End of the shallow DOF obsession? Is 2x crop more cinematic?

[Andrew Reid]

I was thinking the other day about how almost all lenses look best wide open.

So if it's a full frame F1.4 lens you see most clearly the rendering it has wide open rather than say, F5.6.

The advantage of a 2x crop sensor is that you get to shoot wide open and see more detail in backgrounds.

You take, say a 10mm F2.0 micro four thirds lens, it has the look of F2 but the deeper DOF as well so the setting isn't completely creamed out. If you have a really beautiful setting, you don't want it to be invisible and just bokeh in every shot.

So you could stop your full frame lens down to F4 or even F8 but then the whole character of the lens is lost and they all look uniformly pretty much the same beyond F4.

I think it begs a comparison... I might do one soon.

Take a Super 16mm 26mm F1.1 lens on a GH6, and compare it to a 50mm F1.2 on full frame, and also the same 50mm but stopped down to F2.2 to match the equivalent aperture of the S16mm lens at F1.1 wide open.

On the otherhand, the advantage of full frame might reveal itself more clearly when the focus distance is further out, and the subject remains a little bit separated from the environment, whereas on the 2x crop camera they'd be on the same focus plane, 'infinity' might start from about 3m outwards.

I understand the appeal of medium format, 65mm, large format cinema cameras, full frame, and so on...

Just think that 2x crop is not without merit and can even serve the story better in many cases.

[IronFilm]

Let's compromise and meet in the middle, and admit 1.5x is the "most cinematic". 

[Andrew Reid]

All depends on the lenses really doesn't it... Canon Dream Lens, you wouldn't use that on 2x crop, would lose the whole point of it.

And there are c-mount lenses that make a lot of modern full frame lenses look flat and boring.

So every format has cinematic lenses, but the point is that with the larger formats you have more subject isolation, which could suit the shot or not, it all depends on the scene.

[TomTheDP]

I have noticed that some very soft lenses designed for 35mm stills camera are too soft on M43 but look acceptably sharp on S35 or even better on full frame.

[stephen]

Using lenses wide open at f1.4 for shallow DOF is a recent trend in photography or even as you say obsession. Fully agree. It was not the case 20-30 years ago. People are lazy. Instead of using some additional lighting or putting the model in front of a nice background they prefer to blur the background. I don't find this always appealing or attractive but it is the current fashion trend.

In cinema most used aperture for super35 format is f2.8 which corresponds in DOF to f4 for a full frame format. One of the reasons is the fact that is quite difficult to manually pull focus with smaller apertures. Now that we have LIDAR technology this may change. As you said the other reason is that in cinema they prefer and want to show the environment and surroundings as well.

Roger Deakins in an interview shared some technical details (camera and lenses) used to shoot 1917. He basically confirms that for day light he used f4 and even f5.6. He says that he used Alexa LF (FF) for shallow DOF. This is interesting as it shows that different people have different views of what shallow DOF is. 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpCD67BEjiA

My problem with m43 are the lenses. Focal length changes if I want to use vintage lenses or some other great optics from Zeiss or Nikon or Canon on m43. Those lenses are designed for FF. I can’t get the character of a russian 50/58mm Helios for example as it completely different focal length on m43. I used m43 in the past but moved to FF when BRAW became available with External recorder to Panasonic S Series. It gives me access to huge number or lenses - new or vintage and just simplifies my lens choice. For video close the aperture to f4 most of the times and that's it. In low light I may open it to f2.8 or simply bump ISO to higher value. FF sensor compensates for lower light and more closed aperture with better ISO performance (low noise in high ISO)

[kye]

I think a key piece of the puzzle is the human side - how we see and how our brains interpret what we see.

Our eyes have an aperture range and focus just like a camera lens, so anything that is outside of this range isn't going to look natural.  

Images with slightly too shallow a DoF for the perceived subject distance will seem un-natural, but might be what we see if we have been poisoned or drugged and our pupils dilate beyond their normal range.  If you go shallower than this range and it's just going to look completely wrong.  It's AN aesthetic, but it might not match your DESIRED aesthetic.

