cinematography DSLRS - Focusing On Yourself?

Beatlesfan1225

Beatlesfan1225

Hey Everyone,

This question has been irking me for awhile now, and I stumble into issues with it every week. So, I realize this question may come off as stupid, so please be gentle with your responses ;)

As a Youtube Musician, I find myself filming myself a lot, usually about twice a week. Now, I shoot all my videos with a T3i. My normal set up is to set up the camera, get myself in the frame, and then shoot a couple small test videos to ensure I'm in focus. However, I've always struggled with this because I don't have the best vision, and the small screen on the camera sometime deceives me. I find that in about a third of my shots, I'm slightly out of focus as a result of having difficulty focusing on myself. Usually this sort of thing is difficult to see on the small camera screen.

So, I ask all of you - Is there a more conclusive way to ensure that I'm in focus when self-shooting videos? Possibly a way to auto-focus the camera once I'm in place for the shot?

Again, I realize this may be an odd question. Thanks for any help you can provide!
 
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Beatlesfan1225 said:
I ask all of you - Is there a more conclusive way to ensure that I'm in focus when self-shooting videos?
Click to expand...

Shoot in a well-lit room, so you can stop down the aperture. If you are shooting at F2.8 (for example), you have a fairly shallow depth of field. Even just rocking towards & away from the camera can be enough to swing you in & out of focus.

If you change the aperture to 5.6, for example, you'll discover you have a lot more distance to work with - the tradeoff being that you either need to add more light, or raise the ISO setting.

Experiment a bit, and find what you need for your particular needs. The basic idea is fairly simple (aper vs iso) ; but like anything, the finesse comes much harder later.

If you want to get all spergy, and have precise numbers & tolerances & hyperfocals & more:
http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

p.s. If you want a camera that shoots with auto-focus, use a camera that has a decent auto-focus. Most DSLR's don't.
 
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What Steve says.

Plus:

When I need to film myself and I'm all alone I make a 'focusface': just something like a focus chart with fine lines on is.
I usually draw a face to have a sense of size and add block patterns, traingles and lines on a piece of paper.
I attach it on a stand at the heigh of my face and at the position my face will be.
Then I look through the camera to make the composition I want and then I focus.
With tape I make where my toes have to be to have my face in the same position as the focus face.
Then I move the stand with the paper focusface out of the way and test to be sure.
Next step: shoot!
 
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Use a tape measure and grab the distance from the front of the camera body to where your eyes will be. Set the lens to that number, turn off auto focus and it'll be locked perfectly so long as you don't move back and forth too much. Stop down and either add light or bump up the ISO (or a combo of both) to get your exposure back up and you'll have more room to move as stated above.
 
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Tape measurer should probably be used no matter what, just to be sure (but test it out because ring markings are sometimes a little off).

You're a musician so do you probably have a spare mic stand sitting around, right? Ok, so grab that and a tennis ball, cut open the ball and stick it on the top of the stand. Then adjust to the height and position where your face will be. Voila! Now you can frame and focus your shots without needing to be in them :)
 
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+1 on the tape measure. Of course, if you're shooting wide open the focal depth will be less, so measuring from the front of the camera body wouldn't be quite as accurate as from the actual "film plane" (position inside the camera body where the sensor lies).

Though even wide open with most lenses it's probably not likely those handful of millimeters will wreck your shot. But something to be aware of none-the-less.

Do DSLRs have a film plane mark on them these days? I know cameras used to have that pretty standardly, and some higher-end cameras even have a little hook in the proper place to attach a tape measure to so it aligns with the film plane.
 
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