"4-Shallower DOF-Move camera as far back as possible, zoom in"

A couple people pointed this out but i think ill reiterate... because i want to be in on this thread. :-D

Anyway, I've noticed almost the exact opposite with my digital films, as far as getting a film look. I find wide angle lenses give me a more professional, filmic look (and i mean real wide angle, not "meh" wide angle, like the difference between a 37mm lens, and a 24mm lens). The reason i think this works is because, in professional 35mm productions when wide angle lenses are used, the shallow depth virtually disappears (virtually), and in video, the depth that was hardly there also dissappears, so you have extremely similar depth to them.

Also, you can make really interesting compositions with nice wide angle lenses. The trick, in most situations, is getting really uncomfortably close to your subject, causing that wide distortion that looks really cool, and having the background small and distorted as well.

Alot of cool movies were shot with nearly all wide angle lense, my favorite example being Requiem for a Dream.

Another thought i had, if DOF is determined by A) how wide your aperature is open B) the size of the medium and C) the focal length of the lens, would the diameter of the lens also be a factor? I was thinking this because f-stops are measured from the outer edge of the lens in, so if your diameter was bigger, your aperature is bigger. Would that work?

I also noticed that my XL2 has very similar depth to my K3 (16mm camera).

Thats jes my XL2cents, feel free to disagree (that most totally rhymed).

PS: I dont know if anyone has tried this, but as an artistic experiment, wouldnt it be interesting to see if you can use that same DOF isolation theory, but with lighting. Where you isolate your subjects with lighting, kinda like theatre productions. Im not sure if that would look cool, hokey, or a cheap alternative to 35mm DOF.

Since I started this thread as a prepurchase question, I thought I might touch base again once I got the camera and started shooting with it.

I shot some of my first sequences (with any camera!) this weekend. Here are some of my results:

I had one shot with a fixed frame and no zoom where the focus shifted from someone's reflection in a mirror to the actual person to an object in the foreground. All the objects were within a distance of 8 feet and I was about 6 feet from the nearest object. It worked out perfectly.

I had another shot where someone was looking in a mirror (I know, I was just fascinated with mirrors...I'm a beginner). The mirror was about four feet away form the camera and the person was between us. I was able to blur either the person or the reflection of the person very easily.

I had a closeup of the inside of a toaster from about six feet away. I was able to focus on different elements inside the toaster very easily.

So, to answer my question, the DOF is really not that bad as long as you are either zoomed way in from a distance, really close to one subject with another some distance away, or you have a great distance between your subjects.

In normal (not super close ups) distances to subjects, I think the secret is just some depth to the shot, which is a good thing for shot composition anyway (at least to me).

I can tell you that with 24p, depth in my shots and decent lighting, I was able to get shots that looked just like the "film" look I was going after.

Anyhow, I should be receiving my micro35 ground glass mechanism within a few weeks, so I'll be able to compare with that. I picked up a 50 mm lens to use to start out with.

Thanks,

Kelly

I agree with Jon, in that, a well framed wide shot can be as dramatic and add as much production value as a shot with a shallow DOF....



ash =o)