From the course: Video Foundations: Cameras and Shooting

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Shooting with shallow depth of field

Shooting with shallow depth of field

From the course: Video Foundations: Cameras and Shooting

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Shooting with shallow depth of field

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The term Shallow Depth of Field refers to the visual effect where your subject is in sharp focus, but the background and foreground are soft focused or vice-versa. It's a very pleasing and dramatic cinematic effect that goes a long way to making video look more like film, which more naturally has a Shallow Depth of Field. The term Depth of the Field simply refers to how much or how little of the picture in front of and behind the subject is in focus. I'd like to tell people to think a Shallow Depth of Field has an invisible plane of focus, may be one to two feet thick between the camera and the background. As you turn the Focus Ring that plane of focus stays the exact same size, but it shifts position closer or further away from the camera so that whatever is in that area is in sharp focus, but everything before or after it remains blurry. In addition to simply looking cool, using Shallow Depth of Field keeps your audience's attention focused on the subject and blurs out distracting…

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