where to go to understand lenses....

S

shadowknight123

Active member
Im so new to this world. Trying to figure out what lenses i need to purchase to get the "film look" and really control my dof video only, im not concerned at all with photo. So im going 100% manual.

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small description of scene from the movie:
Takes place in a beach town, very dialogue driven, many scenes following a few people who are engaged in a conversation (im assuiming i still havnt read the guys script all the way) a few scenes at a busy beach focused on only a few characters. another big part takes place at some house party at night, and a scene of the couple going down a steep hill on bikes.

We are using a glidecam HD4000 with the x-10 setup for alot of this film, of course tri-pod as well.
For my DOF i wont be doing alot of rack focusing,(maybe for a few shots) just mainly could deal with a large area in focus on our characters and the background all out of focus. I'm concerned about the bike scene as we will be follwoing them going down the hill pretty fast and i want the houses behind them to be out of focus ect while keeping them in that critical clear area..
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Maybe there is somewhere i can understand these #'s ect or someone kind enough to explain to me, or show me what lesnes would work best and a good place to purchase them.

if anyone has skype also mine is shadowknight1231 be much easier to discuss on there oneo on one. I just have so many "other" q as well..


Justin
 
Try anything 2.8 or faster. My favorite is the 50mm 1.4. I think a issue you will have is that with 1.4 and the glide cam. Because you have to focus so much with the big DOF and I wouldnt know how to do that on a glide cam.
 
Ya since we will be using tri-pod, glidecam, dolly im wantinga small yet grand variety of lenses.

The only one we are purchasing atm is this:


As for that the lense i woud like on a glidecam i want it so i wouldnt have to worry about the subject we are following to go out of focus. Because once on the glidecam we cant rack focus anything whats set is set so i want it to have a nice range of sharpness but the background be somewhat if not very out of focus.


Then for our tri-pod/dolly shots I'd want a lense were i can have alot of freedome to rack focusing ect. We dont need anything crazy where its a super shallow dof (small inch ect as you see when people film plants heh). But somthing we can control our dof more so then the lense we will have on the glidecam.





Any suggestions im all open ears :-)
 
You need a lesson in the whole theory of photography - buy a book maybe

things that give you deep focus..

wide lens
small aperture
subject far away

things that give you narrow focus
long lens
large aperture
subject close

things that isolate your subject from the background

distance from subject to background, narrow focus


You dont need faster than 2.8 to have your subject isolated from the background
 
morgan_moore said:
You dont need faster than 2.8 to have your subject isolated from the background
Click to expand...


This is correct, infact, it's starts getting a bit difficult to keep subjects in-focus while both camera operator and subjects are in motion (specially for video) when you start going faster than 2.8, at least in my experience.
 
It will not be very easy to get some if those shots you want without a lot of experience. I would try to shoot in the range of f2.8 and f4 to make things a bit easier. On the beach you will need ND filters and a low iso setting to get down to that range. ND filters could be placed in a matte box or you could use somthing like a sing ray vari nd or fader nd if you are not shooting wide angle lenses.

The range you want to cover is 25, 35, 50 and 85 (then possibly add something wider like 18 and after that the tokina 11-16). You can get most of your coverage with a tamron 17-50 vc 2.8 or tokina 16-50 2.8, but those lenses extend when zooming, so a mattebox is not really a good option if you go that route.

You may want to take a video production class and get a few books to get started. Hope this helps!
 
So about ND filters.. We are going to be using this rig:
http://www.thecinecity.com/tcc/produ...cat=279&page=1

So I dont know wether to get ND filters for the matte box, or filters for the lens them selfs. Can the lens filters be used on all or do i have to indvidually buy a nd filter for my 50 mm 24 mm ect...

When filming we wont be doing "any zooming" EVER. So would a zoom lens still be a problem?
 
Umm There is reason the most popular lenses in the professonal world a T1.3. Super Speeds,
the new Illuminas, Master Primes... Having fast lenses doesnt neccesarily mean you use them at T1.3/F1.2 what it means is that when you stop down a stop or two for maximum performance youre not stopping down to a F4/F5.6 from wide open. Youre stopping down to a 2/2.8. A more useable apeture when youre using natural light, and on a budget.
 
Well over the past few days been doing alot of homework. My uncle is a photographer to so he gave me as much info as he could while trying to relate it to film even though he doesnt have background on the film aspect of using these lens's however i assume its similiar.


With the canon 7D when in video mode, if i change the shutter speed or f stop can i "visually" see it on the monitor ect? Unlike taking photos where after u take a photo you "see" the result of it allowing more light/less light in. Comapreed to say an HMC150 i bring down the f stop and i see on the viewfinder its goign down ect same with shutter speed.
 
shadowknight123 said:
With the canon 7D when in video mode, if i change the shutter speed or f stop can i "visually" see it on the monitor ect?
Click to expand...

yes

any changes in iso, aperture or shutter are immediately displayed on the LCD. When you are recording if you have a manual lens any changes with aperture will be recorded and also shown on the LCD as you record.
 
shadowknight123 said:
Well over the past few days been doing alot of homework. My uncle is a photographer to so he gave me as much info as he could while trying to relate it to film even though he doesnt have background on the film aspect of using these lens's however i assume its similiar.


With the canon 7D when in video mode, if i change the shutter speed or f stop can i "visually" see it on the monitor ect? Unlike taking photos where after u take a photo you "see" the result of it allowing more light/less light in. Comapreed to say an HMC150 i bring down the f stop and i see on the viewfinder its goign down ect same with shutter speed.
Click to expand...


You don't want to change your shutter when shooting video unless you are doing a special efffect. Shoot 1/60th for 30fps or 1/50th for 24fps. Change ISO only. High shutter speeds can give you the saving private ryan look while low shutters give you a video look.
 
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