This week we shot some narrative scenes that included an extremely cute six year old child, including some close up, shallow DOF video. Fortunately, she was very good at staying still - she followed directions better than many adult actors!

For an indoor scene, she was sitting about eight feet from the camera. We went with the 200L, probably at f/3.5, on a tripod. We could have chosen the ZE 85/1.4, but it was easier to grab the longer lens than to move the sofa or rig the jib.

The focus ring was super-touchy. It only has about a 90 degree throw. I thought it was close enough. It wasn't. After viewing on a large monitor, we decided that we couldn't use any of three takes.

We also did an outdoor shot on a tripod where she is standing, smiles, and turns to run away into the blurry background. We did four takes using the ZE 85/1.4 (with ND at about f/2.8) and nailed every one of them. She was less than a meter from the camera and was framed similarly to the 200L shot. That 220 degree focus throw made all the difference!

The Zeiss manual focus lens earned its money that day. The shot was gorgeous. We only used the Canon AF lens on a single shot and it failed.

This is a reminder that if you shoot controlled, shallow DOF video on the 5D2, use lenses with long focus throws.

That said, I have no complaints with the 200L glass. It takes stunning photos!

If I may reply to my own post...

Thinking about it, I should have gotten the focus of the 200L lens close with the focus ring and then I could have fine tuned it by moving the tripod forward and back.

I used this same trick when shooting handheld with the EF 85/1.8 wide open. Rather than use the ring at all, I set a fixed focus and controlled the focus point with my feet, rather than the ring.

Sometimes it helps to press the 'AF' button and then make slight manual focus adustments with the MF ring. If you've got time, and the subject doesn't move out of focus zone, you could take a quick stills shot; zoom in on the review to check for critical focus, and then press video play.

I rarely have problems with the the 200mm or 300mm lenses at f/2.8 and find them far easier to get sharp 'on-the-button' focus than I do with wider lenses like the 85mm or 35mm or 24mm f/1.4 optics. The Hasselblad finder does help a lot though, and I find it difficult to work without it attached to the 5D when working with MF in video mode.