Depth of Field for Videographers

Students of photography spend a lot of time learning about "depth of field," but for most people shooting video it's a bit of a mystery. (Note: I prefer the term "depth of focus" as more accurate and useful, but since it is used less often, I'll go with "depth of field" for this post.)

In part, this is a matter of practicality: while one can easily use depth-of-field techniques with a 35mm camera, most DV camcorders have sensors smaller than a piece of 35mm film and are generally shot at the wide end of the lens -- two conditions that end up creating deep focus. This means that in your typical "stand a few feet away from the subject" setup used by small-crew and solo documentarians and video bloggers, your subject is in focus and so is the background.

That's fine, but for greater control, experiment with this:

1. If your camcorder allows it, set your aperture on the F-stop with the lowest number. That is, the end of the aperture scale that is F1.4, F2, F2.8, or F4.
2. Now zoom in. That is, use the long focal lengths your lens provides -- as if you were trying to bring a distant subject closer.
3. Now you'll have to stand further from your subject to frame them the way you want -- for example a "head and shoulders" shot.
4. Consider how you can solve the audio problem this may create -- if you are working with a crew, a boom microphone would be great, or you can use a radio-transmitting microphone, or a clip on microphone with a long cable.

When you try this setup -- or a more refined version where you set up a subject at the near end of a room and shoot into the room to create depth -- you will discover you are able to get your subject in sharp focus and to throw the background out of focus. That effect can work very well to control your audience's attention, and to emphasize your subject over their environment or background.

It can make for a very creative and beautiful shot -- so try it out.

On West 43rd Street

On Friday I had to attend a meeting in midtown and passed the old New York Times building on 43rd, so I took this quick snapshot of workers stripping out the lower floors. I'm not sure what the next use of the building will be, but I hope it keeps some reference to the huge flags that once hung from the flagpoles.

On the Proposed "New Rules"

Over on Actualities I have been posting about the proposed "new rules" on photography in New York.

See this post and this one also.

On the "New Rules" and Changing Them

As pointed out by CFoA (Certified Friend of Actualities) Ryan Gallagher there is an e-petition relating to proposed new regulations on photography and filming in New York located here.

In general, I resist online petitions. They are less effective than letter writing. Often, they are written in a way that is overly rhetorical. As well, they make us feel we have taken a stand on an issue when we've taken minimal action.

Nonetheless, since I agree with the spirit of this protest -- that we should resist the erosion of our freedoms in general, and that the First Amendment protects photography and filmmaking both in public and in private -- I have signed the petition.

The New York Times article on this states:

The new rules, which were proposed by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting, would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a public place for more than 30 minutes to get a city permit and $1 million in liability insurance. The same requirements would apply to any group of five or more people who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment. The permits would be free.

I encourage you to research the issue, of course. When you have, or if the above is scary enough for you, WRITE a letter -- on paper, signed and with your return address on it, using enough postage -- and send it to:

The Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting
1697 Broadway Suite 602, New York, New York 10019

I assure you that -- as sexy as Web petitioning is -- written letters are weighted much, much, much more heavily by those in public office. They require time to deal with, and are much harder to ignore.

Epson Stylus Photo 1400 Printer

I needed a new "Super B" (13 inch by 19 inch) printer, so I bought an Epson Stylus 1400 Claria Photo Printer.

Fast, quiet, and just the right size for the space my tiny little Manhattan apartment will allow. (The Epson R2400 would have been too big.)

So far: I'm impressed. It's fast, whisper quiet, and is producing great prints. Not a bad price, either.

First Amendment Rally

Shooting video for a project, I went to a First Amendment rally in Union Square. The key issue: proposed new regulations on photography in New York. More on this soon.

In Union Square

Man runs under giant American flag, Union Square, July 27, 2007.

Photo Chick, Episode One

The Photo Chick explains how to avoid flash overexposure.

A Tough Week for Volvos and Renaults

The most amazing account of a recent disaster in France is posted here.

