Lenses#

When you first starts shooting footage, a natural tendency will be to set up your camera where ever you happen to be standing and then zoom in on your subject until they are the desired size relative to the rest of the frame. This makes your footage look amateurish (even if most people can only tell that one a subconscious level) because you’ve failed to weigh all the other visual considerations that come with choosing a lens size. So whether you’re swapping out different lenses or zooming in and out on one zoom lens, lens choice matters.

Wide vs. Telephoto Lenses (and everything in between)#

Lenses exist on a spectrum from wide lenses to long or "telephoto" lenses. The distinction between lenses is given in terms of "focal length" or the distance between the lens and the camera's sensor. Wide angle lenses have focal lengths with small numbers (anything below 35mm) while telephoto lenses have bigger numbers (anything above 70mm). Lenses that fall in between those ranges are called standard lenses. These standard lenses tend to see the world in a way that is similar to the human eye while wide and telephoto lenses distort this view in some way:

| WIDE LENSES | LONG LENSES | | --- | --- | | Wide field of view (sees a large amount to the left and right) | Narrow field of view (only sees the things it is directly pointed at) | | Deep depth of field. Almost everything will be in focus. | Shallow depth of field. Be careful to keep your subject in focus. | | Exaggerates the space between objects. If an actor walks towards camera, it will create the illusion that they are traveling a great distance relatively quickly. | Compresses space, making things seem closer together. If an actor walks towards camera, it will seem like they're barely moving at all. |

Prime vs. Zoom Lenses#

A prime lens has a fixed focal length while an optical zoom lens has the capability to change its focal length. The trade-off is that while a zoom lens gives you more flexibility, you're sacrificing some quality. An image captured on a lens "zoomed in" to a 200mm focal length isn't going to be quite as good as an image captured on a 200mm prime lens.

Please note that only an "optical zoom" is actually changing focal lengths. A "digital zoom" is just taking a fixed image and magnifying how much of it you're seeing. It's the exact same as magnifying an image in post and effectively lowers the resolution of the captured image.

Anamorphic Lenses#

Most lenses you’ll encounter are “spherical lenses.” However, if you dive deep enough into your study of filmmaking, it's only a matter of time until you encounter “anamorphic lenses.” These lenses were invented to help film cameras shoot in the 2.39:1 aspect ratio. Rather than shooting it in 1.85:1 and then cropping off the top and bottom, anamorphic lenses "squeezed" the image to fit into the entire frame. Afterwards, the frame was stretched out to the desired 2.39 aspect ratio which improved the image quality when compared to cropping because it took full advantage of the camera’s resolution.

Shot with a spherical lens.

Shot with anamorphic lens (before de-squeeze)

Shot with anamorphic lens (after de-squeeze)

Anamorphic lenses for digital cameras are often used for aesthetic rather than practical reasons. Because the format was so widely used by classic Hollywood directors, we've been well conditioned to recognize the aesthetic side effects of anamorphic to be particularly cinematic. These side effects include a shallower depth of field, lens flairs that streak horizontally across the screen (usually a blueish color), and out of focus lights in the background (called "bokeh") appearing as ovals rather than circles.

Macro Lenses#

A candle moments after being blown out.

One thing almost all lenses struggle with is focusing on subjects very close to the camera. That's why macro lenses are designed to focus on things right in front of them and have the effect of magnifying whatever they're looking at. If you like to get up close and personal with small subjects (like a wildlife videographer trying to film some insects), then a macro lens is a necessary part of your camera kit.

“Eye” see the value of a macro lens now.