What the DoF?
15/03/10 21:06 Filed in: DoF
A common joke I have with a close friend of mine, @zebratape, is: “How much DoF you shootin’ with.” The joke isn’t funny to anyone, especially those who aren’t shooting with HD-DSLRs. Usually my reply is something along these lines: “about 7. My DoF is 7.” Makes zero sense.
But the lame joke does have relevance in a world now cluttered with so many brands of HD-DSLRs. Sometimes I feel that the blogging world has finally moved past the whole DoF (Depth of Field, for those not privy) fiesta and has gotten back to the nitty gritty of our business, the content. But every time I do think that, Nikon or Canon releases a new camera that is even cheaper than its predecessor and features fantastic video capabilities. I think to wrap our heads around this whole DoF thing we should look back to how and why we got her.
When the first Video recorder was released in the 1960’s, it was huge because artists could create content and almost immediately release their product to the world. Now, for a scale reference, immediately in the 1960’s usually meant a day or six. Depending on the nature of the project video was a fantastic solution compared to the various formats of film. Film was/is an expensive medium to produce work in and video provided the means to create your content effectively and relatively efficiently.
Fast forward to the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s the technology and quality increased tremendously and with the advent of computers we were able to begin digitally manipulating our content even faster. We entered a great age where nearly anyone with the means could begin producing decent, or dare I say in some cases good, quality content; or as I like to call it: The Age of the Star Wipe.
Then, one dark and stormy night, our hunger began to swell. We became obese with quality and getting....”The Film Look.” Now its the very late 90’s almost the 00’s, or is it the oughts? What are we calling that decade? Whatever we’re calling it, it was the decade Kubrick said I’d be taking a Pan Am shuttle to a space station and eating at a Howard Johnson’s while I rotated around earths orbit. I digress...
The beginning of the new millennium brought to a period where our computers were getting faster and better and our camera quality was getting quite superior to previous generations. We began to see the introduction of High Definition camera’s and watch out standard definition, your days were numbered. Everyone got in a tizzy about HD this and that, blah blah blah and the SD/HD argument turned into the Lens Adapter Wars of 2005.
Many young and upcoming artists and small companies fell victim to this war. All of a sudden HD wasn’t enough. I was in college at the time and I thought: “What do you mean HD wasn’t enough? Television is still SD in nearly every major market except Mark Cubans Living room.” But everyone and their brother in college went out and bought $2,000 adapters for their GL2’s so they could achieve DoF and the Film Look. I’ll admit I was tempted to pick up one of the dozen or so lens adapters that were on the market at the time, but instead I bought my girlfriend stuff. I’m not really sure what stuff, I know she doesn’t have it anymore but I know it was stuff.
So now we’re in the mid-oughts, is this what we’re calling those times? In the mid-oughts (really?) we all had lens adapters and now we were buying every Final Cut plugin that promised us that we could grade our projects like the movie Traffic. “Fantastic, I can record a dance recital with sweet DoF and I can grade it like Traffic” is a phrase I heard all the time.
Then 2006 came around and so did the RED. Everyone I knew was going to start a rental house with a RED camera and a laptop with FCP Studio 1. We we going to sell our parents houses while they were on vacation and promise that we’d make the money back in three months at least. Then we realized that not everybody has three mortgages these days and that idea was out the window and we continued to play with our lens adapters.
So between 2006 and now we had a few minor things, flip cams, DIY rigs, DIY lens adapters that never worked and so on. Then the 5d came along and praise the lord its the answer to our prayers that we never even prayed about. Full Frame DSLR that shoots 30,50,60p and the excitement lasted all of....6 minutes. “Where’s my 24!” the masses exclaimed.
At this point we know the history, the 7d and T2i arrived and Nikon showed up to the party and went “Hey Wha Happened?”
So why have I rambled on for about four hundred words and written out the poor man’s history to video technology in the past 50 years? I’ve done this to slightly point out that all these technology advances are tools, some of them were even fads. But these advances were tool for us to create content fast than we could process and cut film. Ever since the inception of video we’ve tried to get closer to the film look without actually using film, and with the advent of bigger sensors and fads like 3d (yes it’s a fad) we are surpassing quality that even film couldn’t get us.
All this being said we can’t overlook the very simple point that, the 7d for example, is nothing more than a tool for me to create my content in an effective and efficient manner that helps me get my work done quicker for my clients. That’s it. The 7d doesn’t begin the pre-production, it doesn’t write the script, it doesn’t do the rendering, it doesn’t do a lot of things. Whether or not we can get awesome depth of field shouldn’t be the reason why we purchase gear. We need to ask ourselves: how is this going to help my workflow? How is this going to make me better at my craft? For me, the 7d is a fantastic solution. Take my work in dance photography/video. With the flick of one switch I can go from shooting full HD video to burst mode photography and get that leap that I have not been able to get a photograph of.
