Cinematography Masterclass L2S3 Variety of Lenses
Hello Friends,
And welcome back to a new lesson
We will talk about varieties of lenses in this lesson
All lenses have a purpose, it all depends on the situation and requirement and that is why we must have a deep understanding of all the lenses
Because we do not know what situation may arise and if we have the knowledge of lenses, we can use the right lens at the right time.
The fisheye lens is around for years, but it did not find its way into the cinema because of the super wide 180 degrees angle.
If you remember you had a door viewer lens for years, a see-through to see the visitor, it had a 180 degrees view and we all enjoyed those funny faces when someone came close to it
So the fisheye lens had two purposes, a super wide 180 degrees angle and a distorted image that was funny and adventurous at the same time.
In cinemas, it was only used when the characters were seen peeping into something, like a door, hole, or a pipe, but now fisheye lenses are used to capture sports, adventure, and so much more.
A small size lens that can capture a wide angle is also helpful in security.
20-25 mm lens with a fixed focal length
It is a wide-angle lens, but it doesn’t give a distorted image.
It is perfect for landscape and cityscape photography. It is also helpful when you want to capture a large group of people.
A 25-50 mm prime lens
With a fixed focal length and no zoom feature, this prime lens is one of the favorites of all because of the output quality.
Low aperture value helps in taking low light images with clarity and gives a shallow depth of field for a cinematic look.
Perfect for talking head videos, interviews, landscape, cityscapes, product shoots, modeling and so much more.
A go-to lens for all beginners
There are many zoom lenses, they come in different combinations such as 18-55 mm, 30-70mm, 75-300, etc
There are many combinations, and you use them as per your requirement.
The only advantage a zoom lens has is that you can zoom in and out with the same lens without physically getting close to the subject.
Sometimes, it is not possible to reach the object physically, so a zoom lens helps in bringing the object into focus.
Helpful in creating cinematic effect by pulling and pushing focus helps in shifting focus from one object to another with ease.
Used in tracking the object without losing the shallow depth of field,
A zoom lens has a versatile use, it all depends on your requirement and creativity.
A lens that has a bigger zoom is categorized as a telephoto lens
When you need to capture something very far, you use a telephoto lens, they are engineered to take images from far far away.
They have better stability and capture images without losing details
Another advantage of a telephoto lens is that you can maintain a small aperture value even after you zoom in.
I am sure you didn’t get that
It is a little technical detail, and this is not the time to get into it, I will explain it properly in the upcoming lessons.
Macro lenses are specially designed to capture images from a closed distance.
They are best for extreme closeups and useful if you want to capture flowers, insects, food or some extreme details of your object.
And last but not the least, you have smartphone attachable lenses,
There are a bunch of lenses for smartphones, and you will be amazed by the variety and quality they deliver, we will cover this in detail in the smartphone photography section, but for now,
Remember that we have different sizes and quality lenses for smartphones, from fisheye to zoom to telephoto lenses, they all deliver amazing results,
and you will be happy to learn about all of them in our smartphone photography section.
There are hundreds of different lenses, and they all offer something unique, it is not possible to discuss every lens in detail, but I hope you got the idea of lens categories, and next time when you see a lens, you can recognize if and find a suitable use.
That is all for today, I’ll see you tomorrow in a new lesson when we discuss zoom lenses in detail
Till then
Good luck and have fun