Hi folks, my first post, I hope it makes sense. :-)
I am shooting a short film with a Canon HF G10 camcorder. Almost prosumer in features but the disadvantage of a fixed lens. 10x zoom, roughly 20-300 mm in 35mm terms I believe. At wide it is f1.8, full zoom about 2.2 or 2.4. Shooting in Cinema mode real 24p 1080i HD. My question/quandary:
I want to achieve a shallow cinematic depth of field look where backgrounds are primarily blurry, particularly for semi-wide and close up shots. This is hard to do with the fixed lens especially when using only a little zoom. If I fully zoom (or close to it) I start to get the effect I want when shooting. For example, a person standing 6 ft or so from a shelf, the shelf will get softly blurry but not quite enough. The problem with this approach is that I have to put the camera rather far away from the subject so I can zoom in enough.
I was wondering if I have any options. Would the addition of an achromatic diopter help? How about a tele-converter (both of which are available for this lens)? I thought about going the other way and putting on a close-up lens and zooming but I am not sure what the result would be but logically seems it might work, allow me to get closer to subject but still zoom to get blurry background. I read a review for the tele-converter from someone who said it helped for this purpose.
Any thoughts or ideas would help. Great site, have learned so much by reading here the past few months.
Thanks,
Matt