People don't seem to understand lenses (moving beyond 'zooms vs primes' thinking)

[kye]

I've been thinking about lenses a lot over the last few years, and just to be cheeky I've put some observations into a framework.

Level 1 is where we start - with zooms

The normal start to using lenses is with zoom lenses, probably the kit lens.

We know the thinking at this stage: its convenient, you stand in one place and zoom, hooray!

Level 2 is what most YT lens videos are about - primes are better than zooms

We all know the arguments.  Primes make you "zoom with your feet", they make you learn about perspective, they're sharper, better in low-light, BOKEH!!!!1, you can learn the FOV and develop an instinct for it, vintage ones are cheap, "real photographers / cinematographers use primes!"

There are approximately 1000 billion videos and tutorials explaining this, but this seems to be where the thinking stops.  I've not seen that much stuff that goes beyond this, but this is really just the start.

Level 3 is where understanding begins - zooms and primes have their uses

Almost none of the discussion up until this point acknowledges that lenses create images, and images have aesthetics, and aesthetics are what is actually being discussed.

Moving to talk about motion pictures now, and cinema especially, there is a bunch of nuance that Level 2 doesn't really discuss.

People have decided that FF sensors are the most 'cinematic' and typically are used with FF vintage lenses.  This means that the FOVs are 24mm / 28 / 35 / 50 / 85 / 100 etc, with maybe a 40mm in there if you're getting fancy.
These weren't the FOVs of cinema though, because cinema was S35.  So the FOVs of cinema using the 50/40/35/27/18 were really like 75mm/60mm/52.5mm/40.5mm/27mm.
It gets stranger when you add anamorphic into the mix.  If I go to B&H anamorphic cinema lens category and sort by best sellers, we get:
 - DZOFilm Arcana Anamorphic Prime 3-Lens Kit, which are FF and 32/45/75mm and 1.5x, so on FF they are: 21mm 30mm and 50mm
 - BLAZAR LENS Talon 50mm T2.1 1.5x, which is FF and equivalent to a 33mm
 - Sirui Saturn 35mm T2.9 1.6x which is FF and equivalent to 22mm

If you're using the standard FF lenses on a FF camera, you are using the FOVs that stills photographers used, rather than those that cinematographers used.

Shooting on S35 sensor size (or crop mode) with FF lenses can create some of these in-between FOVs too.

People at Level 2 thinking probably won't be swayed by the above.  I would imagine the thinking is take a step forward or back, what's the difference?

Level 4 is where understanding begins to mature - enter the feedback loop

The feedback loop is where you realise that the focal length changes how you shoot.

A ridiculous example to illustrate it.  You decide to shoot on only a 28mm on a FF camera, but when you frame up a close-up shot, the distortion makes the talent look awful, so you take a step back and now the footage feels more distant because we're not seeing the talents face so much because there are no close-ups.  

We all know about perspective from level 2 thinking, but the level 3 thinking was that taking a step forward or back was no big deal, so which is it?  This stuff is subtle, but (like all feedback loops) it pushes us to act differently and this can create a cascade of changes over time.

Level 4 thinking realises that this dynamic is powerful and pervasive.

I shoot in public, so I don't control the environment.  I discovered that if I shoot with a 35mm FOV then I can get environmental portraits of my friends and family from close enough that people won't walk in-between me and them, but moving beyond a 45mm I'd either get shots of them that were tight and didn't really show their environment that well, or I'd step back and be struggling with people walking in-between me and the subject, which is a completely different situation.  How would I respond to this?  I might shoot from eye-level instead of chest height.
Now I've changed the shot angle because of a FOV change.  
If I shot from eye-level for a while I might notice that I get more attention and now I find that the people interacting with my subject are more aware they're being filmed and keep looking at the camera.
Now my subjects are acting differently because of a FOV change.

If I asked someone the difference between shooting with a 35mm and 45mm would they think it would change the shot angle and subject behaviour?  Not with the Level 2 thinking of "primes are sharper! duh!!", or the Level 3 thinking of "just take a step back! duh!!".

