This is a HUGE secret- itself alone worth the price of checking out this KnowledgeBase.

One big thing distinguishing content shot on film to most video is the natural shallower depth-of-field of a film camera.

What is Depth Of Field (DOF)?

Close one eye, put a finger close to your other eye and focus on it.

Now, while still holding your finger up, focus on the far wall.

Notice your finger is now blurry, because your eyes are focused on the wall. Now focus on your finger again. Notice objects in the background become blurrier.

The range of distances from your eye- or from a camera lens- that is in acceptable focus is called the "depth of field".

If you have a shot in which close objects and far objects appear all in sharp focus, this is called a "deep depth-of-field".

If you have a shot in which objects at a certain distance are in sharp focus, but objects closer or farther are obviously out of focus, this is called "shallow depth-of-field."

35mm film has a significantly larger imaging surface than most DV or HDV cameras, which usually have 1/4" - 1/3" CCDs. Based on the relative size of the imaging surface, the rules of optics dictate that video cameras will have a much greater depth of field than film.

And that’s the big problem. When you’re shooting video, this extreme depth of field means that every object in your composition- foreground and background- is likely to be in sharp focus, leading to a confused, distracting composition in which the audience is not sure where to focus, making it much harder for you to tell your story. And making what you shoot look very videoy and amateurish, much different than a bigtime feature film.

Shallow DOF helps you tell your story. Hollywood cinematographers use a shallow depth of field to organize their composition, putting their subject in sharp focus and the background out of focus. The human eye is naturally attracted to the subject, and not distracted by the background.

Using shallow depth of field also puts depth into your shots by cueing the viewer to what elements are closer or farther away from the camera.

Shallow DOF looks super cool! When your viewers look at your project, one of the key factors that will make them say "Wow! That looks like Hollywood!" is using shots with shallow depth of field

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Recipe for Shallow depth of field

Getting shallow depth of field out of a DV camcorder takes a little effort- and a larger area to shoot in. Here’s the three step process:

1. Make sure your iris is open all the way. A wide open iris will give you the shallowest depth of field.

2. You need your foreground subject well away from the background and the camera far from the subject.

3. To accentuate the shallow depth of field effect, zoom in as much as possible

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Woops- too bright for shallow depth of field?

You’re outside in broad daylight. You open your iris all the way because you want to get shallow DOF to get a really cool-looking shot.

Hold on! You’re way overexposed! So, follow these steps:

1. Turn on your camcorder’s ND filter.

2. Switch to negative gain (like -3 dB) if possible.

3. Still too bright? Try screwing on additional ND filters- like a .6 or .9 - or even both at the same time.

Here’s a tiplet on Shallow Depth of Field

Awesome!

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