40mm vs 50mm for s35

K

Kevin Kelly

Active member
I've noticed some productions using a 40mm for medium, and medium close-ups on s35. What factors would you consider for using a 40mm instead of a 50mm? Do you think a 40 or 50 would be more versatile? If you had one of the two, which would you prefer?

Thanks
 
My favorite set is:
FF: 24-50-85
S35: 18-40-65
APS-C: 16-32-56
I could shoot most of my stuff with just those three lenses (and the middle one would go unused on many shooting days)
 
Kevin Kelly said:
I've noticed some productions using a 40mm for medium, and medium close-ups on s35. What factors would you consider for using a 40mm instead of a 50mm? Do you think a 40 or 50 would be more versatile? If you had one of the two, which would you prefer?

Thanks
Click to expand...


My suggestion..... Don't base your lens purchases on someone else's production.

Do your own testing to find the focal lengths which work best for the feel you are trying to achieve.

A: If you have the pocket change, rent a set of primes and choose after testing.

B: If you have access to a zoom which covers the focal lengths of 40 & 50mm, use it to easily see the difference with a single lens.


All the best!

Dave
 
I personally love 40mm on S35. Some have suggested it's more natural than a 50mm... but I'm not really sure. I do find that the 40mm still gets the good compression and DOF that is so nice in the 50mm, but is more flexible in terms of being slightly wider.

If anything, it provides a more unique perspective, since 40mm isn't used as often as a 50mm. Same thing with a 60/65mm... which I also like.

I like 18, 27, 40, 65, 85, 100. But whatever. All of the focal lenses are good.
 
Samuel H said:
My favorite set is:
FF: 24-50-85
S35: 18-40-65
APS-C: 16-32-56
I could shoot most of my stuff with just those three lenses (and the middle one would go unused on many shooting days)
Click to expand...

Aren't most of the APS sensors really about the same as S35? or were you referring to the Canon APS size which is a little smaller. My experience is mostly with the Fuji sensors (1.5xFF).
 
Kevin Kelly said:
I've noticed some productions using a 40mm for medium, and medium close-ups on s35. What factors would you consider for using a 40mm instead of a 50mm? Do you think a 40 or 50 would be more versatile? If you had one of the two, which would you prefer?

Thanks
Click to expand...

The 40mm exists because for many years people have argued about which lens had the most common human vision FOV; a 35mm or a 50mm.

One study shows it to be 43mm: https://petapixel.com/2012/11/17/the-camera-versus-the-human-eye/

And that actually makes perfect sense because I think most would agree it was always somewhere in the middle.

A 40mm is thus nice because it's in the middle but also slightly favors towards the wider end where you'll see more of a difference (vs. say a 43mm and a 50mm).

___

P.S. You can actually disregard the post because I just noticed you mentioned a S35 sensor, which makes it irrelevant. The above applies to full-frame sensors.
 
Thanks for the replies. I'm a longtime 35mm stills (film) photographer, and in stills photography there is typically a large jump from 35mm, to 50mm, and then to 85mm lenses. Cinematography seems more nuanced around the “normal” focal length in s35, with options for 28, 32, 35, 40, and 50 lenses. I do like 28mm on s35, but never considered a 40mm until watching some BTS of Skyfall. There were a few shots done on 40mm that had enough room to shoot with a 50mm lens. So are there artistic considerations of using a 40 over a 50 for a medium shot?

Another shot that caught my attention was when Ben Whishaw (Q) was getting into the cable car. Based on the BTS, the establishing shot on the outside of the cable car used a 35mm, but there was a switch to 40mm for the interior shot when he sits down. So the question in my mind is, what's the motivation for the switch?

Any additional thoughts would be welcomed.

Thanks.
 
'Feel' is created by the position of the camera+lens relative to the subject.

When the camera+lens is a long way from the subject the image feels 'distant' (what a suprise!)

The lens chosen then shows an amount of the world - your frame.

So..

Given a frame of maybe an slightly loose CU you select the lens and place the camera to get the framing.

If you choose a 40mm lens you will be closer to the subject for a given framing than with a 50, the feel will be more intimate - less distance.

