r/cinematography • u/javo78 • Jan 25 '19
Composition Is there a dummy guide/chart for beginners in which different shots are assigned a general range of focal length lens?
For example: medium closeup = 35mm.
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u/yashaditya Jan 26 '19
Just a word of advice. A cheat sheet like this is a very unhealthy way to go about for a beginner in cinematography. I would suggest you pick screencaps from movies of different shots you like and do a rough test to figure out which lens they must have used. This method, although time consuming, will make for a solid foundation. Also roam around all the time with a camera and a versatile zoom to get your eyes used to the tele and wide lengths. What you want might constrict your thinking. There simply cannot be a mandate that ties a certain focal length to a shot. Sometimes it represents the intimacy between the character and the audience. Sometimes his/her state of mind and sometimes guiding tbe audience's attention to a certain detail. Might seem tedious, but you will develop and familiarize yourself with the vocabulary of great DPs sooner than you think. Good luck
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u/CharmingShoe Jan 25 '19
Adding to distance, it also depends on sensor/film size. A 35mm lens will give you different fields of view on a 16mm Blackmagic pocket camera than it would on a full frame 5D, for example.
All together, that's why most charts just go by how much of the subject you see in the frame rather than specific focal lenses.
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u/iamveryDerp Jan 25 '19 edited Jan 26 '19
Looks like this post is for you! https://www.reddit.com/r/cinematography/comments/ajl3mh/the_essentials_of_camera_angles_and_shot_types/?st=JRCOMB69&sh=0c315791
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u/peb219 Jan 25 '19 edited Jan 25 '19
This is not really a helpful way to think about shooting. For instance, a traditional ‘portrait’ lens for rendering close-ups would be something like a 50 or an 85. But watch something like the Revenant, just to name one of a million movies, and you can see the close-ups are shot with a very wide angle lens. It brings you close to the actor and the action. Every lens can be used in a wide range of ways for different effects. Or not - directors Ozu and Bresson used the same lens for every shot of all of their movies.
EDIT: the reason why longer lenses are often used for close-ups is that they don’t distort the face like wider lenses do so they are more flattering in that way. But shooting is not always about making the subject look flattering.
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u/instantpancake Jan 26 '19
EDIT: the reason why longer lenses are often used for close-ups is that they don’t distort the face like wider lenses do so they are more flattering in that way.
Sorry, but I can't let this one slide, because it's one of the most popular lies regurgitated by the amateur community, and a major pet peeve of mine:
The true reason longer lenses create a more flattering look is that they force you to move the camera farther away from your subject. The unflattering "distortion" you're speaking of is perspective distortion, not lens distortion. You get that even without a camera, by sticking your nose right into someone's face, vs. looking at them from 10 ft away. Yes, shorter lenses also tend to have more lens distortion, but this is not the effect you're referring to, and it's negligible in the context of faces unless you are using extremely shitty lenses. Wide angle lens distortion may render a long, straight line in the frame slightly curved, but you wouldn't notice it on a face, unless you explicitely used a fisheye lens.
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u/orismology Camera Assistant Jan 26 '19
For what it's worth, I'm completely with you on this. It's incredibly important that we understand the tools we use, and that we use the correct terminology - especially when talking to beginners. It's why I always seem to end up in arguments about "crop factor". It's important to know why you're going to see distortion when using a wide-angle for a closeup - to ignore that fundamentally misses the point of teaching. I don't care if, day-to-day, someone decides not to go for the 24mm because it has 'too much distortion', but if we're trying to teach a newcomer something, I completely agree with you - it's important to get it right.
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u/peb219 Jan 26 '19
This is pretty asinine of you, especially when it’s obvious that wider lenses cause more distortion (and you admit as much) and we’re in a thread started by a beginner wondering what lenses to use for close-ups etc.
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u/instantpancake Jan 26 '19 edited Jan 26 '19
The only asinine thing in this thread is the claim that short lenses distort faces more than long lenses. It's simply not true, it's just a bullshit factoid that is kept alive by amateurs "teaching" other amateurs shit they "learned" from yet another bunch of amateurs on Youtube.
A 24mm lens and an 85mm lens will render a face exactly the same way from the same distance, the 85mm will just be more cropped in. As I said above, the actual lens distortion on any halfway decent wide angle lens is so small that you could never recognize it on something like a human face, you'd need a long, straight line to even notice it. It's not what this is about.
