What lenses to use

I

Ianb123

Active member
I'm sure there are plenty of these types of questions on this forum but I can find them.

Firstly, What are your favorite lens focal lengths? Rank which ones you use the most and are most practical.

Secondly, which lens sizes do you use for certain shots, ie. medium, close-up, master...

Thank you for your time, I have so much to learn from you guys.
 
99% of the time I am between 18 and 200mm.

As a DP, I don't have any "favorites", though the director might. I choose focal lengths that serve the story at hand, and give the images as presented on the storyboards. Really, as a DP, focal length is going to be secondary to field of view. And FOV is going to vary depending on what camera the lens is mounted on. So if you want specific answers, you are going to need to specify what camera you're talking about.

Masters for me are usually between 18 and 35mm
Mediums are 24-85mm
Closeups are typically 50-200mm

Again very dependent on the camera, the story, the directors vision, the camera position relative to the talent, etc. As a basic example, a 2-shot of a couple talking while waiting for a bus is going to require a very different lens if I am shooting them from across the street versus shooting them from the same side of the street. It's the same shot, but with VERY different requirements.
 
Oh I see. I'm going to be buying a canon t2i and really, I wanted to know what the most useful and versatile lenses are so I can just buy a couple to start. Thanks for the info.
 
Ianb123 said:
Oh I see. I'm going to be buying a canon t2i and really, I wanted to know what the most useful and versatile lenses are so I can just buy a couple to start. Thanks for the info.
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Yea I know. You and ten thousand other people... It seems like such a fundamental question. But forums like this are FILLED with new shooters asking this question, and with experienced shooters trying to explain why this is anything BUT an easy question! :)

For people with little experience in shooting, I typically recommend they purchase 2-3 zoom lenses that range from about 18mm to about 300mm. I typically suggest they buy older, inexpensive glass with adapters. The reasons for this won't be obvious necessarily, but these lenses will teach you about focal lengths, field of view, aperture, and other things without you having to spend a boatload of cash.

There are plenty of drawbacks to zoom lenses. Especially, inexpensive zoom lenses. But if you treat them as learning tools, you'll be just fine. You'll learn why they are cheap, you'll learn the benefit of constant exposure, you'll learn the benefit of long throw focus, and other things.

The T2i is available in kit form with a couple of lenses. I bought mine with the 18-55mm lens. That is a fine beginner lens. Add a good 70-300mm manual zoom to that, and you're well on your way.

In this game, "versatility" often runs counter to quality or you trade off some other benefits. Like light gathering. Zooms tend to be very versatile, but often have lower optical quality than prime lenses, and won't allow in as much light as a decent prime. That's the trade-off. By the time you start buying zooms with excellent optical quality, you'll be spending four figures for them.
 
Ha! Each person has their own likes and needs. I prefer having a selection of manual primes over a couple zooms any day of the week! Just goes to show you that whatever works is what you need!

I do agree that buying older glass is a good start for sure. It's cheap and it just works well, especially with today's cameras that tend to be overly sharp. I have even started buying old Russian glass too. It just has a character that I like and those lenses are generally built like tanks too.

I chose old Nikon glass to collect simply because they all use the same mount and I can use a single adapter for all my lenses.

Don't worry about getting anything too close in focal distance. Get something in the 20-28 (wide) range, something in the 35-50 (medium) range and something in the 85-100mm (tele) range and you'll be fine.
 
Svart, I prefer primes as well. But I advocate new shooters start with zooms so that they find what focal lengths they tend to gravitate toward. That way, when they are ready to spend money on primes, they know what they need. Buying a bunch of primes without a clue is an expensive game.
 
Thanks guys, so say I wanted to go the prime lens route. If i were to choose three lenses, which three would be most commonly be requested by directors? Say 18mm 35mm and 85mm? I know different directors want different things and I'll pick up more lenses eventually. These focal lengths are more like 28mm 50mm and 100mm because of the cropped sensor right? Also are you saying that I can use my old nikkor lenses that I had on my nikon film camera and brevis with an adaptor?
 
