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Lenes


mmonte000

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>>Sorry to bother you with kind of a dumb question to pros but, what is the

>>difference between certain lenses? ex: 50mm compared to 28mm?

 

See Focal Length.

 

>> Also whats the best super 16 film with the lowest grain, highest saturation, and

>> middle to high contrast? I'm shooting Tungsten.

 

7248 (100ASA). I believe 7245 is even more saturated, but that is 50ASA and daylight balanced. Adding a correction filter would knock it down even further, and since you'll be under tungsten, I doubt you'd be able to get enough light without baking everything [and everyone] on set.

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all camera formats originate because a human being can see. in the human body the eye serves as a camera.this is the best camera made ever in the world... :D ..just that the images get recordded in the internal hard disk of that humanbeing...no one else can inside that persons mind :P ..so a film camera was made....(seed a dvd called visions of light)

 

coming back to ur question...every camera format has a normal, wide and a telephoto lens....

 

A NORMAL LENS shows what the Normal(..say a 6/6 in medical terms) human eye sees.IN case of 35mm film a 50mm(milli metets) is a normal lens, mm basically signifies the focal length..which essentialy translates into---- the distance from the point the light enters the lens to the point where the image is formed(the film)

 

A WIDE LENS shows "more" than a normal lens ...its got a lesser focal length as it use less elements...anything less than 50mm is a wide lens..it has a greater angle of vier and more deapth of field

 

A TELEPHOT LENS has a lesser angle of view shows "less' things has lesser deapth of field...something like a telescope...th focal lenght is always more than 50mm.

Please lay your hands on some book..cinematography by chris malkawich(i hope i got the spelling right)

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It should also be mentioned that Nitin is talking in terms of 35mm film. in 16mm film you can roughly half that. i.e. NORMAL (50mm) would be a 24mm lens. Conversly, if you were shooting Anamorphic it would be a 100mm lens. May I recommend an introductory book? Cinematography by Kris Malkiewicz

ISBN-0-671-76220-6 Good luck and enjoy the learning process. It never stops.

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What I don't get, is how in discussions about cinematography, people keep using the "50mm = normal" statement, even though it's false.

It's based on still photo, which is 8 perfs horizontal, and a HELL of a lot bigger than the typical 35mm motion picture frame!

And 16mm is certainly not half of an 8-perf 35mm still frame.

So "normal" in motion picture 35mm is really something around 25-35mm, right?

Shouldn't it be something like 25mm in 35mm format, and 12-14mm in 16mm format?

 

Someone please correct me if I'm wrong, because I'm certainly not the most experienced person on this board (far from it), but I keep hearing this from pro's, and I don't understand why.

Seems to me it would skew one's ability to frame shots correctly, right?

 

Matt Pacini

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Yes, the shorter focal lengths are considered "wide angle", the mid lengths are "normal" and the long focal lengths are "telephoto".

 

http://www.nikonclub.com.au/shop/bookshop/...lenses35mm.html

 

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/columns/sm-august-04.shtml

 

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_..._65/ai_56908940

 

http://www.camerahobby.com/EBook-DepthField_Chapter18.htm

 

A "macro" lens allows focusing at very close distances.

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I do agree, Matt. I was told that a "normal" lens was twice the diagonal of the negative in mm.

Which probably would make a normal lens somewhere around 40-50mm, but for film. Not so for stills, though. That should probably be closer to 80mm or something. It's just a rough guide anyway, it all becolmes academic in the end.

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As far as making equivalents to human vision goes, a focal length that's "normal" in terms of perspective is not "normal" in terms of angle of view.

 

What's more, we're talking about motion pictures here which implies (IMHO) the fact that our eyes 'scan'

 

(The fixed gaze as often represented by perspective painting and still photography is an idealized construction).

 

In that sense I have some problems with the whole concept of "normal lens"

 

-Sam

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Which probably would make a normal lens somewhere around 40-50mm, but for film. Not so for stills, though. That should probably be closer to 80mm or something.

On my 35mm SLR, 50mm looks "normal." But of course, "normal" is subjective.

 

I figure it like this: I look through the viewfinder with my right eye, but at the same time leave my left eye open (and tilt the camera body so it's not in the way). I alternate shutting my eyelids left and right, and find the focal length of the lens where the objects I see through my left eye are the same size as what's shown in the viewfinder. I classify this as "normal."

 

But then there's that whole issue of peripheral vision, which sort of throws everything off... :wacko:

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....

But then there's that whole issue of peripheral vision, which sort of throws everything off... :wacko:

Which is probably why anamorphic looks so freakin' bitchin!

It takes in all this stuff on the sides, like our own eyesight, but it's not distorting the way a super-wide angle lens would to be able to see that far sideways.

So, in my opinion, anamorphic is "normal". ha ha!

 

Matt Pacini

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