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Comment by Tomdarkness | Hacker News Reader

The technical quality of Netflix originals is really high. One thing that annoys me though is for some reason despite having rigorous standards for the camera it seems a common trend through numerous Netflix Originals to use the Vantage Hawk V-Lite Vintage '74 line of anamorphic lenses. I guess it's a stylistic choice but it results is some (for me at least) annoying image distortion that can really distract from the show. They are literally described at claiming the flaws are a feature: "The Vintage’74 version has certain gentle aberrations and other characteristics that might be considered flaws by others but are welcomed storytelling tools for cinematographers"

You can see this is some example footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhbRkoeNb9U

Note the distortion and blurred top and bottom of the image.

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Might be related but I'm finding recent TV shows and film to have a really narrow field of focus while the rest of the screen is either blurry like your example or a depth of field effect.

My eyes generally wander to look at the surrounding scene or detail but I get the feeling I'm not supposed to be looking there.

It's probably too blur out any imperfections in the background green screen, or to hide any uncanny valley lack of detail in the CG set. It's become basically standard practice to use a CG set of some kind in almost everything, because it's cheaper than shooting on site or on a fully detailed sound stage.

To some degree the DoF feels like a trend, there will probably be movies in the 50's made in the Netflix style of the 20's.

Is this at least partly due to higher resolution / larger displays? Better quality displays with higher resolution sources will make a difference between out-of-focus and in-focus more apparent.

Maybe, but crazy shallow DoF goes back at least to Kubrick famously shooting parts of Barry Lyndon at f0.7.

Barry Lyndon was shot with an f/0.7 lens because Kubrick wanted period-correct lighting: candlelight, which required a super fast lens with the film used. To my knowledge he wasn’t going for shallow DoF.

You are correct. This wonderful article taken from American Cinematographer goes over this very topic in great detail:

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/sk/ac/len/page1.htm

I just want to say thank you for that link; it was an inspiring read. I think it's time to watch Barry Lyndon again.

Be that as it may, the DoF is unavoidable unless every shot is insanely tight.

Not sure about TV shows but for films (especially Netflix originals), that's partly due to the recent trend of films getting shot for TV viewing experience. These films tend to have fewer "wide" shots and more "character" shots compared to the earlier theatre release only films.

i'n not sure what you're watching, but it's probably at least partly because you're not supposed to be looking there - VFX cost money, and if they can blur or darken a bunch of the frame that makes it cheaper.

That kind of distortion is naturally common to most anamorphic lenses, but especially apparent in older glass. See: Soderbergh’s vintage anamorphic choices in No Sudden Move.

In the old days, they would mostly restrict anamorphics to locked off shots/specific compositions to minimize how visible these type of distortions can be.

Cinematographers almost always want part of the image blurred - an entire image in sharp focus would make it difficult to perceive depth and would take away the ability to direct the gaze of the audience.

In this case the OOF points of light are actually vertically oriented ovals. The idea being its reminiscent of "1974" style anamorphic lenses. Its an affectation not unlike digital retro photo filters, except that its the physical lens. Its not unlike musicians who use vintage equipment because they want to reproduce something as it was done in the past. Its gets a bit dissonant if the movie is set in the present though.

I just imagined sitting for a photography course test and the first question is "why do anamorphic lenses not produce round out-of-focus points of light, since the in-focus parts are not stretched". Naturally the course material didn't cover any of this.

The out of focus spots are an 'image' of the aperture mask. So they'll take on whatever shape the aperture has... not its physical shape, but its optical shape.

In an anamorphic lens the image is squeezed, so the effective aperture is squeezed... well, in most of them. There are anamorphic lenses with the anamorphic part behind the iris, and for those you don't get the oval shaped oof highlights.

A lot of cinematographers don’t really like the extreme resolving power inherent to 4K+ sensors, and optics that diffuse that sharpness (for instance, a lot of anamorphics) are VERY much in vogue as a result.

I don't know a whole lot about camera lenses, but it's this the reason shows like Sabrina have that extremely annoying distortion/aberration near the edges of the frame but covering almost everything not in focus at close range? I find it extremely jarring.

Edit: grammar

They toned that down by the end of Sabrina season 1. I think the idea there was to make a sense of otherworldly spookiness.

And yet they gave her that thirsty wig. I stopped watching the show with Season 2 solely based on the poor wig work.

I’ll take terrible wig work over ‘oh shit, am I about to get a migraine?’ camera work any day. Nevertheless, I think my wife and I quit watching around the beginning of season 3 when it was clear the show had utterly jumped the shark.

The show jumped with the wig I tells you! That accursed wig! Ah!

thanks for the laugh, seriously XD

Oh wow, I've noticed that a lot of Netflix Originals blur out regions of the frame that aren't front and center and it bugs the hell out of me. I assumed it was some weird post-production attempt to mimic depth of field, I didn't realize it was a lens choice.

Oh thanks. I thought I was crazy because I could notice the blur on the bottom and top of the screen but not anywhere else. I thought "Maybe they did this so the subtitles have a better contrast" but I found it stupid. At least it was done for artistic motives...

It looks pretty cool during a rack focus, but I agree, it's definitely used to give a filmic look but gets tired quickly.

Are you kidding? They look very cheap

I had a quick google and found a set for rent at 13900 SEK per day, which is apparently about $1500.

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