Depth of Field on Z1

I am a long-time cinematographer and I frequently shoot with a Sony XD-Cam and am able to achieve a film-like look by using telephoto and ND filters to achieve a narrow depth of field on interview segments that air on two national outdoor shows that I shoot and produce.

However....I have recently been shooting with the Sony Z1 HDV cameras on some segments. I think the cameras look great in their Cinemaframe 30 mode, but I am having trouble getting the depth of field narrow enough to achieve anything near the same look. Is anyone else having the same experience, and have you solved the issue.

Thanks-

Mark Maness

David,

Thanks for the heads up. I thought I had tried everything I knew, I just wanted to know if I've missed something. I really like the images from this camera. With the exception of the depth of field issue and some color banding in extreme color gradients (sunset, sunrise), I think that it's a super camera for the money. Oh, well...I guess you can't have everthing....

I

Ok. I understand, but not very usable for me.
I will try to use ND + Polarizer + ... and shoot with a BIT of tele, work on the limit to get a bit of Bkg out of focus.

Does the telephoto lens that we can apply will improve the situation ?

Camafe

Win 2K * Targa 3000 * 8x 34G SCSI Raid 0

F-stop is all that matters in depth of field. You can use ND or shutter to get wide open and achieve the same result.

All this is a matter of physics. The 'problem' is the imager size. The smaller the imager the more depth of field you will get. The 1/3" imager on the HDV camera or on the DV camera or any camera gives a very deep depth of field. Conversely, an 8 X 10 view camera really fights getting any depth of field. This is one of the main parts of the 'look' of shooting 35mm and also a result of shooting with the mini 35 adapter.