Wally Xie

Cool, thanks for your help Matthew and Gabe. Definitely will try the locked-in approach, and I'll also be looking at these split-field filters.

Ah, cool. A split field diopter looks like something that'll do something similar to what I'm looking for. However, is there anything that can selectively cut out focus in the middle of a range? For example, say you got focus from 10 feet to infinity, and you want focus from 10-15 feet, and then focus from 22 feet to infinity, but then, no focus between 15 to 22 feet -- is that possible?

This might not make sense to anybody, but I was just playing around with the possibility of having one object closer to the camera that is focus, followed by a stretch of area that is not in focus, and then finally, another object that is in focus. No, I'm not talking about a rack focus -- in this image, two objects would simultaneously be in focus, with an area in the middle not be in focus. This goes against the normal laws of depth of field, so I presume this would take something special, perhaps a special lens, perhaps some FX, perhaps a combination of both. Anyhow is what I described possible?