Hi everybody welcome to another episode
of Exploring Photography
right here on AdoramaTV
I'm Mark Wallace
and we are kicking off
a two part series
on which lens should I buy
for photographing people.
Now we know that we have lenses
that are wide and lenses that are long
and lenses that have big apertures and small
but which one should you buy?
Well specific to people photography
there is sort of two different types of photography.
We have street photos
where we're out and about,
in cities and shooting things
and most people agree that you
should use a wide-angle lens for that
and then you have in the studio
professional portraits and headshots
and most people also agree
that you should use a long lens
with a wide open aperture
to shoot those types of things
and so we've got long lenses for studios
and wide lenses for Street.
Why is that, and can you mix those
and break the rules?
Of course you can, but let's talk
about the things that we consider
when we're making people portraits.
There are two things
that are really important to us.
One is depth of field,
that's how much of our image is in focus
and the other is field of view.
Now that's how much our lens can see.
I've already made a bunch of videos on depth of field
and so make sure you check the links
in the description of this video to see those
but we understand
that there are three things
that effect depth of field;
the length of our lens
the distance from our subject
and our aperture value.
So what happens when we change those things up,
with different types of lenses?
Well to understand that,
we need to start with field of view.
That is how much our lens can see
and so it's measured in degrees
and so for example a 21mm lens
can see about 82 degrees.
A 35mm lens sees 55 degrees.
A 50mm lens can see about 40 degrees
A 70mm lens has about a 29 degree
field of view
and a 200mm lens has about a 10 degree
field of view.
But don't forget
that field of view isn't just horizontal
its vertical and that means
if you want to fill the frame
on a 200mm lens
well you don't have to be very close to your subject
if you want to fill the frame
on a 21mm lens the same way
we have to get really really close
and that changes our perspective.
Let me help you understand this
and we have some mannequins back here that
are really going to help us
put this into view.
So let's say for example I've got my fingers here
and I got them close to my face.
Well my fingers look about right.
Right? They look proportional
but if I get closer to the lens
and I get my fingers
and I get them close to the lens
well now I'm going to smash my head,
crunch-crunch-crunch
My fingers haven't changed size
but as I get closer and closer to the lens
they get larger and larger and larger
and that is what we call Perspective
and some people confuse that
and call it Distortion,
so let's really dig into this
and show you on these mannequins here
how this works,
so I have two two little mannequins here.
This girl here, I don't know, we'll call her Nancy
and we have, I don't know,
Sylvia back there
and we're not using these because of budget cuts
and we can't afford models
but we want these to be absolutely still
and I'm using a 24-105mm lens,
so I've got a wide angle lens
and I've got a long lens
and this is a zoom lens
because all three of these things
are going to come into
effect when we're thinking about lenses
for portrait photography.
So the first thing I want to do is
I want to show you the difference
between getting close with my feet,
zooming in with my feet
and zooming in with the lens
that will change my perspective
and it'll change the size of things
in relationship to each other
so we're going to make sure
we see everything here
and the first thing I'm going to do
is I'm going to put my lens
at its widest setting 24mm
and I'm going to take a picture
of our first mannequin face here
I'm going to get about as close as I can get.
I'm going to try to keep
the size of the front mannequin
the same in the frame.
So I'm going to take a picture
and we can see that this mannequins face
looks really big,
in contrast to the mannequin behind.
Even though these have the exact same
size of face
there the same type of mannequin
but this one looks huge.
That one looks really really far away.
Now I'm going to back up
and I'm going to zoom in
and I'm going to fill the frame
at the same, I've got some guidelines here
I'm going to make sure
that its head is about the same
and take another shot
and now we can look at these two pictures
back-to-back
and we can see
that our perspective,
in other words
how big this mannequins face is compared
to that mannequins face changes radically
when we step back
and we zoom in
and so the point of that is an exaggeration
because it's not just mannequin faces
back and forth,
it's the nose and the ears and the lips
and so if you get really close
noses are closer to the camera lens
than the ears
and so it makes the faces
of people look wonky.
So when you're getting close to fill the frame,
some things happen.
The perspective changes.
We can see a lot of the background
and the shape of people's faces change
because the nose is closer
to the lens than the ears,
and the background.
So let me show you what happens if i zoom.
So I'm going to come back here
and I am going to have a wide shot.