Our pupils dilate in low light conditions, so it's going to seem more plausible to open the aperture a bit in low-light situations.  Our eyes do adapt the gain from our rods/cones so shooting with a fixed ISO isn't necessary as there is some flex there.  In very low light we switch from the cones (which are the colour-sensing ones) to the rods (which are monochrome) which is why in very-low light we can't see much / any colour.  Reducing saturation in colour grading might help in making scenes set in very low light feel more natural.

Our pupils also dilate when we are looking at something we really like / love, and our eyes can adjust the gain down a bit to compensate, so opening up the aperture for romantic scenes is also appropriate.

The other non-DoF element is in colour.  We tend to remember scenes as being more colourful than they actually were, and I would theorise that this effect is greater if the memories were positive ones, so this could also be taken into consideration during post-production.

I think a large part of film-making is using the equipment in ways that deliberately trigger the right emotional notes and psychological connotations, so knowing what these are and using them to your advantage is going to help your work be interpreted correctly, and the piece be more engaging.

[fuzzynormal]

4 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

lenses designed for 35mm stills camera are too soft on M43 but look acceptably sharp on S35 or even better on full frame.

My old Nikkor lens is like this.  I can't take it to 1.4 without the halo'ing and chroma aberration, but that stuff is mitigated when I put it on my full frame 5D.

That said, not really a fan of FF for video.  It still hits me as just too weird when it's super shallow DOF.

[MrSMW]

6 hours ago, IronFilm said:

Let's compromise and meet in the middle, and admit 1.5x is the "most cinematic". 

Ha, I was about to say the same, this having been my main approach for around 5-6 years now.

But I should add, more by default than design based on certain camera choices.

Some would argue, I should have chosen my cameras based around other factors and not let this be a default, but overall, for me, it’s about balance and compromise not outright ‘what I’d do in an ideal scenario with the necessary funds’.

On the topic of SDOF, I have always been a fan. I have always liked and been drawn to a shallower DOF throughout my 23+ year career in photography and 13+ in video.

I’ve never been a fan of hardcore uber-shallow DOF in my own work, but probably more because I have rarely owned anything faster than f1.4 lenses in full-frame terms.

For the last few years, I have shoot FF stills and a mix of FF and S35 video, but in 2024, reducing the amount of S35 dramatically as I am moving away from using so much 50% slow mo in my work which due to my kit choices, has meant using S35.

I’ve decided I prefer the full frame look and that coming from 6k, so that’s where I am going.

Lenses/DOF, with S35, I was mostly shooting f2/2.8/4 and I will continue to do the same but with even less apparent DOF using FF instead of S35.

[MrSMW]

3 hours ago, kye said:

Images with slightly too shallow a DoF for the perceived subject distance will seem un-natural

 

3 hours ago, kye said:

The other non-DoF element is in colour

It depends on the project/desired outcome, so with say a documentary or talking head piece or certain commercial pieces, something closer to real life might be more appropriate, but for someone like me who shoots weddings, we might want to slightly distort or ‘enhance’ reality.

We might want to do this by pushing a slightly narrower DOF and tweak those colours just enough to no longer be ‘real’ but at the same time, because our eyes (brains) adjust to other realities fairly quickly, these ‘not real life’ tweaks become reality.

There’s pushing things well beyond reality and then there is capturing reality as accurately as possible, with everything else in between and it comes down to personal preference or client wishes.

My personal preference is ‘slightly beyond reality but not so far that it jars’. 

It’s all very subjective of course…

[Nikkor]

You can buy old zoom lenses for this without having to crop.

[MrSMW]

One other factor to consider of course is how sensor size affects light gathering capability and for my needs why I draw the line at APSC/S35 and prefer full frame sensors.

With 4/3rds and smaller, you generally are forced to shoot as wide open and on as fast as you can get primes, especially in lower light.

I'd rather have the option to choose...so 6k 30p is my new default which also allows me to do a 80% slight slow mo often referred to as 'the dreamy look' where it's only slightly slower than reality, - again within my ethos of 'slightly enhanced reality' alongside a shallower DOF and tweaked colours, ie, no extremes of anything.

