horizontal width of the new 16:9 CCDs is 5.45mm

ref:

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=ja_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.sony.co.jp%2fSonyInfo%2fNews%2fPress%2f200409%2f04-0907a%2f



whereas horizontal width of 1/3 4:3 type is 4.8mm
and horizontal width of 1/2 4:3 type is 6.4mm

let's pretend I'm a simpleton who visits here for info...
can you elaborate on your point?

I'm comfortable with that Mark :)

take a look at the man and his dog shot on this page ...

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=ja_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fwww.sony.jp%2fproducts%2fConsumer%2fhandycam%2fPRODUCTS%2fHDR-FX1%2ffeature04.html



what my post is implying is that, in simpleton terms, with the FX1 it will be about 15% easier to get the slim depth of field effect over a camera with a conventional 1/3" 4:3 CCD

Okay because you got me curious I did a quick and dirty test of what kind of DoF I could get with the Sony.

http://www.darkisle.com/phil/DepthOfField.png

That link is to a single frame pulled off the camera and scaled out to the proper 1920x1080 from the native 1440x1080.

Distance from the front of the lens to various items:

Penguin 22"
Blue box 33"
Red box 41.5"
Whiteboard 77.5"

Camera was set to F1.8 with shutter at 1/60 under the office lights. Zoomed in a bit to fill the frame and used manual focus to get the blue box as sharp as I could in the LCD using the nifty focus assist zoom feature.

You can see the penguin in the foreground is decidedly fuzzy while the second red box is just starting to go soft.

Phil, I can't look at your frame. Is it from the new Sony FX1? I get an error 403 message.

Same 403 error.

Sorry. Permissions issue on the server. Give a few minutes to fix it.

Okay. Try it now. Sorry about that.

Aha, now we're talkin'! Thanks for your post on this! I've noticed in the limited footage so far avail. that the cam DOES in fact seem to have a capability for a small d.o.f. - this is great for us filmmaker types.

So, this cam has
1080i x 3CCD with those Super HAD chips...
cineframe/cinegamma modes which presumably help, not hurt
ability to effectively pull focus with narrow d.o.f. capability...

Sounds like indie-filmmaker standard-issue to me!

I'm thinking "camcorder-of-the-year" folks - what a bold prediction!

Phil, is that frame from the Sony HDV cam? Or the JVC?

It's from the Sony.

Cool, thanks man.

Phil

Thanks for the post. You need a bigger ofiice :)

Mark

Make that movie

Well, I guess all you film-maker types are going to need to hire a focus-puller with a tape measure from now on ;-)

Robin

Hey Robin where have you been?

The FX1 has the focus puller built into the camera - as well as aperture and zoom pulls

In that case - I'm impressed!

Robin

<<<-- Distance from the front of the lens to various items:

Penguin 22"
Blue box 33"
Red box 41.5"
Whiteboard 77.5"

Camera was set to F1.8 with shutter at 1/60 under the office lights. Zoomed in a bit to fill the frame and used manual focus to get the blue box as sharp as I could in the LCD using the nifty focus assist zoom feature.
-->>>

Phil, thanks for the excellent example.

I sure would like to see the results from a similar setup taken from a farther distance at much higher zoom.