depth of field & filmmaking - help

stephenlevi

stephenlevi

Just a little background, I am a photographer, so I understand depth of field, shutter speed, ISO, etc.

The part that is confusing me is this. When filming at 24fps and a constant shutter speed of 50, if you go outside and its very bright, it's virtually impossible to get a nice shallow depth of field shot at say f4. Because it's too bright.

For example, today I was messing with the video on my DSLR and went outside and turned the ISO all the way down, shutter on 50, and it's way too bright. From what I've been told, you don't want to mess with shutter speed in filmmaking, because movie cameras shoot at 48 (50 being closest on DSLR) otherwise it won't keep that filmic look.

I'm confused.

So basically with filmmaking, am I just supposed to rely on aperture, ISO and ND filters?
 
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Theodebernacius said:
What would happen if a faster shutter speed were used? How would it look like?
Click to expand...

I don't think it would look horrible. If you went to let's say 60 over 50.

Also, it really depends the look you are going for. Speilberg filmed action scenes from 'Saving Private Ryan at 60 fpm at ISO 120. Makes everything very jumpy, but for the type of film he did, it looks amazing!
 
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In bright daylight, 1/60 wouldn't be very useful if you're opening the iris as much as you can to obtain a shallow DOF. I was think more along the line of what would happen if you were to use a shutter speed of say 1/1000 or faster. Anyone has a video showing what it would look like?
 
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I actually just watched a clip with Tom Hanks discussing Saving Private Ryan. It was shot in Ireland, and Spielberg wanted overcast skies. So under those conditions 1/60 is probably good.
 
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I think when you start getting much faster than 1/60 you'll notice it for sure. I personally hate the way it looks except when done for a very specific storytelling reason (as in Saving private Ryan). That "look" in just a regular old exterior where somebody did it for exposure reasons I don't care for.
 
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NDs come in various strengths, and you can stack them. The also make "grad" filters where the ND is strong at the top and changes to nothing at the bottom. Those are used to shoot the sky. you position the grad line at the horizon so you can properly expose the rest of the frame without blowing out the sky.
 
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Just saw "Hanna" the other day. It looked like they used a pretty fast shutter speed, there wasn't any motion blur and it was all a little jittery. That fit's with the films overall style and theme though.

I've heard it announced that the Avatar sequels will be shot at 48 and 60 fps and something about the Hobbit going faster as well. It'll be played back at that high of a frame rate as well.

It'll be interesting to see what it's all like in the end.
 
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Since we're talking about ND filters, can someone explain this statement by Cronenweth about the cinematography of "The Social Network":

"We shot with the [T1.3] Master Primes wide open most of the time. When we went outside, which was rare, we had to really stack ND filters to get the exposure down and achieve a comfortable amount of depth-of-field. When shooting digitally and stacking filters, one must always remember the sensitivities of the chip or sensor and what the effect of those filters might be. We used IR neutral-density filters to control the warm effects that the NDs inherently bring, and to give our blue-light-sensitive chip a better chance at capturing the images the way we wanted them."

The human eye cannot see IR. Can sensors "see" IR? What does he mean by "blue-light-sensitive chip"?


http://www.theasc.com/ac_magazine/October2010/TheSocialNetwork/page1.php
 
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point your camera at the front of your tv remote and press some of the buttons... if you see the lights blink, your camera picks up IR. You can filter out visible light to do IR photography (be careful googling this as it also causes problems with clothing)

http://provideocoalition.com/index.php/awilt/story/schneider_ir_filter_tests/
Here's the type of info he's looking at: http://www.maxmax.com/spectral_response.htm (different camera, but same type of thing).
Here's the wavelengths for reference: http://eosweb.larc.nasa.gov/EDDOCS/Wavelengths_for_Colors.html
 
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