Are you talking about when they focus on a subject? If I'm thinking about the same thing you are they're simple manually adjusted the cameras focus.

--QD Jones

like you see them during conversations alot like they will focus on the main person and the person they are talking to lets say behind them is blurred.

I think you're talking about manual focus.

--QD Jones

You're talking about "Depth Of Field". This changes with aperture size.Think of the camera aperture like the pupil in your eye, the larger the pupil the more light gets let in, the smaller the less light. In camera terms a large aperture has a low F# ie F22 is very small and doesn't let much light in, F2 lets lots of light in. The smaller the F# the less the more depth of field (or maybe I have it backwards) anyway if you want more of the effect where the subject is in focus and the background is blurred you want a low F# if you have a high F# both will be in focus. Hope thats not too confusing. I think only the higher end cameras have aperture control. I have a cheap canon camcorder and you can accomplish this by using the manual focus (I assume this is what Knotty meant).

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Yes this is depth of field (DOF) and the rule is this: The longer the lens, the more depth of field you can get. This is achieved through manual focus and is difficult to do with minidv cameras unless you have a 35mm adapter which is made for the prosumer and pro cameras. An example of this is the guerilla35. If you do not have a long lens for depth of field, you need to place the background very far away from your subject and then manually zoom in on your subject. The farther away, the more depth of field effect you will get. I have seen some amazing results from a 35 mm adapter on an XL2 as well as a DVX100a.
a way to do this in post production is to matte and rotoscope the close objects and then blur the part of the scene not matted.

Matthew Sconce

thank you everyone

Layman's terms:
1) Open the F-Stop all the way.
2) Set the camera to AV (Aperture value) this will auto set the shutter speed according to your F-stop, giving you a balanced shot.
3) If it is still too bright use a ND filter.
4) Depending on the focal length of the lens you may need to back up and zoom in to achieve the best (technically worst) DOF.
I often leave my XL-1 in AV mode and zoom in on the subject. It makes for some very cool looking shots. Depending on what kind of lens you have (its hard with the XL lenses because there is no set stop point on the focus ring) you can Rack focus between two subjects (where its focused on one subject then changes to another subject right before your eyes)
Good luck.

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