I feel that we should be focusing on how these new advances will help us produce better content, rather than focusing on specific features - i.e. DoF. We’re in the business of creating content, how do these new tools help us make better content?
But the lame joke does have relevance in a world now cluttered with so many brands of HD-DSLRs. Sometimes I feel that the blogging world has finally moved past the whole DoF (Depth of Field, for those not privy) fiesta and has gotten back to the nitty gritty of our business, the content. But every time I do think that, Nikon or Canon releases a new camera that is even cheaper than its predecessor and features fantastic video capabilities. I think to wrap our heads around this whole DoF thing we should look back to how and why we got her.
When the first Video recorder was released in the 1960’s, it was huge because artists could create content and almost immediately release their product to the world. Now, for a scale reference, immediately in the 1960’s usually meant a day or six. Depending on the nature of the project video was a fantastic solution compared to the various formats of film. Film was/is an expensive medium to produce work in and video provided the means to create your content effectively and relatively efficiently.
Fast forward to the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s the technology and quality increased tremendously and with the advent of computers we were able to begin digitally manipulating our content even faster. We entered a great age where nearly anyone with the means could begin producing decent, or dare I say in some cases good, quality content; or as I like to call it: The Age of the Star Wipe.
Then, one dark and stormy night, our hunger began to swell. We became obese with quality and getting....”The Film Look.” Now its the very late 90’s almost the 00’s, or is it the oughts? What are we calling that decade? Whatever we’re calling it, it was the decade Kubrick said I’d be taking a Pan Am shuttle to a space station and eating at a Howard Johnson’s while I rotated around earths orbit. I digress...
The beginning of the new millennium brought to a period where our computers were getting faster and better and our camera quality was getting quite superior to previous generations. We began to see the introduction of High Definition camera’s and watch out standard definition, your days were numbered. Everyone got in a tizzy about HD this and that, blah blah blah and the SD/HD argument turned into the Lens Adapter Wars of 2005.
Many young and upcoming artists and small companies fell victim to this war. All of a sudden HD wasn’t enough. I was in college at the time and I thought: “What do you mean HD wasn’t enough? Television is still SD in nearly every major market except Mark Cubans Living room.” But everyone and their brother in college went out and bought $2,000 adapters for their GL2’s so they could achieve DoF and the Film Look. I’ll admit I was tempted to pick up one of the dozen or so lens adapters that were on the market at the time, but instead I bought my girlfriend stuff. I’m not really sure what stuff, I know she doesn’t have it anymore but I know it was stuff.
So now we’re in the mid-oughts, is this what we’re calling those times? In the mid-oughts (really?) we all had lens adapters and now we were buying every Final Cut plugin that promised us that we could grade our projects like the movie Traffic. “Fantastic, I can record a dance recital with sweet DoF and I can grade it like Traffic” is a phrase I heard all the time.
Then 2006 came around and so did the RED. Everyone I knew was going to start a rental house with a RED camera and a laptop with FCP Studio 1. We we going to sell our parents houses while they were on vacation and promise that we’d make the money back in three months at least. Then we realized that not everybody has three mortgages these days and that idea was out the window and we continued to play with our lens adapters.
So between 2006 and now we had a few minor things, flip cams, DIY rigs, DIY lens adapters that never worked and so on. Then the 5d came along and praise the lord its the answer to our prayers that we never even prayed about. Full Frame DSLR that shoots 30,50,60p and the excitement lasted all of....6 minutes. “Where’s my 24!” the masses exclaimed.
At this point we know the history, the 7d and T2i arrived and Nikon showed up to the party and went “Hey Wha Happened?”
So why have I rambled on for about four hundred words and written out the poor man’s history to video technology in the past 50 years? I’ve done this to slightly point out that all these technology advances are tools, some of them were even fads. But these advances were tool for us to create content fast than we could process and cut film. Ever since the inception of video we’ve tried to get closer to the film look without actually using film, and with the advent of bigger sensors and fads like 3d (yes it’s a fad) we are surpassing quality that even film couldn’t get us.
All this being said we can’t overlook the very simple point that, the 7d for example, is nothing more than a tool for me to create my content in an effective and efficient manner that helps me get my work done quicker for my clients. That’s it. The 7d doesn’t begin the pre-production, it doesn’t write the script, it doesn’t do the rendering, it doesn’t do a lot of things. Whether or not we can get awesome depth of field shouldn’t be the reason why we purchase gear. We need to ask ourselves: how is this going to help my workflow? How is this going to make me better at my craft? For me, the 7d is a fantastic solution. Take my work in dance photography/video. With the flick of one switch I can go from shooting full HD video to burst mode photography and get that leap that I have not been able to get a photograph of.
I feel that we should be focusing on how these new advances will help us produce better content, rather than focusing on specific features - i.e. DoF. We’re in the business of creating content, how do these new tools help us make better content?
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