So one may choose a 40 for romance and intimacy and a 50 for slightly colder work.

In a chat scene you would want to experience the same as the other character.. so one should shoot from the same distance as they are from the character in frame, if they are close having a romantic chat or argument then you would be pushed (by the position of the camera) to the 40 .. or further out then you would be pushed to the 50.

Its actually all about placing the camera/+lens and then lensing to get your frame. Not the other way round.

--

Intimacy sounds imediately attractive.. 'ill go for the intimate' lens.. but there is also a thing with us having two eyes and onboard perspective correction, while the camera has one eye and no perspective correction.

Jamming a 14 into someones face should be the ultimate intimate.. but we know it just looks odd.. you can take the intamate camera past a point where it just goes wrong.

--
There are practical considerations that push one to longer lenses of course as the operator is less lightly to cast a shadow on the subject, the set can be smaller, and you are less likely to see a second camera that is cross shooting.
 
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Yes, from the director of photography of Skyfall himself, Roger Deakins - Cinematographer Style (2006) excerpts (see 1:08). Lenses don't make perspective. Placement makes perspective. Lenses just crop.

Since you're debating between a 40 and a 50, I see that you're as OCD as I am. Really, an audience member would hardly notice. Or might they? Here's my pseudoscientific theory: a lens that cuts the field of view into a simple number is more pleasant than one that does not.

For example, suppose you have a lens with an angle of view of 45 degrees. Now 45 doesn't seem like so special a number. But what is another way of expressing 45 degrees? Well, given that a circle is 360 degrees, 45 is 1/8. Take another lens whose angle of view is 50 degrees. Its fraction is 1/7.2. That's not a very round number --- well, not an integer, anyways. How about a lens whose angle of view is 60 degrees? That's 1/6. Ah, nice again.

To make such razor-blade distinctions, you need to calculate a lens's angle of view. It depends on the size of the sensor. A 50mm lens on a full-frame camera will have a different angle than on a Super 35 sensor. Here is the formula:

2 x arctangent of ( the dimension / ( 2 x focal length ) )

Okay, I didn't say it would be easy. But there are web pages that calculate angle of view for you, and I made one too: https://www.combatentropy.com/frames. You can play around with different focal lengths and dimensions.

In which dimension should you strive to attain this nice integer division, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally? For you know that if you pick a lens with a nice 45-degree angle of view horizontally, that doesn't always mean it will have a nice round number in either of the other dimensions, vertically or diagonally. I chose diagonal, with the rationalization that the diagonal of a film frame is also the diameter of a circle that goes around the film frame. Even though the film frame is a rectangle, there is a circle implied. And I just felt like the diameter of that circle would best convey the feel of the angle of view. So I picked diagonal (whereas most people focus on the horizontal angle of view).

After a lot of testing, I found that I prefer a 45-degree diagonal angle of view --- even more than other round numbers like 60 degrees, 90 degrees (very wide, by the way), etc. I will save you some calculation by telling you the focal lengths that correspond to a 45-degree angle of view, diagonally, on various sensors:

S16: 17.5mm
4/3: 24mm
S35: 35mm
135: 50mm


It just so happens that the lens whose diagonal angle of view is 45 degrees is also the focal length that has historically been called the Normal Lens. I have come to believe that it has little to do with the traditional explanation that it somehow lines up with the angle of view of the human eye. For that doesn't make sense anyway. Studies show, and you can easily prove right now, that your angle of view is much wider than a normal lens. Just look. You can see much more around you in one glance than a 50mm on a full-frame camera. No, I think the naturalness of of the nifty fifty has more to do with the evenness of its angle of view: 45 degrees. It is more obvious if, instead of a 360-degree circle, you think of a 180-degree half-circle, which is all you could ever hope to see anyway, since you cannot see behind you. 45 from 180 is 1/4, a little bit nicer number than 1/8, for what it's worth.

Actually, it turns out that on a 16:9 sensor a normal lens has integer divisions on all three dimensions. Diagonally, it is 45 degrees (1/8). Horizontally, it is 40 degrees (1/9). Vertically, it is about 22.5 degrees (1/16). I think it's remarkable that it is 1/9 and 1/16 on a 16:9 sensor!

