Focus, oh focus, this is something you’ll have to come to terms with in a major way because whichever hand you use to focus with, it’s going to get a serious workout now. You wanted shallow depth of field, you got it, now you have to come to terms with what that means for keeping your shots sharp and looking beautiful. Most likely you’ll be using conventional stills lenses for shooting video and not the new breed of manual primes now being developed for DSLRs. These are a fantastic investment but if you’re dipping a toe they won’t be for you. Let’s rewind… stills lenses are not designed to be used manually these days, not really. You can of course, and you can manually focus quite respectably but often you’ll find the focus action on a lens is pretty nasty to use. They’re designed to work with super duper auto focus systems and as a result they’re not great for human use. If you’re interested in knowing more about why, then check out Matthew Duclos’s blog here for a more detailed explanation. Professional focus pullers (they don’t really pull the focus these days, just turn a wheel) have had to retrain their instincts when working with DSLRs simply because the throw of the focus ring is so short compared to a traditional cine lens. Good focus pullers have such an uncanny instinct for when the shot’s in focus, without looking at a monitor it scares me sometimes, but they’re used to a nice long throw on the barrel. This means you can make micro adjustments the whole time without overcooking. Stills lenses have a much shorter throw which means your micro adjustments are actually much larger and you’re constantly tiptoeing in and out of focus. Most people want to shoot as shallow as possible because it just looks so nice but when your focal range is no more than a centimetre then it’s going to be tough. So prepare to struggle initially. Its fine if you’re on a tripod and only have to focus once, but try going handheld.
This is always a good test: Take a subject, ideally a person, and set your iris wide open so the shot’s nice and shallow. Start around ten feet away, focus up, then walk towards your subject trying to keep them perfectly in focus as you walk, all the way. Impossible? No. But if you can do that with traditional stills lens focus throws then you’re doing really well.
My experience with focus rings on stills lenses is that they tend to be fairly heavily damped which leads to torquing when you focus. This basically means your hand pulls the camera body with it a little bit when you turn the ring resulting in your horizons dutching over. Dutch – on the piss – not straight! Film cameras have traditionally featured what’s known as a follow focus, a geared mechanism that attaches to rails next to the camera. The focus ring rotates forward and back rather than laterally and basically locks into a gear on the barrel of the lens. With the advent of DOF adaptors many manufacturers now offer pretty cost-effective follow focus systems which allow you to achieve the same system at a fraction of the price of their 35mm counterparts. The follow focus systems for the most part attach to rails under the camera so you will need some kind of cheap rails system (check Shoot 35 or Redrock Micro for a cheap starting point), however I have found other systems that ingeniously use other solutions. You also need to fit lens gears to your lenses in order for them to work with the follow focus, and these consist of plastic rings that you simply attach to your focus ring with an elastic band, or a little screw device (my advice, use the elastic band). Manufacturers will sell you the gears with the follow focus. All the usual suspects make these and believe me it makes a massive difference to how well you can focus. If you’re at all serious about using your DSLR then I would seriously advise getting one. Shoot 35, Redrock Micro and Indikit make pretty good value systems but you can also check out the dFocus and the iDC follow focus. Essentially, with these bits of kit you get what you pay for. I have the Redrock Micro follow focus and it works fine though it does feature an annoying sliver of metal that gets caught on pretty much everything (though in the latest version of the unit this has gone and you can now configure hard stops on it, good times). Whatever you end up going for it’s so worth getting at least something, I can’t stress that enough.
The other issue with focus is that you are basically looking at a 3inch monitor and that simply isn’t big enough. Camcorders enjoy bigger screens, much deeper depth of field and one key feature that DSLRs lack: Peaking. Peaking is a focus aid that overlays a coloured reference to tell you where the edges are sharp (simply speaking, it’s a bit more complicated than that in reality). I use this religiously on cameras like the EX1 and you can very quickly tell where you’re in focus, even on the small screen. DSLRs, no such thing. Now, if you’re using a long lens then it’s actually pretty easy to tell where you’re focus lies, but if you’re on a 30mm or wider then you will start to struggle. This is simply because there’s much more information in the frame and the distances are much harder to judge. I’ve found myself struggling horribly with my Tokina 11-16 sometimes because, even though it’s a beautiful wide lens, it still exhibits a (relatively) shallow depth of field and that 3inch monitor is just too small to judge what’s in and what’s not.