[Eric Calabros]

Once a landscape photographer said all I want is a 90mm f/4 to be optically flawless at f/4, but nobody makes that, because they think nobody would pay good money for that.

You can always design a relatively compact full frame lens to show cinematic character at f/4. But the industry is focusing on "general purpose" approach with high profit margin. 

[sanveer]

2x, 1.5x and No Crop means nothing. There are different zooms and prime to cover every focal length. 

I remember not too long ago, I used to watch TLC hedonistically, and hog on meat and drink like a camel and tiger mix, thereby turning into a fat pig. Many of the shows were presumably shot on the Canon 5D, and many of them were out of focus, or the depth of field was quite shallow, and thus most things appeared to be out of focus.

 

23 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Take a Super 16mm 26mm F1.1 lens on a GH6, and compare it to a 50mm F1.2 on full frame, and also the same 50mm but stopped down to F2.2 to match the equivalent aperture of the S16mm lens at F1.1 wide open.

On the otherhand, the advantage of full frame might reveal itself more clearly when the focus distance is further out, and the subject remains a little bit separated from the environment, whereas on the 2x crop camera they'd be on the same focus plane, 'infinity' might start from about 3m outwards.

Very Interesting. A slightly faster lens, at a shorter focal length may theoretically remove the depth of field advantage of Full Frame, whereas it would be a lot more difficult for FF to get the wider depth of field of smaller sensors. 

[markr041]

I wish people would give a link to a film,  stream series, TV show, wedding video etc. they like the look of, then maybe explain what was used to achieve it ("1917" was one example).

I will commit: I like the look of Ted Lasso. Colorful without the teal and yellow/orange, no hiding of backgrounds, high resolution (delivered 4K with no mist filter). But still a bit hyper reality. The best part was: subject isolation. This series was shot on an ARRI LF, which has a sensor bigger than FF. There was no super blurred backgrounds, just enough DOF for subject isolation and seeing what was around. Some close ups, of course.

I also like the look of The Searchers - big widescreen and wide angle with seemingly infinite DOF. A look relevant to the setting, should not work for London! Not a controversial choice.

In neither of these do I think "lens character" mattered, so much as focal length and aperture (and sensor size for the digital one). But maybe I missed the subtelties.

[EduPortas]

On 10/19/2023 at 9:46 AM, Andrew Reid said:

I was thinking the other day about how almost all lenses look best wide open.

[...]

Modern fast lenses were originally requested by journalists. Specially zooms.

At large apertures you solve two problems:

1) Poor lighting 

2) Unpleasing backgrounds usually encountered at press conferences, the average street, and most offices. 

The "cinema look" was not even a thing in video up until about 2010, since most video productions were a variation of journalism: documentaries, long form news stories, tv broadcasts. All of those requiere deep DOF about 99% of the time.

As you say: if you know what you're doing you actually want to show the background of your shot. Say, asking your subject to stand for the interview in front of the coffee shop were most patrons are visible vs. asking the interviewy to stand in front of a wall of the coffee shop.

So the question is: ¿does this particular background need to be softened or not?

 

 

[fuzzynormal]

M43 @f2.8 is a nice sweet-spot DOF for me, especially on vintage lenses.  Soft, but not too much out of focus, ya know?

[kye]

12 hours ago, markr041 said:

I wish people would give a link to a film,  stream series, TV show, wedding video etc. they like the look of, then maybe explain what was used to achieve it ("1917" was one example).

I will commit: I like the look of Ted Lasso. Colorful without the teal and yellow/orange, no hiding of backgrounds, high resolution (delivered 4K with no mist filter). But still a bit hyper reality. The best part was: subject isolation. This series was shot on an ARRI LF, which has a sensor bigger than FF. There was no super blurred backgrounds, just enough DOF for subject isolation and seeing what was around. Some close ups, of course.

I also like the look of The Searchers - big widescreen and wide angle with seemingly infinite DOF. A look relevant to the setting, should not work for London! Not a controversial choice.

