Talk:Deep focus

Citizen Kane and amateur photography

Most early (and consumer camera made) fotos/movies are deep focus imho (as amateur cameras don't allow to produce narrow depth-of-fields), therefore I wonder a movie as young and late as Citizen Kane popularized deep focus. --Abdull 23:25, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

True. But most amateur/home movies do not exploit that deep focus in a way that Kane does. Welles uses deep space in addition to deep focus. That is, there is significant action going on in the foreground plane and background plane simultaneously. In contrast, most home movies record action on a single plane--like Junior's birthday party being all shot in medium shot or a pan over a distant mountain range from a family vacation. The earliest "professional" movies made by the likes of Lumiere brothers also have deep focus (due to small apertures), but, again, there's little use of deep space. --Jeremy Butler 12:14, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Wrong Explanation for Deep focus on different formats

I am sorry, but the explanation for deep focus being in relation to the resolution of the medium is just plain wrong. By that logic, ISO 400 film stock would have less DOF than ISO 100 film stock. Or an 2k sensor less than one with 4k. It all depends on the size of the sensor or film and is explained here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_of_field#DOF_vs._format_size . This is even quoted in Dion Beebes comment on Miamy Vice. Could someone with better english skills than me rewrite that? Cheers, Joris —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.95.220.10 (talk) 03:56, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Rules of the Game

I think the _Rules of the Game_ image is a bad example of shallow focus. For one thing, using it will confuse readers, since the movie is famous for its use of deep focus photography. But I'd also call the shot in question a deep focus shot, and Alexander Sesonske's commentary on the Criterion DVD agrees with me. It's true that Schumacher isn't perfectly clear in the screen capture shown, but he appears somewhat more clear in motion on the Criterion DVD. What's more, one must remember that the negative to _Rules of the Game_ was lost during the war, so the image isn't as good as we could hope. But most of all, any shot in which we notice something in the background (and if you watch it in motion, you definitely notice Schumacher), doesn't qualify as a shallow-focus shot. Much better would be something like the comparison halfway down at <http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/A-Robert.R.Lauer-1/Corrigan.html>. (No idea of the copyright status of that). Amolad 04:15, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there is some potential confusion for readers skimming this article (and the one on shallow focus), but I also think that this screenshot illustrates a crucial difference between deep focus and what André Bazin and others call composition in depth. The latter is a function of mise-en-scene, determined by how the actors are positioned on the set. The former is a function of attributes of the camera (aperture, focal length, camera-to-object distance). Renoir composes this scene in depth--as he does many others in Rules of the Game--but he does not shoot it with deep focus.

Even though Rules does have a reputation for deep focus, there are many composition-in-depth shots in it that use shallow focus. Here's another example: http://www.tcf.ua.edu/classes/Jbutler/T340/RulesOfTheGame/Rules_13.jpg

If you're looking for "pure" examples of deep focus and composition in depth, you're better off with Welles or Wyler--as can be seen here: http://www.tcf.ua.edu/classes/Jbutler/T440/VisualStyleIllustrations02.htm

Thus, I must disagree with your comment that "any shot in which we notice something in the background (...), doesn't qualify as a shallow-focus shot." And, for the sake of precision, I believe it's important to maintain the distinction between deep focus and composition in depth. However, if you're looking for an example of shallow focus without composition in depth, you can find some in the bokeh article (but that is for still and not motion photography). --Jeremy Butler 12:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

The picture is a very bad example of shallow focus. First of all, Rules of the Game is one of the most famous deep focus movies in history, so when the film is listed as further down in the article as such it is confusing that a still from this film is an example of shallow focus. The person in the background may not be in crystal clear focus, but he is still acceptable sharp. The whole point of having these pictures in the article is so readers understand the difference between deep and shallow focus. To better explain it, why don't use a still from a shallow focus movie like Michael Clayton? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.48.166.197 (talk) 08:47, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Removal of "Principle Films"

I removed the "Principle [sic] Films" listing because it implies that most shots in those films exemplify deep focus. Many of those films do have striking deep-focus shots, but they aren't dominated by deep focus. (Also, the list needed to be properly formatted to fit Wikipedia style.) --Jeremy Butler 16:42, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Explanation of the Technology

I think this article ought to have a technical explanation of how deep-focus is achieved. I'm sure the information is available on the Internet, but if we're going to have a Wiki on the subject, there should certainly be more than what we're given. Which is just about zero. Gspong 01:07, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

I've put a "How to" on the shallow focus page

The effect can be obtained by a wider aperture, a close viewpoint, or using a longer focal length lens from a greater distance. A tilt lens can be used, in the opposite way to that used to increase depth of focus. There are even adapters that allow lenses from 35mm cine cameras to be used on smaller film and digital formats.

just do the opposite !(Or use the half-close-up lens trick)

--195.137.93.171 (talk) 00:29, 18 March 2010 (UTC)

Star Trek Example

I take issue with the two Star Trek screenshots as examples of how different formats lend themselves to deep focus differently. For this to be a proper comparison, the f-stops, amount of lighting on the sets, and the focal lengths of both lenses should all be given. If one were to go just by the captions, you'd think that depth of field was inherently related to the area of the film stock itself, and not the focal length of the lens. When I read this example, I was very confused. It should be a clearer that the inverse relationship between the size of film format and depth of field exists only because smaller formats use shorter lenses, or am I missing something here? Also, the explanation given on the depth of field page is not very clear either, but then again that article deals with very technical aspects of DOF. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.177.234.154 (talk) 01:13, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

New Images

SchuminWeb -- the salt shaker image doesn't seem to be the right one for "shallow focus" -- both shakers are fairly well focused. Perhaps something like this might be a better example (demonstrating f/5 versus f/32): -- Autopilot (talk) 12:33, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Excellent example omitted.

In many pages on Wikipedia there is discussion about what is an appropriate number of examples; and additions are often refused because it is considered that there would be too many examples. Having said that, Kubrick/Clarke's "2001: A Space Odyssey" is probably well worth including, because not only does the "Through the Star Gate" component of the film use this effect very heavily, some might even say "to extremes", Kubrick even went to the trouble of having a special slit-focus camera built for the occasion to allow the massive depth of field to occur. This is well documented in the book "The Making of 2001", where there are even pictures of the special camera. 101.174.209.37 (talk) 09:34, 4 December 2014 (UTC)

Photographic?

It seems that the article is strongly, almost exclusively, focussed on "Deep focus" as a cinematic term and technique. Nothing wrong with that, but "photographic" should therefore logically be removed from the intro. I've already done some simple tidy-ups, but this seems a bigger step, so I'll leave it to others. Snori (talk) 00:52, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Example list

I added The Rules of the Game to this list. I was very surprised that it wasn't on the list, since it is often the film that film historians talk about when they talk about deep focus. I would think that there should be some criteria for including a film on the list, and I would propose that if a film's wikipedia article mentions deep focus being significant, that would be sufficient. If there is no mention, some external reliable source should mention the significance of deep focus for inclusion. -- SamuelWantman 09:07, 27 July 2018 (UTC)