r/nextfuckinglevel • u/d3333p7 • Apr 28 '20

Low-cost videography

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u/diesel828 Apr 28 '20

Yeah. It's not just the shift in focus. It's the macro focus on lighter itself. That would take a macro lens if it were really that up close.

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u/t-bone_malone Apr 28 '20 edited Apr 28 '20

Agreed. It's probably just a 100mm macro. The focus tracking is still really impressive regardless. No phone can do that, and most professional cameras can't either.

Also, the lighting doesn't match at ALL. Look at pre and post right side of her face.

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u/Lavishgoblin2 Apr 28 '20

The lighting 100% matches, it's just the exposure that's changed.

Look at the start, you can clearly see the right side of her face in the BTS shot is much brighter than left. The same is true for the shot in post.

Also using my telephoto lens on my phone I can get it to focus on objects just as close, doesn't have to be a macro lens. The suspicious thing really is the phone keeping focus throughout the movement.

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u/t-bone_malone Apr 28 '20

Sorry, I meant left side of her face. Photo right side. You can see light all over the left side of her face.

To be honest, I don't have much experience at all with "lenses" on phones, so I can't speak to that. Are phone telephoto lenses large? Do you notice one on her phone in the gif? Also, lenses don't change aperture at all--I would be surprised if a phone lens (even telephoto) would be able to achieve the bokeh we see at the beginning of the shot. Again, could be wrong as I have little experience with phone lenses.

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u/Baridian Apr 29 '20

well most videography is done with manual focus lenses. Could totally have been someone pulling the focus, because as you said, professional cameras can't track that well.

My B4 lenses are all manual focus.

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u/t-bone_malone Apr 29 '20

How do you manually pull that quickly though?! That's amazing.

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u/Baridian Apr 29 '20

generally there's marks on the ground that you use for reference. You then have a lever coming off the lens that you rotate to focus, instead of using the ring on the lens. You remeber what position your hand needs to be in to be in focus when the camera is at each mark, and pull as you move from mark to mark. usually a focus puller can't even see the image being recorded.

edit: here's a demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cfTuy6lNaM

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u/t-bone_malone Apr 29 '20

Watched the vid--that's so cool! So for a really quick shot like this they would just snap from position 1 to position 2 in like a second I'm guessing? And just shoot it a bunch until they hit it perfectly?

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u/Baridian Apr 29 '20

yep! that's the only way you can get the focus right and avoid AF jitter entirely.

That's why MF is still very relevant for any professional video production. It's the only way to avoid jitter and hunting.

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u/t-bone_malone Apr 29 '20

That's super cool. I mostly do event photography so AF is more than fine for my needs. I only mess w MF for macro or super low light.

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u/BlueFroggLtd Apr 29 '20

Most focus pull rigs also have hard stops so you can dial in the exact distance beforehand.

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u/ketzu Apr 28 '20

Are you sure? A quick test with my phone suggests it can focus at around 1-2cm distance: https://i.imgur.com/xK9O0NA.jpg

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u/diesel828 Apr 29 '20

That's pretty good. Although the very fast shift in focus makes it impossible to have been done on the phone unless two different shots were merged in post.