Micah McDowell

Have a budget in mind?

Exteriors at night... sounds like you want something with great low light performance, right? If you're on a low budget, 5DmkII with some fast primes perhaps.

When I saw the first image in this article about Charlie Sheen, Mr. Sheen looked awful.

 

When I scrolled down the page, I found an almost identical image of Mr. Sheen, the background is different but the clothing is the same, and Mr. Sheen looked much better.

 

The difference appears to be that the top picture used a flash and the result was a desaturated image that was very unflattering whereas the second image was straight on regular lighting used during the actual featured interview.

 

Here is a link to the article and the two images of Sheen.

Hence the reason that I HATE on-camera flashes. I use fast lenses and natural light for as much of my still photography as possible. People go, "Wow, that looks great! "How'd you do it?" And I'm not a great, or even good, photographer.

What are the types of lenses available to use in a camera ???

what is a spherical lens , non-spherical lens & an anamorphic lens???

can some one kindly explain in detail?

am confused with this

A spherical lens is just what it sounds like... a plain, round, sphere of a lens. That's the most common and perhaps user-friendly kind.

Anamorphic lenses are generally a spherical lens with additional elements which "squeeze" the image so that it is narrower when it hits the film negative/digital sensor and then is "unsqeezed" when it is projected/edited. This gives a wider aspect ratio while utilizing as much as the camera negative as possible for higher quality. They're also known for different flare characteristics and field of view vs. spherical.

Do some Googling... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_format would be a good place to start reading.