In neither of these do I think "lens character" mattered, so much as focal length and aperture (and sensor size for the digital one). But maybe I missed the subtelties.

Specific examples are useful.

The Tokina Vista lenses on Ted Lasso are relatively neutral but still do have a bit of character.  Here is a comparison of them vs the ARRI Signatures nearest focal lengths and apertures.  

(Click to view image in proper resolution)

I see differences in colour cast, contrast, background separation, and even aspect ratio perhaps?

All lenses exhibit SOME character, although in the context of cinema, rather than TV, these lenses are relatively neutral.

One thing to be aware of is how quickly we adapt to a look.  Our eyes and visual system is incredibly adaptable, so much so that a significant element in colour grading is the design of the colour grading suite and workflows and processes so that your eyes continually have a neutral reference and so they don't gradually drift over the course of a project.  With lenses etc there is no neutral reference.

One thing that is interesting to look at is the VFX breakdown videos from shows like The Mandalorian where they show the process of making the 3D objects look as real as possible, then applying the same lens characteristics as the production used, which often has a significant effect aesthetically.

Lens character is a tool that can be used to reinforce or undermine the creative intent of the film.  It won't make or break your production, but it's available to you so why not use it?

[kye]

23 hours ago, MrSMW said:

It depends on the project/desired outcome, so with say a documentary or talking head piece or certain commercial pieces, something closer to real life might be more appropriate, but for someone like me who shoots weddings, we might want to slightly distort or ‘enhance’ reality.

We might want to do this by pushing a slightly narrower DOF and tweak those colours just enough to no longer be ‘real’ but at the same time, because our eyes (brains) adjust to other realities fairly quickly, these ‘not real life’ tweaks become reality.

There’s pushing things well beyond reality and then there is capturing reality as accurately as possible, with everything else in between and it comes down to personal preference or client wishes.

My personal preference is ‘slightly beyond reality but not so far that it jars’. 

It’s all very subjective of course…

Yeah, that's what I said in my post.

[kye]

Perhaps the most significant aspect of this whole thing, which is the elephant in the room, is that all movies and TV and videos are a fiction.

Anything scripted is a fictional reality of course.  

Documentaries are a fiction too, taking hours of interviews, b-roll, on-location and historic footage and editing them down to a hopefully coherent string of snippets is a radical departure from the reality.  In documentary editing they talk about "finding the story in the edit" - if I go out my front door into reality I don't have to "find the story in reality" and even if I believed that made sense how could it possibly occur?  

Wedding films are so romanticised that most wouldn't even call them a documentary, despite being made exclusively of filmed-on-location non-scripted cinema-verite.

Even the walk-around videos shot by @markr041 are a long way from reality.  If I was actually present in these locations then I could go wherever I want, talk to whoever I want, etc - the set of choices of each video represents one single possibility from an infinite number of creative choices, just like every edited film is one of an infinite number of possible edits that could be made.  These films are edited in real-time, moment-by-moment, and cannot help but include an almost infinite number of creative choices.

In this context, ALL choices are creative choices to contribute to the final film.  

So what does this mean?

Well, if all work is fiction (of some sort or other) then every choice is a creative one.  The choice of a high-resolution aberration-free lens is a choice just like any other.  If I am shooting something modern then a modern lens is appropriate, if I am shooting something gritty then a gritty lens is appropriate, if I am shooting something vintage then a vintage lens is appropriate.

But here's the kicker....  if everything is a fantasy, to some degree or other, then there is no such thing as a neutral choice.  Clean lenses have just as much look as anything else, it's just an absence of technical aberrations.

[PannySVHS]

3 hours ago, kye said:

Lens character is a tool that can be used to reinforce or undermine the creative intent of the film.  It won't make or break your production, but it's available to you so why not use it?

It can break something and shift the viewers attention on someones sharply rendered mustache hairs instead of staying on their eyes. A medicore production can fail even more.

GX85 with its additional slight crop in 4k was a blessing for som C mount lenses. Rendering of some of these gems are just a sight to behold. S16, mft and S35 are my favorite formats for the choice and kind of lenses I am using. FF will be interesting too. Keep em all coming!:)