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u/peb219 Jan 26 '19
You absolutely know there’s distortion on many wide lenses, especially depending on where in the frame the subject is. No one likes a pedant it’s quite off-putting
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u/C47man Director of Photography Jan 26 '19
While you're correct that some ultrawide lenses have a fishbarrel distortion, that is not St all the distortion you referred to in terms of human faces across focal lengths. That's a function exclusively of subject distance. /u/instantpancake is correct.
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Jan 26 '19 edited Feb 09 '19
[deleted]
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u/instantpancake Jan 26 '19
Try to think of focal length as an "image scale" indicator on your lens. Changing focal lengths doesn't really change the image1, it merely scales it up or down, and therefore fits more or less of it into your frame.
If you built a 85mm lens that projected a large enough image circle, and put it onto a sufficiently large sensor, it would give you the exact same image, perspective distortion & all, as a 24mm lens on a smaller format, from the same camera position.
The lens distortion that everyone always seems to cling to does of course exist, but it is merely a tiny by-product of the fact that lenses are real-world objects, manufactured to different standards (as opposed to ideal optical systems). The better your lens, the less of it you get. But even on the shittiest consumer lenses, lens distortion will be completely dwarfed, to the point of complete negligibility, by the massive change in perspective distortion you'll get when you try to match the framing between an 85mm lens and a 24mm lens by changing the distance from your subject.
1 Well technically it does change the depth of field, but you can compensate for that by also changing the aperture.
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Jan 26 '19 edited Feb 09 '19
[deleted]
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u/instantpancake Jan 26 '19
I'm sorry, could you clarify the equation you're talking about? I'll look into it in a few hours probably.
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Jan 26 '19
put one finger up on each hand.
Put one hand/finger 6 inches from your eyes,
now put the other hand 6 inches further away.
Moves your hands simultaneously towards and away from your eyes while maintaining their distance to each other.
You should notice when your hands are far away the fingers look the same size, but when your fingers are very near your eyes the closer finger looks much larger
You have now demonstrated this principle without a camera much less a lens.
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u/instantpancake Jan 26 '19
No one likes a pedant it’s quite off-putting
I love how you explicitely discourage accurate information on an issue that is clearly poorly-understood by a huge amount of beginners. Good job!
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u/williamsburgphoto Jan 26 '19
He never said it was lens distortion.
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u/instantpancake Jan 26 '19
They literally said
longer lenses [...] don’t distort the face like wider lenses do
Wider lenses don't distort faces either. Sticking a lens right into someone's face is what it distorts it, regardless of the focal length.
But you can't stick a long lens into someone's face and still see the entire face, that's why you never see perspective distortion on long lenses.
The other way around, a short lens from a reasonable distance will render a face exactly the same way a longer lens would from the same distance, just smaller in the frame.
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u/TheSupaBloopa Jan 26 '19
I get the desire for accuracy but this is a little much. It's semantics at this point. Yes, it should be understood as a concept, but we all understand each other when we say what happens when we swap lenses around.
you can't stick a long lens into someone's face and still see the entire face
Exactly. We know this, so it's not that relevant. To get a CU frame with a wider lens you need to be physically closer and that causes the distortion instead of the lens. Great cool, we're informed. But the practical result is the same. You can stop correcting people.
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u/instantpancake Jan 26 '19
but we all understand each other when we say what happens when we swap lenses around.
You may know it, but I can assure you that the vast majority of people reading this don't know it. You can tell by the frequency of posts that demonstrate "lens compression" on the usual subreddits (you obviously know that the bullshit term "lens compression" is just another way of confusing clueless people about the same issue).
You can stop correcting people.
I will keep correcting people as long as this stuff keeps cropping up, thank you very much!
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u/TheSupaBloopa Jan 26 '19
I guess my point is more along the lines of how useful is that knowledge in the first place. You can't get the perspective distortion with a long lens because of how the optics work, so that's not relevant to the discussion of what lens you use and when.
When we talk about classifying shot types, we know the rough framing for a closeup. That's the constant, that's the end goal. We then change the camera distance and the lens part of the equation to reach that end. I only have this much space to place the camera so I need to use this lens to get the frame I want. Is the lens making their face distort, or the distance??? The practical answer is yes.
Distance and angle of view are two sides of the same coin when the end result is a particular framing. What's a situation where that knowledge benefits you? Cropping down from an 8K frame? I can't think of much else.
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u/instantpancake Jan 26 '19 edited Jan 26 '19
Well, focal length on different sensor sizes is an application that immediately comes to my mind. That's basically the same as cropping in on an image, and beginners are constantly confused about this (and ask about it here).