Ian,

For lensing a movie, it's typical to have 6-12 primes on hand, as well as a couple of zooms. Asking "which three" is like asking which three wheels are important on a car. If you really NEED an 18mm, a 24 just won't get it done. And if you NEED a 100mm, that 85mm just ISN'T going to cut it.

If I *HAD* to select three primes, I'd probably choose a 20, a 35, and a 50. You can close lens some things, but getting wide is just impossible to fake.

And yes, you can use your old Nikon film lenses. That's about all I use. Adapter costs about $15. I put one on every lens and bought a bunch of Canon lens-backs. Simple as can be.
 
The 40mm is my favorite lens. I think it is a great normal perspective lens. I think 35mm is a little wide and 50mm is a little tight.


If I had to pick three, and only three.... I'd pick either:

1) 32mm, 40mm, 75mm.

or

2) 25mm, 40mm, 75mm... if I needed a wider lens and still had to only pick 3.
 
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Great, thanks for the information. The 40mm lens is my favorite on my 35mm still camera. With the t2i's 1.6x crop sensor does that mean that I need a 25mm to get the same image that I'm use to? It's really confusing me.
 
Ianb123 said:
Great, thanks for the information. The 40mm lens is my favorite on my 35mm still camera. With the t2i's 1.6x crop sensor does that mean that I need a 25mm to get the same image that I'm use to? It's really confusing me.
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To get a 40mm field of view, you would need to use a ~25mm lens, yes.


If you have a lens and want to know what focal length if will emulate on your T2i, multiply it times 1.6.

If you want a particular field of view, say 50mm, on your T2i, and you want to know what lens to use, you divide the focal length by 1.6.

That's all there is to it.
 
jscottprice said:
That's all there is to it.
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See, there's a problem with this statement in my opinion. Especially for those coming from 35mm film or full frame.

While it's true the 1.6 crop factor conversion WILL get you the correct field of view, the lens is STILL the same focal length. So if you like the DOF, and other characteristics of an 85mm, you NEED to still be on an 85mm, but your field of view will be that of a 135. It's quite an adjustment.
 
PerroneFord said:
See, there's a problem with this statement in my opinion. Especially for those coming from 35mm film or full frame.

While it's true the 1.6 crop factor conversion WILL get you the correct field of view, the lens is STILL the same focal length. So if you like the DOF, and other characteristics of an 85mm, you NEED to still be on an 85mm, but your field of view will be that of a 135. It's quite an adjustment.
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This is true. You are absolutely right.


For those starting up, though, understanding what field of view you will have when you put on Lens A instead of Lens B is the most crucial, since it is the most immediate effect on your image. And since he said he was confused, I was more or less summing up the math of it, not necessarily the cinematography.

@OP:

Hopefully this won't confuse you more, but what's truly happening with these "cropped sensors" is magnification. Since the 7D/T2i/60D crop the image by 60%, it would be the equivalent of going into Photoshop, cropping an image to 60% its size, and blowing it up to the size of the original image. You have, essentially, magnified the image by 160%, or 1.6x. That is what is happening on these cameras. The sensors ignore part of the image, which means part of a lens's field of view is ignored.

The caveat here, like Perrone pointed out, is that lenses have an innate effect on depth of field and the portrayal of subjects based on their focal length. A 10mm lens has a drastically different depth of field as a 135mm lens, as well different fields of view, obviously. The cropping only effects the field of view, so, with a 35mm lens say, even though the sensor has cropped the image to more like a 55mm field of view, subjects in the foreground will still appear closer to the camera than they truly are, and subjects in the background will be farther away - a property of wide angle lenses - and the depth of field will be greater than an actual 55mm prime because it is still a 35mm wide angle lens - your camera is just magnifying a portion of its view.

Does that make sense? Hopefully I didn't muddy the waters.
 
That was confusing to me.

To me, it breaks down like this:

If I have two cameras, one full frame (Canon 5D) and one crop (Canon 7D), and I have a 50mm lens.. it works like this:


Place the 50mm lens on the 5D and I have a specific field of view and a certain "apparent distance" from the subject. In the case of the 50mm, the subject and backgroud appear through the camera nearly as they do to my human eye.

Remove the 50mm lens and place it on a 7D

On the 7D, the field of view is narrower (I can't see as much on the edges as I did with the other camera) but the apparent distance to the subject and the background has not changed one bit. The 50mm still looks like a 50mm.

