With consumer video devices now selling for very little money (some mp4 recorders can be had for under $100), everyone is a director, producer, star. Go to youtube.com and you'll find any number of videos, some good, some not so good. And yet they all have one thing in common - the video look.
Video is great when you want to capture memories, special events, that sort of thing. It can be very durable (I have some good video shot in 1989, and some other video short in 1984). It's convenient in all kinds of ways - recording, playback, and editing thanks to the digital age.
But when it comes to going that bit further - to replace actual film with video, you run into a host of challenges. As mentioned before, video has a particular look about it that is very different from film. So can video cameras be used for making movies? The short answer is - yes, to a point.
Video is very different from film - the trick is to somehow make the video look like film. Some cameras such as the Canon HV-20 shoot in film's native 24p mode (24 progressive frames per second, just like the cinema). This is one part of the equation but, oddly enough, is not the most important part. This will reproduce the slight stutter that is probably the most general difference between film and video - video is overly smooth, in my opinion. But shooting at 24 frames per second won't reproduce the texture of the shot - this is where depth of field comes in.
You've seen the shots many times - the foreground subject is in focus while the background is blurred, yes? Surprisingly, in this digital age of HD cams and hi-tech editing computers, the effect simply can't be achieved with most video cameras. Some approximation can be achieved using zoom from a distance, this tends to be impractical, and while the final result looks similar to the desired effect, it is flat and disproportionate. Thus the real solution is to adapt a 35mm optical system onto a standard video camera.
There are various sources of information on the net, but the designs come down to three basic flavors - static, vibrating, and rotating. I'm presently working on a static design that can be converted to the vibrating type with little effort.
Step 1: Obtain macro extension tubes (from Ebay)
Step 2: Decide on the lens type (Nikon, Canon, Minolta, etc.)
Because I already had an old Canon AE-1 with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, I decided to use the FD type mount as my starting point.
Step 3: Purchase the appropriate adapter.
The macro extension tubes are designed for the Canon EOS mount, and my lens used the old FD mount. Thus I needed to purchase an adapter so the FD lens would work.
Step 4: The "focus screen"
This is perhaps the most critical part of the DoF adapter.
The focus screen I currently am using came from the Canon AE-1 and has a focus assist in the center that shows up in the video. The Canon Ee-A (pictured) and Ee-S screens are completely blank. The Canon Ee-A will yield brighter images while the Ee-S is easier to focus.
Step 5: The "achromat"
This is a lens needed to allow most camcorders to focus properly at close distance. I tried three different types, finally settling on a 37mm +10 diopter designed to thread onto my specific camcorder.
An alternative I tried was to use the objective lenses from an old pair of binoculars placed front to back to avoid barrel distortion. The problem I ran into is the lenses were too old - scratches, pits, and any other abnormality showed up in the video and just looked bad.
Another alternative used a 0.6x WA lens. This produced crystal clear video with minimal barrel distortion, but it introduced too much color separation (blue and yellow fringes) - the same problem I had with the lens when trying to use it as a WA lens.
Step 6: Piecing it together
The overall concept is fairly straightforward - use the 35mm lens to project an image onto the translucent focus screen. The camcorder then videotapes the image on the focus screen. And yet it's not quite as easy as it sounds. For one thing, the camera must be zoomed in on the focus screen to get a full frame. For another, the video image will be upside down and reversed that requires "fixing" in post.
Sony HC1 HDV, no DoF adapter. Note the background and foreground are at the same focus, thus there is little actual depth.
Sony HC1 HDV, no DoF adapter. Note the background and foreground are at the same focus, thus there is little actual depth.
Sony HC1 HDV, no DoF adapter. Note the background and foreground are at the same focus, thus there is little actual depth.
Sony HC1 HDV, no DoF adapter. Note the background and foreground are at the same focus, thus there is little actual depth.
Additional parts I've ordered since undertaking this project include:
Canon FD 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 Macro zoom lens
