Camera Testing 1st Outing: Focus/Depth of Field

Depth of Field

During our first outing to test camera techniques we encountered a variety of problems with both the environment and the equipment. One such problem that occur frequently was the focus and depth of field on our camera was not at the right setting making our footage look either blurry or the depth of field was wrong. For instance whilst attempting to perform a reverse dolly shot while the camera was moving backwards and zooming in, since the camera was set to Manual Focus it was difficult to adjust the cameras depth of field while at the same time reversing it away from the subject, this made some of the footage come out blurred and out of focus.

Depth of Field Problem no.1

These images are screenshots from footage taken during the reverse dolly shot which show the problem we had with changing the depth of field as the camera was moving. The shot became blurred and out of focus which ruined the shot as the camera was moving.

Depth of Field Problem no.2

These shots show the problems  with using a camera where the depth of field and focus has to be manually changed whilst the camera is moving, it became a problem as while one person was moving the camera the one needed to adjust the focus. I think that to fix this problem in future consideration for perhaps using either a different camera which has no adjustable focus or perhaps a different method of filming and planning such as marking out start/end points for where the camera will move and exactly how much the cameras focus will need to be tuned by the time the camera reaches the end point e.g. tuning the cameras focus from 35mm to 55mm within a stretch of 2 metres whilst reversing on a dolly.

One advantage of using the 600D camera that we used however is that the focus can be altered manually as on other cameras it either does it automatically or you cannot alter it at all so being able to change the focus manually can be useful even if it does cause problems as it needs to be finely tuned if the camera is moving. For a future test the use of a different camera could make a difference to how well the focus is affected whilst filming.