So taken am I with the Normal Lens that a while back I made a post of several videos all shot with nothing but a single lens, a single, normal-length lens for whatever camera they were each shot on (different for each video), http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?355222-Videos-shot-with-a-single-normal-prime-lens
 
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My favorite sensor size is the aps-h in 17:9 crop. And then i switch between the 35 and 50 most, with the occasional 25 or 85, but i don’t really like leaving the 35-50 range often.

The 35mm on s35 is incredibly versatile and if. I had to shoot a film on one prime lens, it would most likely be a 35mm. But if i had two lenses, it would be the 40 and 32 for s35 or aps-c format

I dislike 85 and and 28 lenses but cannot deny they are very useful. A fast 28mm on ff35 is pretty cool looking though.


But all of this depends entirely on the story and intention of the scene, shot, etc
And there are plenty of times when more extreme lenses are the only way to get a shot.
 
In the s35 format, the main difference between a 50mm and 40mm for me is something like this,

The 50mm crops in a just a little more, so you can get a little more distance from the scene and this can help with framing objects and lines in a very solid way. Foreground and background elements are more unified in size relationships, it allows for a more firm composition style.

The 40mm is like the 50mm in some ways, but opens up the sides of the frame a little, let’s a little more chaos in, and breathing room, an gets camera as close as you can to subjects without distortion.

But in the s35 format, i see the 40mm being more of splitting the 35mm into the 32mm and 40mm, and then the 50mm is a telephoto.
 
Best test is to rent a zoom lens and tape over the focal length marks with tape. Shoot for a day, periodically markingthe zoom barrael, at the end of the day, remove the tape and see which focal lengths you marked the most. That should be a good indicator of your preferences.
 
combatentropy said:
Yes, from the director of photography of Skyfall himself, Roger Deakins - Cinematographer Style (2006) excerpts (see 1:08). Lenses don't make perspective. Placement makes perspective. Lenses just crop.

Since you're debating between a 40 and a 50, I see that you're as OCD as I am. Really, an audience member would hardly notice. Or might they? Here's my pseudoscientific theory: a lens that cuts the field of view into a simple number is more pleasant than one that does not.

For example, suppose you have a lens with an angle of view of 45 degrees. Now 45 doesn't seem like so special a number. But what is another way of expressing 45 degrees? Well, given that a circle is 360 degrees, 45 is 1/8. Take another lens whose angle of view is 50 degrees. Its fraction is 1/7.2. That's not a very round number --- well, not an integer, anyways. How about a lens whose angle of view is 60 degrees? That's 1/6. Ah, nice again.

To make such razor-blade distinctions, you need to calculate a lens's angle of view. It depends on the size of the sensor. A 50mm lens on a full-frame camera will have a different angle than on a Super 35 sensor. Here is the formula:

2 x arctangent of ( the dimension / ( 2 x focal length ) )

Okay, I didn't say it would be easy. But there are web pages that calculate angle of view for you, and I made one too: https://www.combatentropy.com/frames. You can play around with different focal lengths and dimensions.

In which dimension should you strive to attain this nice integer division, horizontally, vertically, or diagonally? For you know that if you pick a lens with a nice 45-degree angle of view horizontally, that doesn't always mean it will have a nice round number in either of the other dimensions, vertically or diagonally. I chose diagonal, with the rationalization that the diagonal of a film frame is also the diameter of a circle that goes around the film frame. Even though the film frame is a rectangle, there is a circle implied. And I just felt like the diameter of that circle would best convey the feel of the angle of view. So I picked diagonal (whereas most people focus on the horizontal angle of view).