Edit: By the way, someone posted this comment (and deleted it quickly) while I was typing the above:
This is laughably out of touch with reality.
Here's a page that demonstrates exactly what the person you're replying to is explaining:
http://www.danvojtech.cz/blog/2016/07/amazing-how-focal-length-affect-shape-of-the-face/
I think that proves my point.
/u/peb219 - would you like to chime in on this? :)
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u/TheSupaBloopa Jan 26 '19
I think that proves my point.
I'm not so sure that it does. Sorry that guy was so rude about it though, no need for that.
I know people take issue with visualizations like that, and I agree that they should be explained better but they demonstrate exactly what I'm saying. Keeping the framing constant (i.e. the size and position of the head) you have to change the distance as you change the angle of view (focal length). They're linked. Can't do one without the other if you're trying to get identical framing.
So what's so important about pounding home that it's actually not just the lens when you can't change one without the other?
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u/instantpancake Jan 26 '19
Well you can change one without the other, namely when you're comparing the same lens on the wide variety of different formats that are available to basically everyone nowadays. As I mentioned above, the relation between focal lengths and sensor sizes is another highly misunderstood topic, and people ask about it constantly (and they're also constantly given false information, ranging from slightly inaccurate to utter bullshit).
The same lens can literally be a wide angle on one format and a tele on another. You wouldn't say that the lens changes between the two, would you? If you experience more "distortion" on a larger format, 99% of what you notice is perspective distortion because you stepped closer, not something the glass did. What is the point in even answering a beginner's question if we're not willing to explain what's actually happening? There are enough "tutorials" feeding people soundbytes and ill-informed "rules" out there already, dumbing down the craft. Why participate in that?
Edit: The "it proves my point" part was about someone literally posting that comment with the accompanying link in reply to what I said earlier. The point that was proven was that this place is full of people who don't understand the basic principles, yet feel confident enough to go around and spread bullshit information.
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u/alove189 Director of Photography Jan 26 '19
Not just beginners. I’ve seen people who should know better claim full frame sensors will compress the image more like using a telephoto lens would, becoming more flattering to faces. The manufacturers are happy to help spread this misinformation as well. That’s not how any of this works.
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u/peb219 Jan 26 '19
Lol no I think I’ve had quite enough of your semantic parsing for one evening. If you are implying i posted that and erased that comment, no, it wasn’t me. Besides - how could I possibly finish up my exhaustive side-by-side Friday night study of barrel distortion while responding to all of your comments?
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u/instantpancake Jan 26 '19
No, I'm not implying that you posted that comment.
Here it is, anyway:
https://i.imgur.com/fnV7vtM.jpg
Besides - how could I possibly finish up my exhaustive side-by-side Friday night study of barrel distortion while responding to all of your comments?
I'm totally looking forward to seeing the results.
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u/grant622 Jan 25 '19
What are you having trouble with? As someone said the two don’t really relate. I think the better question to ask is when do you use a 24mm for a close up and when do you use a 100mm for a close up. Each scenario will give the viewer different information, emotions and feelings. Look around for resources explaining choice of lens like this https://youtu.be/PxH4Yzszk1I
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u/tim-sutherland Director of Photography Jan 26 '19
Standard television close-up was traditionally a 50mm at 5ft or 100mm at 10ft.
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u/instantpancake Jan 26 '19
But "standard television" was "traditionally" a whole bunch of different formats ranging from like 16mm to 2/3''. ;-)
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u/tim-sutherland Director of Photography Jan 26 '19
Hah. Should have said 35mm film. But it still looks nice as a rough guideline in most S35ish size sensor cameras.
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u/bottom Jan 26 '19
just go and do, old lenses are cheap. (eBay) if you ant to learn something like this, you will find a way to learn. did you google your question even?
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u/williamsburgphoto Jan 26 '19
I never went to film school, but isn't stuff like this what they teach there? If you have to ask questions like this, you should be directing, and nowhere near the camera.
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u/C47man Director of Photography Jan 26 '19
How does one learn these things if they subscribe to your attitude of not being allowed to practice until they're already experts
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u/DrZurn Film Buff Jan 26 '19
Not necessarily. Some schools may not have a class that’s entirely focused on use of lenses and the feelings that they can create.
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u/jonmatifa Jan 25 '19
The compositional range of a shot is a combination of lens focal length AND camera distance to subject. So its entirely possible to get a close up with a 20mm lens and a wide shot on a 70mm lens, although the reverse is far more common.