A surgical camera system with automatic alternation between two depths of field is provided, comprising: a tunable iris configured to automatically alternate between a first depth of field (“DOF”) and a second DOF larger than the first DOF; one or more lenses configured to collect light using the iris; a body containing the iris and at least a portion of the lenses; a sensor configured to produce images from the light; a video processing unit configured to: produce an image stream from first images and second images produced by the sensor from the light, the first images acquired at the first DOF and the second images acquired at the second DOF; and adjust one or more lighting parameters of the first images and the second images prior to producing the image stream; and, a display device in communication with the video processing unit, configured to render the image stream.