Camera Focus effect PLEASE HELP?

Question

Okay so in a lot of movies I will see this really catchy focus effect, it's kind of like the soft focus effect you get with cameras. To be more specific, you'll have a person and he's seemingly far, and there will be a close person, and the far person will be blurry but the close person will be clear. Exactly like this video at 2:33 into the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&feature=endscreen&v=-aNj8KYn3-U

So please, can you tell me how you can make this effect? If you need a specific camera, what type? For that camera, how do you make that option? Thanks alot guys! I hope you understand what I'm trying to uncover here, it's very unclear but I know some of you will help me, thanks again!

Answer 1

What you just showed us in that video is actually called rack focus. It does involve a shallow depth of field and then switching focus from foreground to background. You can do this with about any professional level video camera if you have the proper equipment and a lot of know how.



But if you don't want to spend that kind of money and go to that sort of trouble, it's also very easy to do on the Sony SLT cameras. Here is an example of rack focus with the Sony SLT a55: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDACdkbtBGw



It's very simple on these cameras. All you have to do is adjust your settings for a shallow depth of field, start recording and then change the AF point from the foreground to the background. It's important to know that you can't do this with any true DSLR, only SLTs. You can probably get this same effect just as easily with a mirrorless like the Sony Nex or Panasonic G series too since they have the same sort of operation.

Answer 2

Using selective intensity of subject is less difficult whilst utilizing cameras with sensors which can be over 15 instances better than your one hundred HS. That signifies that you mainly don't seem to be going to get the style of shallow intensity of subject you're asking approximately with out a few critical paintings for your aspect and being capable to idiot the digital camera into utilizing vast open apertures with the zoom at its fullest achieve. There is a application that's an upload-directly to Photoshop CS5, Extended known as Lens Effects which expenses approximately $eighty. If you don't have already got Photoshop CS5, so that they can fee you a further $one million,000 except you're a scholar. You should purchase Photoshop CS5 within the scholar retailer for less than $2 hundred

Answer 3

The effect is called "shallow depth of field." You can do that with any camera that has manual focus, but (D)SLRs ($500+) are your best bet to getting it.. because although some point-and-shoots do have manual focus, it's tough to get shallow DOF because the size of their sensors are so small.