1/4" vs. 1/3" sensor size
 

Now correct me if I am wrong but doesn't a smaller sensor further aggrevate the "video look" by providing endless DOF?

Coming from a DVX100 I find myself looking for 1/2" for the future, not the opposite direction.

Am I misunderstanding this whole sensor size thing?

No, you're right: smaller sensor means more DOF, and is a bit associated with Video.

Yeah, it is directly related to Circle of Confusion. This is why You can find under Alternative Imaging so much talk about 35mm adapters. Those adapters just use bigger image plane for achieving shallower DOF.

For a detailed technical discussion, see Jeff Donald's article here:

http://dvinfo.net/articles/optics/dofskinny.php

1/2" Sensor, please
 

Yeah, I'm with you. I'd rather have a 1/2 inch sensor with minor color issues than 3 1/4 sensors. I REALLY LIKE limited DOF.

Problem is a sensor that big costs relatively big bucks and so you may not be able to afford the machine..

The 1/2" sensor is called an XDCAM HD.

You can have:

Relative Low Price, Amazing Quality, 1/2" Sensor for shallow DOF.

You can choose either the first two or the last two.

What would be amazing is if Canon could take their full frame 35MM sized sensor from the 1D and 5D dSLR's and make them work at 24P & 30P.

[QUOTE=What would be amazing is if Canon could take their full frame 35MM sized sensor from the 1D and 5D dSLR's and make them work at 24P & 30P.[/QUOTE]

then you'd have the Arri 20D or the Genesis or the Red....

It's all about hitting a price point--it's cheaper to make 1/4" chips than larger ones. What's interesting about this little Sony is that they seem to be attempting to position it as something other than a consumer camera...and I notice they don't exactly proclaim loudly the wonders of small chips. I had to hunt for awhile before I found out it had only 1/4" chips.

You can get shallow depth of field with a 1/4" chip camera. Say you shoot a profile of a person. Zoom in with aperture wide open to an extreme closeup of his eye and nose, composed over to one side of the frame. If the background is 10 or 20 feet away, it will be soft. If the camera has a close focusing lens, you can be at a wide angle and move in to something like a coin until it nearly fills the frame. The background will be soft. For basic head and shoulder shots, forget it.

Yes -- folks forget they have to do some work with small chips, but it can be done. Especially for a produt shot or a CU. Outdoors you may need an extra ND filter to get iris fully open.

Attached is a shallow depth of field from the V1U. If memory serves, I'm about 8' from camera, iris likely at 1.8, 2.0, or 2.4, shutter definitely at 1/48. There may or may not be an ND filter on due to the light hitting the sides of the barn. I honestly can't remember, and don't want to go digging for the tape to read the datacode.
The "arm" you can see behind my right shoulder is about 4' back, and the nearest firetruck is about the same distance.
Screen cap from DVRack; a little underexposed. Apologies for that, we were juust prepping up for a shot and I hit "Grab."

Aside from expense theoretically how small could you make a camera with half inch or 3/4 inch chips? Could you ever cram 3 chips of larger size into a cam as small as the FX1 (or even smaller)? I wonder what the size cut-off point is with today's technology...

Why put these new features (24p, CMOS, etc.) on a 1/4" cam, and market it as a "prosumer" product like the Z1?? Why not just cut to the chase and give it all to us in a Z2?
You can kind of imagine Sony's strategy: The Z1 is still selling well and only been out less than 2 years. If they came out now with the Z2 (1/3" CMOS, 24p) they would be sort of stepping on their own successful product. So, they release the V1, which is "almost", but "not quite". Nontheless, it has features that many lust for, newer imaging technology, great early buzz, some practical advantages (size, for one), and a price that is not prohibitive. It's affordable enough to take a gamble on.
I bet it will sell like hotcakes. Then over the next 18-24 months, if Z1 sales begin to wind down, Ta Da... the Z2 will be unveiled, with all the V1 features plus a couple of irresistable new items.
Sony has made a huge bet with HDV, and appears to be playing their cards very well indeed.

The first question DOF junkies have to ask themselves is how much
Sony really thinks its prime market targets are concerned about it. There are a few people out there who clamor for shallow depth of field in their small video cameras for film like qualities, but for the much more numerous market is for ENG, event shooters, and run and gun sports guys. For all of those, I am wagering that a deeper depth of field is more of a benefit in terms of focus forgiveness.... a bigger issue in the HD realm...

Robert I tend to agree with your opinion that a 1/3in. 3-CMOS machine may happen sometime in 2007. And i would bet earlier maybe rather than later. Just my opinion.

Is Shallow DOF really related to the sensor size, or is it directly related to the type of lens. For instance lens adapters for the XL series cameras for SLR lens, while they only focus on the center of the lens getting a cropping/magnification factor of about 7x the DOF properties remain the same. It's merely the framing that changes.

Another instance, I had found an old Sony 8mm camcorder at a thrift store not long ago, which had an removable Fujinon manual lens (10-107mm), which had to have been designed for a chip that was much bigger than the one in the accompanying camcorder. I could stand 4 feet away from a subject with the back ground only a few feet away and achieve amazing shallow DOF with that camera. The image seemed a little cropped, but not terribly so.

I also wonder about 1/2 and 2/3 lenses on say a JVC HD110? Or that PL mount adapter for XL cameras for instance. Using 16mm lenses, it suppossedly only crops/magnifies the image by 2x.

My theory is that if you put a lens designed for a bigger image plane on smaller chip cameras, you could achieve a nice shallow DOF, with some minimal cropping. So is the size of the image sensor the issue or is it the size of the lens designed for that specfic sensor.