What about controlled sets?  
Sure, on a controlled set there aren't random people walking in-front of the camera, but now we're talking about actors and all the dynamics that goes on there.  
Can great actors deliver amazing performances while the matte-box is only inches from their face?  Sure.  Do YOU have actors that are that good?  I don't think so.
Can great production designers change a set to accommodate a camera being further away, while keeping the frame looking the same?  We know that as we move the camera back the subject gets smaller in frame, and that as we do that the background gets smaller but not nearly as fast as the subject does.  This is great if you are only filming the subject and don't really pay attention to the composition of the entire frame.  But you're a talented cinematographer, so you want to move back a bit and keep the same composition, which means that production design needs to 'cheat the camera' and basically rearrange every item in frame that isn't in the very background.  I remember shooting a student film in a cafe and every setup required moving the vase of flowers on the table the subject was sitting at.  That vase probably used two-thirds of the area of the table!

I watched a video recently where a street photographer tested a 40mm prime for the first time.  They didn't know what to make of it, having only a week to shoot with it before they had to release their video review.  What struck me wasn't that they didn't know what shooting with a 40mm was like, it was that they didn't seem to understand that there's a period of learning that goes on, they didn't understand that the feedback loop exists.  
I realised they had 'learned' each focal length by memorising its attributes (which Level 2 photographers will crap on at great length about), rather than having learned them for himself by following a process where you explore the feedback loop and see how it makes you feel and how it makes you act and how the world responds to that, and how you respond in turn, and how the loop feels and matures over time, and how to make the loop go faster etc.

I recently spent some time in a small town in rural Japan and shot the same location with FOVs equivalent to 71mm, 82mm, and 100mm.  I went out for a walk each night with one of those lenses, going out for perhaps an hour or two.  Shots that were possible with one were not with the next, shots that were great with one were lifeless with another.  As I walked down the same road from my accommodation seeing the same shots night-after-night and making different framing decisions with each lens (and deciding to take the shot or not to bother as it didn't work) I noticed that I made different decisions to walk one way or another as certain subjects required different FOVs and distances to make them.
I've also spend a lot of time, over several trips, shooting night scenes with 68mm and 71mm FOVs.  In some locations I can make some shots and not others, while in other locations I can take different shots.  If I'm shooting across a road then the width of that road (combined with my FOV) determines the type of shots I can take.  After taking a number of those types of shots I start to adapt to how I'm shooting these locations.  The more I shoot the more everything feels different.  Level 3 thinking says "just take a step back, what's the difference?" and when shooting in those situations the difference between a 35mm and a 50mm feels like it's a span where there are several complete aesthetics in-between the 35mm end and the 50mm end.  Thinking about shooting a 50mm FOV vs an 85mm FOV feels like travelling to a different country where things look similar but feel very different in practice.

I know I'm barely scratching the surface of Level 4, and perhaps there are levels beyond this that I'm unaware of, but it's just amazing to me that almost no-one seems to talk about anything beyond Level 2.  It's probably controversial to say, but I deliberately avoid almost all stills-only people because the thinking seems so rudimentary in comparison to people who shoot moving images.  You can feel the limited thinking and the "well, actually!!!!" responses where they miss the entire point entirely because one lens is sharper or something ridiculous.

Anyway, hopefully this helps.  I've not really heard anyone talk about this stuff, which seems a shame as the rabbit hole is very deep and to only talk about ankle-deep water seems silly.

[ND64]

I remember Jim Kasson once said in his blog he wished there was a small but sharp corner to corner 85mm f/4 lens for landscape (he would prefer a f/5.6 one, but it would look silly marketing wise). 99% of photographers these days can't see whats the point of that, they all learned that 85 is for portrait and it should be fast to create a blurry background. So lens makers don't even think about that. We have gazillions of 85mm f/1.4 on the market right now, but none truly optimized for landscape. The irony is camera makers are trying to make full frame body as small as possible, so a compact 85mm would be ideal for a landscape combo, but everybody assumes compact=slim body+28mm pancake.

[Ilkka Nissila]

40 minutes ago, ND64 said:

I remember Jim Kasson once said in his blog he wished there was a small but sharp corner to corner 85mm f/4 lens for landscape (he would prefer a f/5.6 one, but it would look silly marketing wise). 99% of photographers these days can't see whats the point of that, they all learned that 85 is for portrait and it should be fast to create a blurry background. So lens makers don't even think about that. We have gazillions of 85mm f/1.4 on the market right now, but none truly optimized for landscape. The irony is camera makers are trying to make full frame body as small as possible, so a compact 85mm would be ideal for a landscape combo, but everybody assumes compact=slim body+28mm pancake.

