Does the XL2 need a DOF machine?
 

A friend of mine is shooting with the XL2 and he says that he gets great DOF with his XL2 - is this true? Is it not necessary for that camera?

Depends on what your friend means by "Gets great deapth of field". If, by that, he means that the depth of field is great... then yes... it's as deep as any small chipped DV camcorder on the market.

If he is referring to 'shallow' than no, it's not much shallower than any other either. This is why the ground glass adapters are used.

Ok, thanks. I wasn't sure because I haven't seen any footage myself, but he said that it did indeed have shallow DOF and that focus pulling was possible as well as rack focusing - very similiar to 35mm - his words.

What he probably means is that the 20x lens allows one to move way back and zoom way in. This will create a picture with a shallower depth of field and allow for nice rack focuses.

Without zooming in, the depth of field is quite deep...everything in focus, just like all cameras with 1/3" chips. The more you can zoom in, the shallower the DOF will be, so cameras that have longer lenses will be better.

Hope this clears it up a bit...

KW