How will our craft be in ten years? By Carlos Cañal on 3/6/19, 1:26 PM • 469 views Many times I wonder how our work will change in the near future.  I always think the way we pull focus will change very shortly but the years go by and almost nothing changes.  Well, we have now lens mapping, better interaction with rangefinders, ... But the craft reminds the same.  What does change very fast is technology inside the cameras and the way we shoot!  Cameras have bigger and bigger sensors, works with higher and higher resolutions and we shoot way faster and almost with no rehearsals with lenses wide open all the time. To me, we will need help from technology, but making sure we don´t loose the organic feel of a pull and the way of narrating through the focus.  What do you think?  How will our craft be in the near future? Rozemarijn On 3/13/19, 5:33 PM When people, 2nd's , interns, collegues ask me 'how does focuspulling work', there is only one answer. Its a feeling. And machines and technology will never be able to feel the emotions of a scene, an actor or the beauty of nature. Besides that, who will get the DP their coffee, and know where they have tossed their jacket in the morning. Mohd Abudin Abdullah On 4/23/20, 7:03 PM Reading this i thought to myself, i used to listen to rantings of Seniors (filmmakers) about filming with celluloid gives the DP a really personal connection towards a project. This was in reference to before the revolutionary video assist technology. Because only the DP knows. And then video assist keeps getting better, but still, guestimates all around right. Then comes the digital era and suddenly everyone with a camera is a DP. Nothing wrong with that. But what separates the great ones from all others is how they justify what they do. I think we’ve all seen advancements in autofocus technologies. Sure they don’t buzz mid shot, but they can’t make decisions on when NOT to focus. Technology will always require a person behind it. Im not surprised if one day 1st AC’s are merely there to program the system. But there will always be a 1st AC, probably pulling focus for only 50% of the time. It’s an organic thing what we do, it’s what I believe.  Fabio On 3/7/19, 8:44 AM Don’t know exactly why but a lot of people ask me this, and of course I wonder myself too. Personally I’m not worried: I’m confident that the technology will keep improving making our job easier (think about when there wasn’t RF nor vídeo feed for the camera assistant), but our craft is so random and unpredictable that I think that it will always need “the man behind the machine”. At list until the day the dop will be able to explain the shot to the machine, but when that day comes I think we are going to have other and more important concerns.

Clemens Hönig On 3/7/19, 9:19 AM I think, that no matter how advanced the technology becomes, there will always be focus pullers, who will push it to their limits. 

Vince On 3/7/19, 11:11 AM I remember a few years ago that there was a system (forget the name) that records the entire range of depth of field and that post could choose were the focus lays. I believe that focus-pulling can only be done by a person because it's all about emotion, and emotion is something a machine can not produce..

Flip Bleekrode On 3/25/19, 4:28 PM Hi Vince, the system is called lightfield photography. Lytro not only made a few consumer stills cameras that could be refocussed in post or 'transcoded' into moving stills but also an enormous Lytro cinema camera shooting 300 fps @ some 750 MP. Besides from being able to re-focus in post keying could be achieved without having to place the actors in front of a green or blue screen; any background would do.  In 2018 Lytro stopped the projects... But one way or the other these technical achievements will resurface.