From the course: Learning Cinematography: 1 Narrative Fundamentals

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Choose a focal length

Choose a focal length

From the course: Learning Cinematography: 1 Narrative Fundamentals

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Choose a focal length

- We've talked about how the lens magnifies the image in front of it. Now, let's talk about the most common task the cinematographer has to perform on a day-to-day basis, deciding on the lens' focal length while shooting a scene. Your selection of a lens and distance affects how your audience feels about the characters in your scene. For this reason, great cinematographers carefully choose the focal length and distance of each shot. It's a common practice for young cinematographers to choose the focal length of the lens by putting a zoom lens on the camera and rotating the zoom ring until the shot is as wide as the cinematographer wants it to be, without much consideration of how far the camera is from the subject. Choosing a lens in this way loses a lot of the subtle poser of using just the right focal length at just the right distance. In reality, you should combine the choice of a focal length with the decision about distance, because the full impact of a lens choice comes from the…

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