Quick side-by-side testing of Sony HXR-NX3D1 and Panasonic HDC -Z10000

[Vimal Raj]

How about the shallow DOF in Z10k is it good? I am an indie film maker. Shallow DOF is important for my shots.

[Neil Richards]

Shallow DoF is the exact opposite of what you want in most 3D. Use it with extreme care, if at all.

Generally shoot wide in 3D with a lot of DoF so your audience's eyes can wander around and explore the scene.

Not being able to look at the whole of a 3D image is at best frustrating and at worst some out-of-focus 3D can cause intense irritation. In particular avoid out-of-focus objects in negative space (coming out of the screen).

To answer your question, the Z10k has a 6 small 1/4" sensors so it does not give shallow DoF anyway unless you telephoto in - but note that when you do this you will get depth compression (or "cardboarding") and will lose the roundness of the 3D. Whether the reduced 3D is worth the cost in order to get some shallow DoF effect is a decision you will have to make - in some instances it may be the only way to get the shot anyway.

Don't shoot 3D using 2D pre-conceptions. When you get your Z10k go out and shoot a lot of footage to practice and check it closely on the largest 3D screen you can find. The only real way to learn what will work and what will not in 3D is by experience, so best do that before you have to do a real shoot.

All imho of course :)

Best wishes

Neil

[Wolfgang Schmid]

For your shooting, you have some important points:

- the major point is really what convergence you adjust. Here you have to take care if you converge the two streams not. To converge the camcorder has some advantages if you wish to avoid the adjustment in the postproduction. But it has major drawbacks if you end up with high divergence, what may bring a lot of ghosting in situations where you have both divergence and high contrast. Another disadvantage is that you reduce the depth bracket. But you will not suffer from a trapec effect with the Z10K.

So, one has to take care about the convergence in the shoot, to shoot with parallel streams is possible if you switch the convergence to C99. And not everybody will agree, but a lot of people still think that parallel shooting is the best way how you can do it - and maintaines the best possibilties for the postproduction.

A nice way to check that is to use the mix-mode of the 3D function, that gives you a better indication abotu the divergence. Rule: it should not be larger then something about 3.5% of the monitor width.

- the other part is that you have to take care about the minimum distance. The build in "3D Guide" is your friend, make sure that you enable that function during the shoots

- and yes, check the footage at your editing place or at a large 3D HDTV, and learn from that. I completely agree with Richard about that.