After a lot of testing, I found that I prefer a 45-degree diagonal angle of view --- even more than other round numbers like 60 degrees, 90 degrees (very wide, by the way), etc. I will save you some calculation by telling you the focal lengths that correspond to a 45-degree angle of view, diagonally, on various sensors:

S16: 17.5mm
4/3: 24mm
S35: 35mm
135: 50mm


It just so happens that the lens whose diagonal angle of view is 45 degrees is also the focal length that has historically been called the Normal Lens. I have come to believe that it has little to do with the traditional explanation that it somehow lines up with the angle of view of the human eye. For that doesn't make sense anyway. Studies show, and you can easily prove right now, that your angle of view is much wider than a normal lens. Just look. You can see much more around you in one glance than a 50mm on a full-frame camera. No, I think the naturalness of of the nifty fifty has more to do with the evenness of its angle of view: 45 degrees. It is more obvious if, instead of a 360-degree circle, you think of a 180-degree half-circle, which is all you could ever hope to see anyway, since you cannot see behind you. 45 from 180 is 1/4, a little bit nicer number than 1/8, for what it's worth.

Actually, it turns out that on a 16:9 sensor a normal lens has integer divisions on all three dimensions. Diagonally, it is 45 degrees (1/8). Horizontally, it is 40 degrees (1/9). Vertically, it is about 22.5 degrees (1/16). I think it's remarkable that it is 1/9 and 1/16 on a 16:9 sensor!

So taken am I with the Normal Lens that a while back I made a post of several videos all shot with nothing but a single lens, a single, normal-length lens for whatever camera they were each shot on (different for each video), http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?355222-Videos-shot-with-a-single-normal-prime-lens
Click to expand...

With the greatest respect I think this is all.. not valid... certainly not the fractions bit :)

Clearly the angle of view of the human eye (pair) is very close to 180.

But what area of that do we focus on? Yep around 45 degrees. Maybe. Sitting at my computer screen now I seem to be comfortable when the screen fills 1/4 of my full visual field.. but Im short sighted and sit closer than many would!

Clearly the 180ish is not our normal focus of perception (FOP!!!)..(what we concentrate on) 45 degrees might be.

Id suggest our focus of perception varies scene to scene.. walking into a cathedral I will probably scan the whole 180 very quickly (at which point my FOP is close to 180). If I see someone with a bullet wound..my focus of perception (the bit of the image I am seeing or my brain is alerting me to) will probably be very tight, maybe 10 degrees!

There is therefore no normal FOV of the human eye - hence endless debate.
 
The trend the past few years for me and for our clients is toward wider "environmental portraiture" type framing for interviews. It seems like I am typically in the 24mm to 35mm area on a S35 imager. Unless the environment is ugly, cluttered or boring, in which case, back up to the "normal" 50mm to 85mm range to isolate and soften the BG a bit but I still try to keep it at F4.0 or smaller. I enjoy seeing where an interviewee is sitting, their body language and posture and what clues about who they are might be lurking in the frame. Soft, mush-like "Bokeh" BGs are boring as hell to me. I have also discovered that I like playing art director in wider framings and building up the environment a bit, move a prop, plant or other item in or out of frame to make it all look nice and well composed. So for me, the 35mm-40mm FL in S35 is the hot tip. Of course, with b-roll or handheld, it can be any focal length, depending on the look and feel you want to impart to the scene.
 
Remember that when filming Chinatown, "[Cinematographer John Alanzo, ASC] avoided diffusion to give the film a greater sense of immediacy and shot a great deal of Chinatown with a 40mm anamorphic lens to replicate human perception"?
https://theasc.com/ac_magazine/February2008/DVDPlayback/page2.html

And here's an interesting list compiled from "hearsay, guesses and some plain research from interviews, books, videos and so on." Still worth a look, and includes some intriguing links, a video, and a chart. Worth a gander:

The Focal Lengths and Lenses used by Great Directors
https://wolfcrow.com/the-focal-lengths-and-lenses-used-by-great-directors/
 
A few years back I was hired to shoot a project by someone that was big into Roger Deakins.

I used my Sony F65 along with a single Cooke 32mm prime lens. Because the guy read that Roger liked to shoot at that focal length.

After watching playback the cat says.... This looks nothing like a Roger Deakins film.

Upon which I replied.... Well, I'm not Roger Deakins, and your not Sam Mendes. But aside from that, you spent zero dollars for locations or set design.

That's when his wife who was producing it hit him on the arm and said, SEE I told you.

