lenses

[LAmind]

Ok, i know nothing about lenses. NOTHING. So i hope someone can clear a couple of things up.

First off.. a wide angle lense. This is what I thought a wide angle lense does. true or not true:

Ok, when you shoot a home video, and you come up to someone (without any kind of lense except for the one that camera has). And you get a close shot of their head. Their face will look kinda....fish-eye effected. You know what i mean? It will start to be kinda round. Now... does the wide-angle lense make the image perfectly flat (like you would see it in reality through your eyes)? Is that it?

And what exactly is telefoto lense. Does all it do is just let you see farther?

-Ivan

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"A place for everything and everything in it's place".

[machead]

best not to worry about these things

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MACHEAD
I've only got one button on my mouse,what does that mean?

[sdchown]

Actually, it is best to worry about these things. It costs nothing to learn a little about how lenses work and how images are rendered (either on film or on ccd). And it will help you a great deal and give your work a better look.

There are probably too many things involved for me to go into any depth on your questions. I understand how lenses work, but am not technical enough to explain it properly.

I suggest you find some books on 35mm stills photography. All the lens principles are the same. If you learn how to use a SLR camera manually (rather than having it do all the automamatic shutter speeds, focus, F-stops and stuff), you will have a solid foundation for cinamatography.

Here are some tips though.

1. Wide lenses will mask some of the unsteadiness of your shots, but at the same time they will make your shots look kind of flat and lifeless. So when shooting handheld or stedicam or something go as wide as you can, but be sensible. Too wide and the motion towards the edges of the frame will seem freeky (see some of the shots in El-Mariachi)

2. Don't zoom in. It looks cheesy. Unless of course you want it to look cheesy (All a bit seventies really). Rather dolly in closer.

3. Fixed prime lenses are generally better quality than zoom lenses.

4. When shooting 16mm a 25mm lens is roughly what the eye sees.

5. Wide lenses will end up including a lot of background. So if you have cheap sets, it will show them up. It also detatches you from the subject slightly. Tighter shots are more personal.

6. Mix your shots up (Lord of the Rings was great at this I thought - it went from huge wide epic shots to really tight closeups).

7. If your camera is noisy a zoom lens will allow you to be far enough away from the subject that you wont hear the camera (this is fairly obvious of course)

8. Zooming in will compress a scene. This is useful for tricking perspective so that it will make two objects seem closer than they are. Useful for fight scenes (make it seem like a punch has connected rather than the miss it really is) or stunts (make it seem like the hero was almost hit by a car when in reality it was far enough away from him to be safe).

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Regards
Stephen Chown
Old Ones Productions

[This message has been edited by sdchown (edited January 10, 2002).]

[This message has been edited by sdchown (edited January 10, 2002).]