depth.of.field.exercise.two.

Exercise Two

The essence of exercise two centered around the manipulation of depth of field in a shot. Each of us is required to do two takes with Sony EX3 camera—one with the shallowest depth of field, one with the greatest.

So far, we learned in class that, basically, the wider the aperture, the shallower the depth of field, which means that the background is less in focus. The closer you use the camera to focus on one subject, the background is blurrier, too. If someone uses a lens with a short focal length to film a subject, the depth of field will appear to be great. However, when the subject is filmed proportionally the same within the frame, one will notice that the depth of field actually is the same with a long or a short lens.

To look at the portraits I’ve done, personally, I am not satisfied with my work (the shot simply is not beautiful), even though I did fulfill the requirements in some way.

For the first take, I walked farther away from Lance, used a focal length of 40mm with an f/4 and filter 1. It is a low-angle, mid shot in which I positioned Lance at around one-third of the frame. For a tiny part of it, it is over-exposed, but the overall image is evenly lit and the light on Lance’s face is soft. The image looks warm because the sunlight was very intense that day. The background is fairly out of focus, indicating a shallow depth of field. However, what I could have done to achieve an even shallower depth of field, was to apply filter 2 to block more light in order to use a wider aperture. It is interesting how distance and the focal length worked the opposite way in regard to depth of field. When you walk closer to the subject (shallower DOF), you have to use a shorter lens (greater DOF) to achieve the same size of shot you want. Thus, I should have experimented with the FL and the distance more to really get the shallowest DOF I want with a restriction on shot size. (Note: The 40mm is only around half of the FL we could have achieved.)

The second take is aimed to achieve the greatest DOF. The exposure level is around the same but a tiny bit darker than the first take. The parameters I used was an FL of 11mm, 1/4 16 of f-stop and no filter or gain. Although this shot is not aesthetically good, it does have almost the greatest DOF. I like how people’s outlines from across the street and the street name are both clear in focus. If I were to improve the take in regard to the goal, I could add gain to the image so as to allow me to bring down the aperture even smaller. Still, I need to take a bit of time for experimentation in different distances and FL.

There are a fair number of great shots taken by my classmates. For example, the shots 2,3 and 6 (Kris, Lydia and Darcey) are nice shallow DOF ones. The degree to which the background is blurred for each of them is great than mine. The main reason that accounts for this could be them using a wider aperture while applying filer 2. And, the difference in shot size may also be a factor that influenced the appearance of my shot. Keeping the aperture and FL the same, one can do an MCU by filming closer to the subject which makes the DOF shallower. It is also the same if we switch between FL and the distance from the subject. However, for a mid shot, I cannot do that in order to keep the size of shot I wanted. The standard of blurriness is essentially different for a mid shot and an MCU.

I like how the shallowness of DOF in shot 1 (Michael) is emphasized by framing in a bicycle seat when it’s extremely close to the camera. Looking at the background, it is not blurrier than that of Lydia’s, but the viewers can get a more direct and obvious feeling of shallow DOF by doing the take like shot 1. This is worth remembering.

Shot 4 and 5 are both good great DOF shots. I really like how the fourth takes the advantage of the dimension of deep space. I did try to do the same with my shot, but it wasn’t good enough. By showing a deep space, one can get a sense of deep DOF, looking at all the things behind the subject.

I think, except for the technical part, to achieve the best result, one also need time, practice, good communication and familiarity with the camera. The time limit, practice and the familiarity element works together. If one has practiced a lot with this specific EX3 camera, he won’t need too much time to achieve the same result as someone who is new to the camera. I myself wasn’t familiar enough with the camera (even if I used them for a semester), so I forgot to apply gain when I tried to create a great DOF shot. However, with my own Canon, I never forgot to adjust the ISO when doing photographs. The element of good communication is vital in most careers, especially in media, doing group projects. I myself is a shy person. I cannot change it. So when I work with others for the first time, I’m usually not very active. That is a strong downfall of mine. (Even though later I can even become proactive.) This affected my performance for this exercise when I tried to tell Lance where to stand.