Newbie Question: manual lens for street shots

jonpais · February 21, 2014

I've read over and over again that to achieve a film look it would behoove me (it's been ages since I've been able to use that word!) to shoot with manual lenses. Up until now, I've been using two X Vario zooms with the GH3 (as well as the GM1) for capturing street life here in Saigon. I have been procrastinating because I'm so worried that all my pictures will be a blurry mess and jittery without any OIS. It would appear that inexpensive lenses like a used Nikon f/1.4 or some other manufacturer can be exploited with great success. So I guess my question is this: is there any advantage to using a full-frame lens and adapter vs. something like a Voigtlander micro four thirds lens? How do you keep constantly moving subjects in focus? And what about stabilization? Do you think just a shoulder rig would suffice?

pablogrollan · February 21, 2014

Manual lenses won't give you a film look per se. They will simply allow greater control (just like manual settings in your camera) so that you can shoot how you want instead of how the camera wants. Autofocus still doesn't work properly for video, so using a follow focus (or the focus ring if you're skilled enough) is the way to go to rack focus between different subjects in the frame.

A good and fast voigtlander m43 is a great lens. Micro four thirds has a x2 crop, which not only affects the field of view -that appears "cropped" or "zoomed"- but also the depth of field. A full frame lens + metabones speedbooster will reduce that crop and give you a shallower depth of field. Therefore, It is easier to keep everything in focus with a m43 sensor and an m43 lens. With enough practice, it won't matter if you use a full frame vintage lens or the voigt. As long as you use a good lens...

Nevertheless, you can increase the depth of field of any lens by stopping it down. An aperture of f22 will give much more depth of field than f3.5 (at the expense of light). If you are shooting outdoors in a sunny day, you can stop it down without needing to use a high ISO. Regarding shutter speed, you should always use 1/50 for a film look. According to the 180Âº shutter rule, your shutter speed should be "double your framerate", and considering film is shot at 24fps (1/48 shutter speed), I would choose the closest shutter speed to that (1/50) to have the "natural" motion blur of cinema, even if you are shooting 30p.

A stabilized lens or stabilized sensor helps a lot. For handheld or shoulder mounted, use a wide lens (not a fisheye, just a regular wide angle, from 18mm to 35mm in FF format) There is no IBIS in cinema cameras, but a professional operator would resort to a steadicam if such smoothness is required. I would usually recommend a rig. A stablized lens will not help you with "picth" jitter -rotation of the camera on its own axis pointing up or down-, which is the most akward of jitters, the one that reveals it was shot with a smalll camera.

A large shoulder mounted camera does not pitch up or down, hence a shoulder mounted rig helps. Bend your knees a liitle to counter your steps and try to move smoothly. Moving right + stabilized lens + shoulder rig + a bit of stabilization in post = pretty decent and smooth camera moves. If you plan to do heavy stabilization in post, use a shutter speed of 1/150, because the stabilization software will remove the jitter, but cannot remove the motion blur associated to that jitter, but then again a shutter of 1/150 is not as usual in film as 1/50.

Hope I helped...