If I've got this right, smaller formats have correspondingly smaller circles of confusion (key to calculating DoF). For example, the Wikipedia entry on circle of confusion gives the "Zeiss formula" as CoC = diagonal/1730 so its directly proportional to the film/imager size. The current (9th) edition of the ASC Cinematographers Handbook specifies .001 inches for "all formats", but allows that for 16mm you might use the more traditional (and smaller number) .0005 inches (p. 663). Thus a smaller format has a smaller CoC. Ok, on page 738 is the start of charts for DoF and angle of view for super-8. It indicates that the tables are based on a .002 inch CoC. This is obviously twice the recommended CoC for 35mm! I'm pretty sure that the correct CoC for Super-8 is more like .0002 inches (fits the Zeiss formula, for example, and is generally in a progression from .001 [35] to .0005 [16]) I thought this was a typo, leaving out a 0 is easy and I wouldn't be posting about that. However, I checked the tables against an online DoF calculator as well as using the equations to back-calculate what CoC is assumed by several of the table entries and it seems clear that the tables are actually based on a CoC of .002 which, unless I'm looking at something upside down, is 10x what it should be. It seems more likely that I've got something wrong than that the ASC Manual has this error, but if so, I can't see what.
