The small footprint of a CCD makes it hard for digital video cameras to emulate the short depth of field of film cameras. You’ll notice depth of field in movies when they have one actor close to the camera and you see the second actor over the shoulder; the actors will alternate being in focus because of the short depth of field. Here are some examples. To emulate this using a DV camera you have to change the size of the target area. A smaller image is projected on a clear screen in front of the camera which is then recorded. This project uses a clear CD blank for the screen. The CD is rotated using an old CD player; otherwise the camera would pick up the grain of the plastic. Pretty easy, right? I haven’t even mentioned that the resulting image is upside down.
[thanks Angstrom]
