From the course: Learning Cinematography: 1 Narrative Fundamentals
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What a lens actually does
From the course: Learning Cinematography: 1 Narrative Fundamentals
What a lens actually does
- So we have this thing on the front of the camera that we need to talk about. It's completely separate from the camera itself. You should give some thought to what a lens actually does. The effect that a lens has on the image is psychologically complex. Sometimes we attribute a visual result that we see on screen to one factor, when actually there's something else happening. That can have the cinematographer making the wrong change to the shot, and not getting the effect that they want. This is why it's so useful to understand a little of the physics of what a lens actually does. The only thing a particular lens can do relative to another focal length, is to make the limits larger or smaller on the center of the camera. Longer focal length, or telephoto lenses, magnify the image more than wide angle lenses. In terms of the physics, that's it. I'm pointing this out because filmmakers often attribute lots of characteristics to a lens, which confuse this very simple fact of physics…
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