It would be the same as going into Photoshop with a picture taken on the 5D and cropping. There is no magnification factor at all.



Another way to think about it is to thing about projecting an image on a screen from a projector. If we adjust the screen such that the image fills the screen perfectly that emulates the 5D. If we then cut the screen so it is 1.6x smaller, we have just emulated the crop camera having a smaller sensor. The image is no larger or smaller, and no magnification has taken place. We simply lose the edges because the "screen" is smaller. This is precisely what the lens is doing. It's projecting the EXACT same image onto a smaller sensor in the 7D.
 
When you say, crop the FoV by 60% what is the standard you are working off of?

Crop factor can change depending on the first format compared to the second format. Not all of us shoot on photography cameras like a 5DmII
 
Well, in addition to changes in image size, relative to 'angle of view', one also has to consider the change (typically) in circle of confusion.

So, from my 'handy' calculator, for a still 35mm film film camera, with a circle of confusion of .030, one has for a 50mm lens, and a focus of 15 ft, f/8, a near and far value of 10.4 and 26.7 ft.
For a GH-1 using the 4:3 circle of confusion value of .015, one has for the same lens and settings, 12.3 and 19.2 ft respectively.

In other words, the 'dof' has gotten shallower.
 
That seems odd. One of the PRIMARY benefits of going to a DSLR (large sensor) from the small 1/3" sensor cameras has been to get shallower DOF. But what you've posted here is exactly the opposite. The GH1 certainly has a smaller sensor than full frame 35, so the depth of field should certainly be DEEPER not shallower.
 
That's because Circle of Confusion is related to 'viewing size', and so, what you have said about DoF and lenses is true, but when you 'crop down' there is a corresponding 'enlargement up'... which is when circle of confusion comes into play.

Actually, on doing a web search... Here's a Dof article from Barry Green... whoever that guy is...

http://www.dvxuser.com/articles/article.php/21
 
PerroneFord said:
Another way to think about it is to thing about projecting an image on a screen from a projector. If we adjust the screen such that the image fills the screen perfectly that emulates the 5D. If we then cut the screen so it is 1.6x smaller, we have just emulated the crop camera having a smaller sensor. The image is no larger or smaller, and no magnification has taken place. We simply lose the edges because the "screen" is smaller. This is precisely what the lens is doing. It's projecting the EXACT same image onto a smaller sensor in the 7D.
Click to expand...

But a full frame sensor is wider and taller than an APS-C sensor, is it not? Therefore, the 7D cropping is horizontal and vertical.

That would mean the 7D is effectively magnifying the 5D's field of view by 1.6x and cropping out what doesn't fit. In my mind, it would be like looking at an image full-screen on your computer, then zooming in: What is left in the screen is your actual image, say on the 7D, and the rest that doesn't fit has been cropped out. It is magnifying in the sense that both the 5DII and the 7D record to 1920x1080, but one has a full frame, the other a 1.6x crop of that frame - but both cameras squeeze their fields of view into 1920 resolution.

I could easily be mistaken about this whole mess, which is not unlikely, and I don't want to be spreading misinformation, so please correct me.


Edit: Referencing this image

500px-Sensor_sizes_overlaid_inside.svg.png
 
If you take a page out of a book and cover half of it with your hand, you've not magnified anything, you just can't see part of the page.

The 1920x1080 has zero to do with anything. The RED One has 4k pixels in the roughly same space as the 7d's sensor. That's off the table.

Cropping has nothing to do with magnification. But you can test this yourself. Take a photo into photoshop or similar. Size it to the size of a 5D sensor. Then crop it to the size of the 7D sensor. Did it magnify? No, you just cut things off on all 4 sides. This is exactly what happens when a given lens projects an image onto two different sized sensors. For there to be magnification, the optics would have to change, and since we are using the same lens, that isn't occurring.

It's unfortunate most people can't just put two cameras side by side and test this. I was confused a bit by this concept because the idea of a crop camera was foreign to me. So I put a full frame camera and a crop camera on table, and move a lens from one to the other to see the effect. There was no magnification of the image, merely a cropping.
 
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