Hey all, I'm trying to shoot a scene where the background is blurry and the subject is in focus. How can we do this? Do we need a telephoto lense? Thanks, -Mat

You could put your iris on 1.8.
But then you get a lot of chance your image is overexposed.

You don't need another lens, the GL2 doesn't even support another lens.
You could zoom in completely in to a close-up of anyone, from far. That you have a CU, but you are completely zoomed in, that should give you a short DOF.
For a medium I think it's much more difficult, but you can do it in the same way, but beware that you surely shoot on a tripod.

Good luck!

What you, me and others are trying to do is create this very short Depth of Field. This in turn creates interesting layers that will "focus" your viewer's attention onto the item you've taken much time to frame and light.

However, because of the nature of video we are limited - we have BIG DoF! And as Mathieau implies, one of the ways to do this is to forece open the iris in Manual. I do this but I compensate for this overepxosure by adding twcie as much ND - about 1.8 in total. This brings down the exposure and gives me a BIG iris.

Here is a link to the DoF Machine, well titled, website. Have a quick scan through its pages - and weep!

http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/dof/index.htm

I'm now seriously contemplating the 35mm adaption, much spoken of, to achieve short DoF.

But you are in the same boat as all of us!

Grazie

Grazie,
Just curious if you ever decided to go for the 35mm adaption? It looks interesting in the "How to" article but I am wondering how practical it is for real world shooting?

Jim

Well, it's not practical at all for "real-world" shooting is it?
OK for pseudo-drama and such, where you can rehearse movements and make focus-marks so that your focus-puller can keep the talent sharp, but I don't see a short DOF being anything other than a hindrance for day-to-day shooting.

Robin

Robin, straight to the point - as ever. I must say I am achieving much less DoF with my very open Iris and NDs a plenty. This I can cope with. However, a bigger chip will do me no harm AND a 16:9 at that!

I'm still keeping an eye on the mini35 development - I think there is still some more R&D to be squeezed out.

Grazie

you could also depending on space. frame your subject with a tighter focal length and seperate the background futher from the subject allowing for focus definition to be tighter. you should be able to create a shallower depth of field by doing this.