Sunday, May 20, 2012

Controlling your Depth of Field in Video:

I personally shoot with a Canon T1i, and as any T1i user knows, when shooting video you are at the mercy of the camera when it comes to setting, and most importantly aperture aka f value.  Typically when I shoot video I go for a shallow depth-of-field (dof) look, and often during well-lit situations the camera wants to stop down the f value to say 16, giving a very large dof.

In search of gaining more control, I starting searching around the internet for ways around this and to my delight I found one.  Now I don’t think this is something that would be exclusive to the T1i, and should work on any DSLR that you can’t manually control your settings.  I guess I should also give a disclaimer that doing this technique could potentially end badly for your gear; trust me you’ll figure out why; so you’ve been warned.

The first step is to be in AV (aperture priority) mode.  Here you’ll change your f value to your liking, say f 2.8.  The next step will revile the danger in this technique.  You’ll need to press the lens release button located on the front of the camera next to where the lens connects, and turn the lens enough to change the f value on the back display to 00.  This should only require you to turn the lens ever so slightly.


Taken from T1i User Manual


This will keep the aperture set at your desired choice while the camera will still adjust ISO and exposure speed for you. 

Now switch your mode to video mode.  When you do this you’ll notice an error message on the back of the camera.

To clear the message and to start shooting simply press the ISO button and the record button at the same time. 



Now you are in business and you can shoot video with that shallow dof look.  Just be very cautious about how you hold your camera as you don’t want your lens to fall off.  I’ve never had a lens fall off yet, but just aware that it is a possibility.

Here are links to video’s I’ve shot with my T1i using this technique:


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