Thank goodness we wrapped after that and called it quits.
 
Jim Feeley said:
Remember that when filming Chinatown, "[Cinematographer John Alanzo, ASC] avoided diffusion to give the film a greater sense of immediacy and shot a great deal of Chinatown with a 40mm anamorphic lens to replicate human perception"?
https://theasc.com/ac_magazine/February2008/DVDPlayback/page2.html

And here's an interesting list compiled from "hearsay, guesses and some plain research from interviews, books, videos and so on." Still worth a look, and includes some intriguing links, a video, and a chart. Worth a gander:

The Focal Lengths and Lenses used by Great Directors
https://wolfcrow.com/the-focal-lengths-and-lenses-used-by-great-directors/
Click to expand...

Yes, Roman Polanski typically used just a couple of focal lengths per movie, always slightly different, but always a touch wider than the normal focal length, http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?328602-Roman-Polanski-quot-It-s-simple-quot

Bear in mind that even restricting the discussion to Hollywood movies, there are three major film formats:

  1. Flat 35. This was the main format 1950-2000, a 1.85 crop of standard 35mm film. Basically the same size as APS-C. A normal lens would be 30mm.
  2. Anamorphic. The other major format 1950-2000. If you weren't shooting "flat" (above) you were shooting "scope". Because of the 2x squeeze, optically speaking the diagonal is 45.5mm, just a touch bigger than the diagonal of full frame 35mm. So going by diagonal measurement, a normal lens would be 50mm. However, it may feel wider than normal to you, because the screen is so wide.
  3. Super 35. The Super 35 that most digital-cinema cameras shoot today doesn't match either of the two popular formats of yore. It's a bit bigger than flat 35 and of course a lot smaller than anamorphic. A normal lens for this is 35mm.


Many of you already know all this, but I thought I would mention it just so everyone is on the same page. Gordon Willis's favorite lens was 40mm (the Gordy Forty). But he always shot on Flat 35. So it has a slightly telephoto feel. When Roman Polanski shot Chinatown on anamorphic (and I think it is his only anamorphic film), his 40mm had the opposite feel: a little wide.
 
morgan_moore said:
With the greatest respect I think this is all.. not valid.
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You may be right. I may be crazy. I myself called it pseudoscience

There is therefore no normal FOV of the human eye - hence endless debate.
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I agree. The naturalness of the normal lens has nothing to do with field of view.

Unlike the human eye, a movie screen or TV screen or photograph has borders. The lines of perspective, radiating out of the picture, hit and interact visually with that rectangular border. A 45-degree perspective hits the border in an even way. The other angles of view (30, 37, 77, whatever they are) will hit the edges of the frame at odd angles and feel a bit off.

That's my current hunch, pseudotheory, inane rambling.
 
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Already good info here.

it should be based off what you're shooting and your personal taste. if you're used to 35mm film, then a 40mm will feel more 'normal' than a 50 because of the narrower field of view.

i typically reach for a wider lens in general because for what i do, it's usually easier to step forward to adjust my FOV vs stepping back(as opposed to reaching for another lens)
 
puredrifting said:
The trend the past few years for me and for our clients is toward wider "environmental portraiture" type framing for interviews. It seems like I am typically in the 24mm to 35mm area on a S35 imager.
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This is really good for me to hear. I have been waiting for this to happen. I advocated for this in a thread two years ago that nedcam started with this quote:

nedcam said:
My Go-To interview lens, when I have the space, is my 70-200 and to tell the truth, I'm getting really bored with looking at my footage. When I sit down to edit, eeesh...I need a new look. Every sample video I send out starts to look the same.
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And my reply:

combatentropy said:
Although my vote is for a 35mm prime (on the C100 this is a normal lens, like a 50mm on a full-frame camera).

Get rid of the talking heads! That form originated when TVs were 4:3, 640x480 (roughly), and 13". Everything had to be a close-up. But rewind further back, to when the only moving picture was at the theaters, and look at the compositions then: medium and wide shots, with few close-ups.
Click to expand...

I remember watching The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965, 70mm) and thinking, "This is all wide shots!"
 
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