No, not the Tour de France itself -- but the incredibly true adventures of the Reuters photographers covering the Tour....

What happened, it appears, is that while the vehicle was cruising along at about 60 kph ahead of the pack, awaiting an arrival of disks from the motorcycles, the Renault’s turbo caught fire, sending a ball of fire from the front right-hand side along the underside of the vehicle. Within seconds the car was completely engulfed in flames. Thierry Roge, driving, managed to grab his camera bag on the seat beside him and jump out. Ian, seated at our custom made desk in the back, baled out as the car slowed and immediately tried to remove as many personal bags as possible from the back door of the vehicle.

Eric Gaillards computer bag was hurled out first, Ian’s personal bag was next. But the personal bags were very big and heavy and he was only able to throw them about two meters away. Within seconds the heat was too intense to stay anywhere near the vehicle and he had to back off and as the raging fire spat large flaming pieces of burning plastic as far as the few bags he had saved. Thierry and Ian had no choice but to watch helplessly as the burning plastic sparks set their bags on fire just meters out of reach.

Warning: contains graphic images of burning 300mm F2.8 lenses.

Round Up The Usual Suspects

The Guardian has a very interesting piece by Ian Jack: "The documentary has always been a confection based on lies":

The 1990s saw a succession of controversies about invention in documentaries - Driving School, The Clampers, The Connection (in which drug runners weren't in fact running drugs) - which produced the same kind of hand-wringing, if not quite the quantity of it, that this month overtook the BBC.

According to Michael Grade, too many young people in television have "not been trained properly, they don't understand that you do not lie to audiences at any time, in any show".The BBC's director-general says it must "never deceive the public". But the documentary is a confection and often built on a series of small lies.

Well worth a read.

Personally, I'm not bothered when someone disputes that either documentary or photography can deliver "truth." I do kinda resent the "confection" bit, however.

"Command Z" Followup: Camera Tossing

At the end of May, the "Command Z" exhibition I co-curated came quietly to an end. I was busy trying to finish a short film and to make it through my last term in school -- ever -- so I didn't get a chance to write much on the excellent work in that show.

For example, Ryan Gallagher organized an amazing online component of "camera toss" photographs. His post Camera Toss (The Blog): Command-Z Concludes... details what went into this, and has some incredible images you'll want to see....

Frugal Traveler: American Road Trip, Week 10

I've really enjoyed editing the Frugal Traveler episodes this summer.

This was week 10 of 12. Each short piece, so far, has offered a different editing challenge, stretching my abilities and my understanding. And all have been done under time pressure. It's been a really great class in real-world documentary production.

So what have I learned? Well, a lot about pacing. When I started this series, my tendency was to strip the edit down as much as possible -- to get from here to there without "wasting" time. The first discovery, for me, was that loosening the pace just a bit as one action completes and another starts may give the audience a chance to experience and feel -- and is usually worthwhile time.

This week's episode forced me to think about that further, and you'll notice several moments that read as a chance for the main character to reflect on his situation. By extension, we (as audience) may experience this reflection as well, if we choose to....

Frugal Traveler: American Road Trip
(Week 10: Fort Collins, Colorado) 4:57
July 25, 2007

Why Black and White?

I'm sometimes asked why I like black and white photography. One answer may be found in the photograph above: the tuxedo was lavender.

Errol Morris On Photography

My favorite documentary filmmaker, Errol Morris, blogging about the nature of photography:

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Pictures are supposed to be worth a thousand words. But a picture unaccompanied by words may not mean anything at all. Do pictures provide evidence? And if so, evidence of what? And, of course, the underlying question: do they tell the truth?

(Please note: the link goes to a "Times Select" feature.)

Live From Peru

Profluence Productions member Maya is posting about her documentary filmmaking trip to Peru over at Inkaland.

