Any "low depth of focus" tricks around?

[jcdenton]

I need a "low depth of focus" effect for my Panasonic GS75 (stop laughing! ). It claims to have a feature named "tele macro". Of course, when I zoom up to tele at 10x, I get a low depth of focus. But in the same time I also get only a macro of the scene. If I move the camera away from the actors, the effect will disappear more and more.

I already tried to apply a wide-angle convertor to get a bigger picture in the mentioned "tele macro" mode. But -you may guess- it was neutralizing the Effect I was after, "low depth of focus".

Are there any tricks to achieve it nevertheless, even with my Camera (I can manually open the aperture to 18 dB, but this won't help)? Any ideas are welcome, thanks.

[jcdenton]

I can't believe nobody knows any tricks.

Ok, I try to find some ideas here.

1)
Shrink all Actors, so they may be very close to the lense. Not very practical, but anyway.

2)
Use double greenscreening for actor 1, actor 2 and background. Not very practical since it's a lot of work.

3)
Use manual masking to blur certain parts of the screen. Not very practical since it's a lot of work and it may look very obvious on the contours.

4)
Use some kind of "milky glass" between actor 2 and the background, so the background looks brured. Problem: Colors and brghtness of the background may look unnatural. And: a big milky glass is required. (maybe some kind of pvc plane could be used). This method still won't blur Actor A, but this may be solved with a low lense distance.

5
Use an anlaog Dia or Film Projector with a canvas for the background, like in good old times. Problem: the background colors may look pale and low contrast-ish.

Still trying to find more...

[Gyro]

My cheap camera has a feature that allows you do adjust the focus from the foreground to the background, this of course is only applicable if you're a little ways back. Here's an example.

[Passman]

I have a Canon Xm2 and when i want to achieve a short depth of field i go further away from the object i want to focus on and zoom in. It also helps to keep the f-stop as high as possible (1.6f for the xm2).

There is a great acticle on this link: http://www.de-interlaced.net/articles/f ... peed.shtml

scroll down a little to read about DOF[/img]

[Epsilon]

The larger the lens, the better.

[BrownCowStudios]

And the larger the CCDs, the better.

[jcdenton]

Thanks. The Panasonic NV GS75 has 3* 1/6" chips. Not that small. Gyro - this shot is looking good, it's exactly what I was after. I simply can't get it with this camera, as far as I see. Some people told be a wide apperture would do the trick. Since I cannot open the apperture manually without to affect other automatic settings, I guess I should try to use the socalled "sport AE mode", that has a very high shutter speed. This will force the aperture to open up by the max. Thanks for this hint! I got to try this...

[jcdenton]

Uh, not very successfull yet. I have realized my aperture is fully open most time. I have just set the shutter speed to 1/1000 and the Aperture to F2.8, but then the image was way too dark, at least in this indoor enviroment. But then I've seen the Aperture is even fully open all the time anyway, no need for a high shutter speed at all. I also doupt an ND Filter would help a lot. Anyway, if I'll find a way I'll let you know. (Sorry for using the term "depth of focus" instead of "Depth of field" - that's what the dictionary said...)