So what’s the answer? Well, there’s two. The first is the much vaunted ‘viewfinder’ solution. This involves sticking an eyepiece over the screen to magnify the image and give you a much bigger image, right in front of your eye. There are a number of these on the market at wildly varying prices. Zacuto make the best known of these, the Z-Finder which is pretty pricey. It used to come only in a x3 magnification flavour but they’ve updated the range and brought out a whole bunch more which fit to the camera in different ways. LCDVF (2x) and Letus (4x) also make one and… well I bought the Z-Finder and I never use it. Well, that’s not true, I use it in bright sunlight when I absolutely have to see what I’m doing. I hate my Z-Finder. It was expensive, over-hyped and when I put it on my camera what did I discover? Well, the problem is this, the camera’s LCD screen is simply not high enough resolution to handle being blown up as large as the Z-Finder makes it. You end up with a washy, pixelly image that does nothing to make focussing easier. In fact, I find it harder to focus. Not only that but your image looks like ass. I hate shooting on it because the image looks terrible and I don’t trust anything I’m doing. I can’t really recommend one or the other because I think they’re all products for cameras that don’t exist yet. Once the screens become higher resolution (will they ever?) then they’ll come into their own, but right now save the money, do yourself a favour and put it towards a lens. Viewfinders are a waste of time.
So, what is the solution? Well, unfortunately it involves investing in something a bit more expensive. Fortunately however there’s a lot more competition in this market and the manufacturers are working very hard to bring new products to the table aimed at DSLR users. The answer is of course a monitor. Marshall, Ikan and Small HD all make products that you’ll want to take a look at. As someone who’s struggled through all the difficulties associated with shooting on DSLRs I have to say the investment in a monitor was a real turning point. Suddenly you can make an informed judgement about your shot, you can focus properly and, well it’s fun, and isn’t that the point? You’ll need a monitor with HDMI input and a mini-hdmi to hdmi cable. The HDMI connection is terrible as the cables are not really designed for the kind of abuse you get in the production environment and the cable will just fall out, a lot. You’ll also discover that the signal out of the camera is not a full 1080 signal but varies depending on what camera you’re using. The 5D has wretched monitor out capabilities as you buy it but the guys who made the Magic Lantern firmware are working on a 1080i output. The 7D is better and if you press ‘info’ a couple of times you’ll get a decent size picture, not full frame, but decent. Bizarrely, when you play footage back it fills the screen. Weirdness. Ideally you want a monitor that you can fit to a hotshoe mount adaptor and put on top of the camera, so go for one that’s not too heavy. There’s plenty of other ways of attaching a monitor though so don’t worry too much if you can find a great deal.
There are a number of different models from Ikan, Small HD and Marshall. I personally own the Marshall V-LCD70XP-HDMI which is at the pricey end of the scale, but it features peaking, an easy layout and you can fit Sony batteries (or whichever batteries you’d like) which will last you a very long time. My small exposure to SMALL HD was the DP1 which I didn’t like and which is really too heavy for the kind of work you do with DSLRs. The button layout is very peculiar as well, but they have now announced a smaller version, DP-SLR which looks like it ought to be a really great option, great resolution and just a great price. Small HD’s batteries are very low profile and nicely designed but they won’t last as long as the Sony ones. Ikan have also been busy developing good hi res monitors and they’re generally pretty well priced. I’d love to see the DP-SLR turn out to be a great product because I like the way the company have approached the job and they’re the little guys and I like that! For me the Marshall has just transformed the way I shoot and I really really enjoy it now.
Don’t despair, nothing on a DSLR is really designed for video, yet we make it work. It’s just that the focus becomes such an important consideration for shooting on DSLRs you really need to know what you’re getting into.
