the lens is the mechanism that focuses the image, but the size of the sensor directly affects the amount of depth of field. Of course achieving that shallow DOF "film look" is possible with smaller sensors, but it is vastly different than from something like a full frame DSLR.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13580_3-9802758-39.html
http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/digital-camera-sensor-size.htm
The size of the sensor does NOT affect the depth of field.
It crops the image. That's all.
So to compensate for this cropping effect you, for example, use a 20mm lens instead of a 40mm lens. Using the shorter-focal-length lens at the same subject-object distance is what will affect your depth of field.
It crops the image. That's all.
So to compensate for this cropping effect you, for example, use a 20mm lens instead of a 40mm lens. Using the shorter-focal-length lens at the same subject-object distance is what will affect your depth of field.
Poor choice of words on my part, but sensor size does affect it indirectly as Keith pointed out.
Really don't see why this is down voted. It provides links to relevant material?
Don't forget that most motion pictures are made using a super35mm sized film or chip therefore the film look is technically a super35 crop not full frame.
Don't forget, that links with additional information are not liked by many people, it needs extra effort to click them and actually read and understand the context presented there.
Those many people like to be spoonfed.
Waiting for another ten down votes. If you can manage clicking that button, you can actually click a link or two. But reading them, hmm, yeah, I see the fallacy.
Onto FacialBukake, crying about internet cruelty.
What happened to the days of having to find information! I'm only young but mostly everything I have learnt I have had to find. Spoilt for choice on here!
It's funny that people don't like the extra effort yet I doubt they consider the effort that you have had to put in to go to three different sources and get the links!
Maybe it is my old age, I just become more cynical every day, often when visiting this forum. I guess it is a love-hate relationship, or some kind of masochism to stay here, especially as many questions asked can be answered via searching.
I mean, we live in the digital age and have a wealth of information at our fingertips, and still people haven't figured out, how to look for it.
When we still had libraries, and looked for an answer in some of those ancient books they had, there was no one reading the correct answers back to me. Or am I just ludicrous?
Anyway, back to the thread: Focus pullers will be a thing of the past with this.
----------
It might not be useful, but it can produce artsy erotica.
Seen the Lytro but not convinced at the moment. You may lost a production focus puller but maybe a new digital focus puller will be created because someone would still have to decide what area is in focus and it could be just as complicated if when mixed with video matching the focus to a moving object!
I meant it more as a gist. The focus puller will hopefully stay, why complicate things? Though if the technology matures, maybe the viewer can pull the focus, if the audience is still there for longer films.