djtoltz
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Nov 2, 2004, 10:02 PM
Post #8 of 14
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Re: [mjeppsen] That live, indoor look....
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Of course film lenses allow precise manual control as well as incredible depth of field, something that is hard to do with DV cameras.
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Actually, unless you mean the opposite of what I think you mean, which you might, the small size of the CCD (1/2 inch or less) means the video camera will have much more depth of field, given the same, physical aperature size. The size of a 35mm frame is an advantage if selective focus is your goal. Personally, I like the reduced depth of field for creative filming, because it allows me to use selective focus as a way to guide the viewer through the image. When working with my 1/3" CCD camera, I must zoom in and use large aperature openings to get a shallow depth of field. Often, to achieve the effect I want, I must even get in close to the subject to narrow the depth of field even more.
BTW: this is one of the major selling points of a full frame CCD still camera (35mm equivalent CCD area).
Just to build on what has already been said, film generally has a wider exposure range and better shadow detail. It is generally recorded at 24 frames/second, and it is NOT interlaced. By shooting in progressive frame modes like 24p and 30p, with fairly low contrast lighting, and some work in post, video can have a filmish look, but don't expect miracles. You'll probably want something better than DV's 4:1:1 color sampling if you're looking for "Hollywood" quality.
Keep in mind, when purchasing filters, that they don't work the same on every camera. Your camera's electronics will respond to the filter in a unique way. You'll need to experiment with various filters to find one that gives you the effect you want. Don't ever use a filter without thoroughly testing it, first. (This rule can be ignored with your protective daylight/UV filter).
Another side note: I wrote a UV smoothing filter to average out the color in DV (4:1:1) to smooth out some of the artifacts. It's similar to filters provided by After Effects and Final Cut Pro 4, but it's a Quicktime plugin, so you don't need any expensive tools to use it. In writing the filter and testing it, I realized that you can do whatever you want to your DV to smooth over the artifacts of the 4:1:1 color sampling, but if you render the result back to DV, you'll lose any benefit you may have gained. Therefore, if you wish to push your DV footage into a smoother, more refined look, you'd better plan on rendering your footage in a less compressed format (DVCPRO 50, 4:2:2 at a minimum). You'll find you pay a big price for converting to something with less compression. For true color sampling (4:4:4), you'll have to use about 12MB/second. That not only adds up to a lot of disk space, but it also hurts your playback/preview performance. On the other hand, I've found that many video artifacts are a consequence of compression, and they can be cleaned up, if you're willing to render every single frame of your video and store it all with about 2:1 compression.
There's always a tradeoff.
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Douglas Toltzman
Hubert, NC
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Re: [mjeppsen] That live, indoor look....
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