"with 2 tapes of good material and 2 stomachs full of papas and cuy, we headed back to the highway to find a collectivo to take us home. many other people were there to do the same thing and there was nothing in sight. there's a lot of dust in this country. there's a fine layer of it on everything. it lines your nose and coats your mouth. it gets kicked up by buses and so we sat there gathering dust and the sun began toasting the tops of our heads and still nothing was coming along the road."

Slowish Versus Fastish

I've been a fan of Michael David Murphy's 2point8 site for a long while. He's just posted a note about changing the focus of his site:

"The world may not need another online photo magazine, but I’m considering turning this space into something more polished and focused - a little less bloggy - a space for great streetish photography with a critical, editorial vision."

I'll keep watching and I expect he'll do a great job of it. It brings up a point I've been thinking about for a while, however: the significance of speed.

Museums are slow, with shows staying in place for months. Pure photoblogs are fastish, generally posting a photo a day. A number of fastish sites use more of a shoot-and-dump strategy, going to a party or event and posting a gallery of 20 photos or so the next day. And some sites, especially those with multiple photographers, have moved to a pace of multiple posts each day. With RSS readers and subscription sites increasing in popularity, viewers can even more-or-less keep up with the onslaught of images and the avalanche of words about images.

I'm left wondering about each format, however, and I get the sense that there may be an issue of scale here. In almost any photography class, the issue of how large a photograph should be will arise, and after some experience most people get the sense that a number of factors can "tell us" how big to print a particular image (or about other issues of presentation). Some images should be large for best effect, some small.

I think a similar thing happens with Web presentation -- not necessarily regarding size but frequency and significance.

I'm definitely a fan of images in larger units. I love single photographs, of course, but I find more significance, sophistication and interest in small portfolios or sequences of images. Yet the Web has, so far, seemed to hold a grudge against anything but the single image. While it is easy to make a Web gallery, or focus on project or portfolio presentation (Zone Zero is based on the idea), there is something about the medium that seems to push for the single impressive image. Flickr is never used for sequenced images, after all, but posting of single images (or all the images) from a shoot. Blogs are structurally set up to facilitate posting one image at a time.

One of my students presented work in book form this term, and I remembered I love that format. Because you hold a book close, an image that is physically small reads as large and detailed. Because (often) each image is given its own page, significance is granted to it. And because all the techniques of sequencing and storytelling are allowed, a well-planned photobook is generally more than the sum of its images taken alone. During my Saturday visit to ICP, just after my student showed her newly printed book (made through Shutterfly, I believe) we stumbled onto a table of similar books made by Stephen Shore. Freed from the type of pressure a traditionally-published photobook is heir to -- I'm staring at my copy of Garry Winogrand's "The Animals" and noticing it is not physically very different from these new books -- Shore's work seemed very at home in this format. I went back and forth from his "American Surfaces" book -- very carefully printed, packaged and marketed -- to these more "casual" books. I really like them as a way of working.

So how do you give the feeling of a small book to online presentation? What speed should it be?

International Center of Photography

I met up with students from my Seriously Fun Photography course (held at Hunter College Continuing Education) for a visit to International Center of Photography. The current shows include:

Biographical Landscape:
The Photography of Stephen Shore, 1969-79

Let Your Motto Be Resistance:
African American Portraits

Amelia Earhart:
Image & Icon

Chim: Photographs by David Seymour,
Selections from George Eastman House

Well worth the trip, as always.

Above: a view of 43rd Street as ICP students conduct a photo shoot.

News Flash

I've posted a photo from my recent wedding over on New York Portraits.

Haiku

CFoA (Certified Friend of Actualities) haikugirl has given this blog a very nice shout out. (Since our goal is to gain RSS subscribers and blog readers, that's a very good thing.) After blushing, I wrote a haiku about it:

looking at the Web
recognize my own name's shape
immodest nature

Then again, perhaps writing in verse isn't necessarily the best way to extend our reach. If it turns out to be popular, however, be prepared for future posts in iambic pentameter....

Easton, New Hampshire

A casual snapshot from last Sunday. (Photo by Caroline Barber.)