Voigtländer made a 90 mm f/3.5 Apo Lanthar for DSLRs. Nikon made a series E 100 mm f/2.8 that is very compact. I think most people today prefer to use zooms for landscape photography. Short tele lenses of smaller maximum apertures typically have some close-up capability or even may be optimized primarily for close-ups. I believe for the most part, manufacturers follow sales and make their product lineups based on sales data combined with estimated future demand. Often users just have to adapt to what is available if they want to use new lenses. Even popular lenses can be neglected or discontinued if the manufacturer wants to promote something new.

 

One issue with non-macro primes of smaller apertures is that manufacturers find it easier to market product lineups where there is a clear line of progression from one level of product upwards to the mid-level and top-of-the-line, and every parameter of performance should improve along the way. This means that although it would be easier to make smaller-aperture lenses better optically than large-aperture lenses of corresponding focal lengths, the manufacturers will make every effort to make the reverse true and the larger-aperture lenses better in image quality, focus speed, etc. and sometimes this means the smaller aperture lenses don't get all the quality they could have. This is unfortunate as I believe there is significant demand for compact, very high quality lenses.

[Bioskop.Inc]

Zoom Vs Primes!

Horses for courses isn't it, but more and more i will go out with my Tokina 28-70mm f2.6-2.8 - 3 focal lengths in one, no brainer!

This is not to say that I don't like primes, well not entirely - I'm not too keen on wide angle lenses as they produce distortion the wider you go. And then this can be a bonus, try doing a close-up with a wide angle lens - the wider the better.

So, the whole thing about you have to use a wide lens for landscapes or an 80mm for portraits is just nonsense.

You use what you want to achieve the result that you want - there are no rules or if you are more traditional, rules are meant to be broken!

If you follow the herd, you'll just produce pictures/films that look like everyone else's - how are you going to stand out if you aren't being creative in your lens choices?

[eatstoomuchjam]

11 hours ago, kye said:

People have decided that FF sensors are the most 'cinematic' and typically are used with FF vintage lenses.

"Cinema" over the last 130 years would strongly beg to differ in terms of the size of the imaging sensor used.  😉

11 hours ago, kye said:

- DZOFilm Arcana Anamorphic Prime 3-Lens Kit, which are FF and 32/45/75mm and 1.5x, so on FF they are: 21mm 30mm and 50mm

This one is a best seller, presumably, because it was just recently announced and it's still in preorder state (with a free PL adapter!).  I'm tracking it, though, as it's in the "less squeeze, but with oval aperture" that I find somewhat interesting, as shooting true 2x anamorphic feels generally unwieldy.

11 hours ago, kye said:

A ridiculous example to illustrate it.  You decide to shoot on only a 28mm on a FF camera, but when you frame up a close-up shot, the distortion makes the talent look awful, so you take a step back and now the footage feels more distant because we're not seeing the talents face so much because there are no close-ups.  

I'll point out that even in a distortion-free 28mm lens, shooting a close-up tends to be unflattering due to perspective.  The reason longer focal lengths tend to be seen as more flattering is because the relative distance from the nearest part of the face (probably the nose) and the rest of the face (especially the eyes) is much larger.  If I am standing 12" from a subject with a nose 1" long, the nose will seem much larger in comparison than if I am standing 48-72" from the same subject.  This can be observed simply by holding the hand about 11" from the face and moving it back 1".  The difference in size is noticeable - and it is for the nose in a portrait as well.

There's an additional part of this which will get you chased out of a number of forums for heresy - if you are shooting at sufficiently high resolution, you can take a couple of steps back with your 28mm lens and then just digitally reframe/zoom in on the subject and get functionally the same result as putting on a slightly longer lens at the same aperture value (give or take variances in lens character, etc).  If you're shooting at 8K to deliver in 4K, it can be a pretty big couple of steps.  This is basically turning a prime lens into a zoom lens.

11 hours ago, kye said:

Can great actors deliver amazing performances while the matte-box is only inches from their face?  Sure.  Do YOU have actors that are that good?  I don't think so.

