CHAPTER 3

      THE AESTHETICS OF LENSES

      I don’t have a preference for primes or zooms, unless we are shooting anamorphic. I think zooms are a part of film language these days and people understand them. I don’t think they throw audiences off. Ultimately the subjective viewpoint of the camera is accentuated by the zoom and that can be a great benefit.

      (Matthew Libatique, ASC, Frost interview)

      The lens is the eye of the camera, replicating human vision or distorting it. Lenses can show a portion of what is important to see in the shot or reveal beyond what human perception would see. Lens quality keeps improving and the selection of the lenses is an essential component in the storytelling process. For a director, understanding the basics of focal length will have an impact on the visual translation of the scene. Utilizing depth of field can isolate the focal range or enhance it depending on whether it is wide angle, normal, or telephoto. This tells the audience what is important within the scene, highlighting where to look.

      Lens selection, along with composition and framing, are the areas of cinematography where the director can be the most influential. Discovering what is the most important image in the shot from a storytelling perspective is the first thing to understand. With a wide angle shot the subject will be in their environment, we will see details in the background. With a longer lens, such as a telephoto, the background will become soft focus, highlighting the subject in the shot. The lens engages the audience by directing their visual perception and showing them what to look at within the scene.

      When the cinematographer sets up the requested shot, the first question she or he will ask is: “What focal length does the director want: wide, medium, or close?” The director may respond with a hand gesture just above the waist indicating a medium shot, or just below the neck indicating a close-up, or say “give him a haircut,” meaning a more extreme close-up. Understanding focal length — wide, normal, or telephoto — is key to communicating the desired composition with a cinematographer. The lens is not only a technical tool to capture the image but also an aesthetic one, and understanding how to use depth of field and focal length to tell your story is an essential tool of visual storytelling.

      WHAT DOES THE LENS DO?

      The lens allows light to enter and hit the sensor or film plane resulting in exposure of the latent image. Controlling the amount of light is done through exposure calculation designated by the lighting conditions and the selection of the f-stop as indicated from the light meter reading. F-stops regulate the exposure and the diameter of the iris opening of the lens determines how much light enters the camera for the exposure. The selection of focal length and the f-stop provides the depth of field in the shot. The cinematographer will read the light as it falls on the subject, which calculates the f-stop that should be used for exposing the scene. There are two series of numbers on the lens the t-stop and the f-stop. The t-stop is the true light transmission, and the f-stop regulates exposure and is used for calculating depth of field.

      You can feel the weight of the glass in a good quality lens. The difference in image quality is very evident if you use an inexpensive kit lens over a quality cine lens. Today’s lenses have become sharper and crisper than ever working with digital capture.

      The cinematographer will be of great assistance in helping you, the director on the selection of lenses that will work best with the story being told and the camera and aspect ratio being utilized.

      Cinematographers may want to test the some of the lenses to see how they read the light and contrast and these tests are shared with directors. There are some older lenses selected by cinematographers because of the way they capture a slightly softer image, other lenses like the Panavision Primo Primes or Zeiss high-speed primes are much sharper and crisper and may be selected because they can be shot wide open at a (faster) t-stop of 1.0 instead of the standard 2.8. A lens is considered “fast” if the iris opening opens to 1.4 or below which allows additional light to enter the camera. A fast lens is helpful for shooting in lower-light situations. But keep in mind shooting “wide open” also affects depth of field creating a more critical focus situation. Lenses that are not high-speed usually open to f/2.8, and slow lenses will open to f/4, which means that additional light may be needed in darker lighting scenarios for exposure.

      ■ On selecting lenses for Brokeback Mountain: Ang (Lee) originally wanted to use Cooke Panchros because he wanted a softer image. He didn’t want something really hard-edged and stark. I usually use the Ultra Primes because I like high contrast and very, very sharp images. We did side-by-side comparisons of Ultra Primes, Panchros, and Cooke S4 primes. We concluded that our best bet was the S4’s because they have a wider gamut of lenses than the Panchros, and they match better from one lens to another. The S4’s felt a tiny bit less harsh and a touch warmer than the Ultra Primes. If we needed a little extra softness, we used a bit of diffusion.

      (Rodrigo Prieto, American Cinematographer, January 2006, 60)

      1. Brokeback Mountain

      THE BASICS OF LENSES

      Basically, there are two types of lenses: the prime lens, which has a fixed focal length, and the zoom lens, which has a variable focal length. Prime lenses are made to do just one job, to maintain a single focal length. For example, an 8 mm prime, or a 27 mm prime, or a 32 mm prime, is each only designed to be one specific focal length. If the director has selected a certain focal length, like 27 mm, and wants to move in a little closer, the camera will have to be physically moved, or the lens will have to be changed to a longer focal length to get a little closer. There are cinematographers who prefer to work with primes because of the size of the lenses, and they prefer to move the camera to accommodate the shot rather than zoom in, because to zoom in will affect what remains in focus in the background. The zoom will compress the space, where the prime will not compress the space unless it is a longer focal length. With a prime lens, the camera can be as close as several inches away from an actor. It puts the audience very close and intimate with the subject, while keeping the background in acceptable focus.

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