Tochigi or Nikon 300mm f/2.0

[zack_zoll]

<p>Agreed with Joseph. I was willing to help for the first part of this thread, but by the time I got to the end I thought Joe's assessment was bang-on.</p>

<p>At the distance you're going to be, you can't get any shallower DOF than what was suggested, short of using 4x5 or 8x10 view cameras and extremely rare lenses. Even then, it won't be much shallower. But you're a film student, so you know better.</p>

<p>Let me ask you a question to put it all in perspective: what are the chances that you can actually operate this equipment? All the money I have says that if you just gave somebody a setup with a DOF that shallow and as short a time as you have to practice, they'd bomb it. I've been using a Hasselblad and a 150 f/4 for portraits for some time now, and even with probably 60 rolls of film shot with that combination JUST THIS YEAR, I still botch the focus pretty regularly when my DOF is measured in inches. Do you honestly expect you're just going to pick this up and be greeted with anything other than massive failure? Because I have a hard time believing anyone is skilled enough with this equipment to go around sandbagging people's attempt to help.</p>

[shadforth_stephen]

<p>My eyes are bleeding after reading Joes post. Excellent work, though.</p>

[jose_angel]

<p>Nikkor 300/2 on FF for stitching, 4x5" scanning backs, 600/4 CA problems, digital 6x7... ... ... thanks God my life is easier (and cheaper).</p>

<p>This kind of work cannot be done using software? Good Photoshop technicians make wonders, even for less than $5000; I bet they (or even many users here) can simulate any kind of blur. Someone could say it is not the same but, <em>is it unacceptable?</em>. How you will be <em>"moving their elements and animating them in a stop-motion short film... "</em>? Maybe with photoshop? Printing and cutting it out for filming? IMAX full sized projection? Full HD? YouTube... ?</p>

<p>I`m obviously not qualified to answer in this thread but maybe with a 300/4.5 and a little more or less PP work you will save <em>a lot</em> of $$$ to you and/or to your school. Please excuse me if I`m wrong, I always tend to simplify things... :)</p>

[rodeo_joe1]

<p>Vaughn, shouldn't your college tutor be helping you with these questions? One of the required elements for most assignments is that you discuss and agree the practicality, viability and cost-effectiveness of the project with your tutor. That, after all is what he or she is being paid for.</p>

[vaughnbrines]

<p>Awesome--thank you guys for all of your suggestions and warnings. There is definitely a lot to contemplate here, and your help has been completely useful. <br>

Thank you,<br>

Vaughn</p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>Vaughn - one more bit of input. Without knowing more about what you're doing... if you want a narrow DoF relative to the scene, the easiest way to do it is to manipulate the scene. If there's a big distance between the foreground and background, the background will obviously be more out-of-focus; if you can manipulate the scene so that the background is more out of focus than the viewer would expect, it'll look like a large aperture. Or, of course, you could use green screen and blur the background digitally. If you can recreate any of the scene in model form, filming it with a macro lens makes it much easier to get a huge apparent aperture (hence the "macro look"). The other way of going about this is to use a tilt/shift lens and use tilt to throw everything but the subject further out of focus. None of this helps if you actually need a small DoF aligned to the focal plane in a distant, real scene - but sometimes cheating is the way to do it. (After all, if you can do the whole thing in CGI, a lens with a 2m aperture is easy to simulate.)<br />

<br />

Best of luck. I hope you'll let us know when you've finished your project - I'll be interested to see what all this was about!</p>

[red_buckner]

<p>I believe the lenses for the Pentax 67 can be used on Pentax 35mm cameras. Eight hundred on 35 would be a powerful setup. </p>

[Andrew Garrard]

<p>Just to avoid confusion... Red - you <i>can</i> put a Pentax 67 lens on a 35mm camera, but then the 600 f/4 would behave like a 35mm 600mm f/4 (albeit with pretty good vignetting characteristics). If Vaughn wants the equivalent of a 300mm f/2, he needs the larger frame of 67 format to get the same field of view out of a 600mm lens. If he just wants a 600mm f/4 lens, they're more easily available (at least for hire, since they're not cheap). Likewise 800mm, although I believe you need Sigma or Canon if you want autofocus these days. A 300mm f/2 on 67 format would work as a 300mm f/2 on 35mm with an adaptor - but there <i>is</i> no 300 f/2 for anything but 35mm.</p>

[vaughnbrines]

<p>If anyone's curious, I found one of these 300/2's, modified for cinema use with many thousands of dollars of investment into it (including for a rotating filter stage) for $6,500. It comes with custom case, PL/PV mounts, filters, etc. It's in good shape--not perfect, but not any noteworthy flaws either.<br>

<br />If you're looking for one, keep your eye out and you will find it.</p>