This sort of thing is specifically why I love having a 180mm macro lens - it lets me do extrame c-u of an actor's eye or eyes without getting the entire camera package right up in their grill.  No matte box, though.  I ain't professional enough to use a matte box.

11 hours ago, kye said:

What about controlled sets?  

Controlled sets can also be places where using a Zoom lens becomes more attractive, as swapping lenses can take 3-5 minutes.
- Detach FF gears
- Remove support
- Unmount first lens
- Mount second lens
- Attach support
- Attach FF gears
- If using electronic FF, run calibration
- Potentially, if on a fancier set than I'm usually on, inform whoever is doing script notes of the change

If shooting under any sort of time constraints, everybody will start to hate you after a little while if doing this frequently.

This sort of thing is why I've begun using a Canon C80 with autofocus stills lenses for timed film competitions.  I did one with the RF 24-105/2.8 on loan from CPS (worked great, beautiful lens, maybe someday when the price is more reasonable, I'll buy one) and another with my own 24-70/2.8L II and 24-70/4L IS and swapped in the 85/1.4L IS for some close-ups and the 180/3.5L for some extreme close-ups.  It's been working really, really well.  On the last set, when someone got annoyed that I was swapping lenses again for some reason, they timed me - total time for a lens swap was about 1 minute 15 seconds (no lens supports, no FF gears).

[Emanuel]

I think @kye’s point still stands, and maybe it becomes even clearer once you move away from the usual zooms vs primes argument.

It always comes down to how much convenience a zoom actually buys you, especially when time becomes critical. On a controlled set, changing lenses can break rhythm, slow down the crew, cost minutes, and sometimes cost the shot. In uncontrolled environments, it can be even more decisive, because you may simply not have the time, the space, or the chance to change lenses before the moment is gone.

So yes, a zoom can solve a very practical problem: time, reaction and continuity. That should not be underestimated. If the situation is changing in front of you, the practical convenience of a zoom can become creatively important too.

But I don’t think this cancels the OP’s deeper point. There is also another kind of convenience in truly understanding a given focal length. It teaches you where to stand, how close to be, how to move, how much space to leave, and how the scene changes once your own position changes. A zoom may save the moment, but understanding focal lengths changes how you read the moment in the first place.

And this is also why I have never had any patience for the 2x, 3x, 5x terminology. I always prefer the actual focal length value, because that tells me something real about the relationship between camera, subject and space. “2x” may be convenient marketing language, but “35mm”, “50mm” or “85mm” immediately tells you much more about how the image is likely to feel and how you may need to position yourself.

Leonel Vieira is a good recent example of this. This June, while shooting the making-of on A NOITE, I was able to observe that very particular relationship he has with focal lengths, especially his liking for 75mm and 100mm lenses, focal lengths he has often favoured and used there. That is not just a technical preference. It affects distance, performance, compression, the way actors are observed, and the emotional space between camera and subject. With those lenses, the focal length becomes part of the staging itself, not just a number attached to the lens.

[mercer]

I assume some of you have heard this story... when Stanley Kubrick got his first Hollywood job directing a movie, he asked the cinematographer to switch to a different lens for the next shot. Instead, he moved the camera to get the shot. Kubrick asked him to put the camera back and switch the lens like he asked. The cinematographer told him it was the same shot if you moved the camera or changed the lens. Being a photographer in his previous life, Kubrick disagreed and said the perspective changed. Unless I'm remembering this story incorrectly, the man vehemently disagreed and refused to do what Kubrick asked, so Kubrick was forced to fire him and throw him off his set.

Of course there's a lot to lensing than just FOV, the question becomes how important does the perspective, in this case, matter? Kubrick was right, the shot changed and it mattered to him because it was his film. Would the audience have felt the difference in what he was trying to communicate with that specific lens, from that specific distance? Possibly. The question becomes how much does it affect yours.

I remember when I first got my 5Diii and the 24-70mm f/4. I was checking the light on the talent and lining up my shot and the image looked a little flat, so I zoomed in and stepped back and the talent popped. In that instance, I used a little bit of 1,2 and 3 I suppose. I can't lie and say I did this to emphasize any theme or symbolism, I was merely looking for a shot with a bit more dimension so I zoomed with the zoom and zoomed with my feet... it was that moment I knew I was a pro in my own mind.