I'm going to take a picture of our mannequins
and with this wide-angle lens
you can see everything,
but notice the relationship,
the size of the mannequin face
in the first shot,
then I'm going to zoom in
I haven't moved my position
when I take another shot here
and you'll look at that.
Now notice in both of these images
that the size of the faces
in relationship to each other
are the same
so that means that when we zoom our lens
the subjects and everything
in our field of view
changes size in the same relative way
to each other.
Everything gets bigger and smaller
in relationship to each other
but when we walk and we oom with our feet
things that are close to the lens
get much larger
than things in the background
and that has a huge impact
on the way we shoot.
Now to understand this a few years ago
I went into an old studio
and I shot a series of images
and now we can start comparing things
specifically Depth of Field,
Field of View and this Distortion.
So let's look at that right now.
Let's dive into our little experiment
now I've taken a series of images
of this coffee creamer
and in each image
I've tried to keep the coffee creamer
about the same size in each image,
so to do that I just put it on an old tripod.
Now at the bottom of the screen
you'll see our ISO value
that's just there for your information.
On the left hand side though
is the aperture value,
that's really important
and on the right hand side is the focal length.
That's also really important so
let's start with an 85mm lens.
Notice our Depth of Field
is pretty nice this is f16 at 85mm.
I'm pretty close to the coffee creamer
but you can still see behind the coffee creamer
the wood on the right.
Those boards over there, an orange ladder
and a light stand another light stand
and the legs of even another light stand.
Now watch what happens
when I change the aperture value
and nothing else changes
so we're at the same distance.
The only thing that's going to change
is our aperture value from f16 to f1.2
Notice that background just drops out
and that is what our aperture can do
with the longer lens.
This is an 85mm lens,
now notice the background
and let's go to a really long lens.
This is a 200mm lens.
Now notice we can only see the orange ladder
the wood on the right has now disappeared.
We can see an out-of-focus light stand
next to that and nothing else.
So the background is cleaned up
quite a bit and notice I'm shooting at f2.8
and so things are nice and out-of-focus
and I've tried to keep that coffee-mate
about the same size
which means I've had to back up considerably.
Now let's take a look
at this next image to our 16mm lens
a wide-angle lens.
Now notice we're still at f2.8,
f2.8 here,
f2.8 here.
200mm lens notice the background
is really nice and clean.
We only see the ladder
and the light stand.
When we go to our 16mm lens,
notice we can now
understand the environment
even though we're still at f2.8,
our Depth of Field isn't as shallow.
We can identify things in this image.
We can see that ladder back there
we can see the wood to the right,
we can see the walls, the coffee table,
we can see some smudges over there
by the door.
So it's not just the aperture value
that gives us that shallow Depth of Field
it's also of the size of our lens,
the focal length of our lens,
with this one we're really, really close.
Now watch what happens
when we just walk backwards,
so again we're still at f2.8
but I'm just going to take about 10 steps back,
about 10 feet.
Watch what happens
BAM!
Now everything is in focus.
Everything looks good,
nothing is distorted
and we can clearly see everything
but our aperture value,
our ISO and our focal lengths
have all remained the same.
It's just moving back
and this is why wide-angle lenses
are loved by street photographers
because those lenses
sort of pull us into the scene,
we can open up our aperture
and still have almost everything in focus
and we can even get close
to really exaggerate things.
Well now that we know this,
this explains why in a studio
normally what you want to do
is use a long lens and zoom in and out
so everything stays in proportion
to each other,
but when we're doing street photos
then we want to see
more of the environment,
more of the background
we want everything in focus,
well we use a wide-angle lens
we can get close
and we can really exaggerate things
to get dramatic effects.
Now the question is are there exceptions to this rule?
Absolutely.
In fact I've got two friends
that have really broken the rules.
One of them his name is Scott Jarvie
and he actually used a fisheye lens
and a Ring Flash
to create some really fun portraits
and events he calls it the Jarvie window.
I think these images are crazy fun
and it totally breaks the rules
with fisheye lens for portraits
and then of course Kenna Klostermann,
we talked to her in a previous episode about a year
and a half ago I think
and she talked about how she
makes Street portraits
instead of street photography
she uses a longer lens.
She isolates her subject,
she gets rid of the background
and she makes traditional portraits
ike you would in the studio,
but out on the street
and so of course
there are many people
that are breaking the rules
using wide-angle lenses in the studio,
using long lenses out on the street,
but it's up to you.
Now that you know
how these different lenses behave
and what they do to your subjects
you can choose your own style.
Well next week we're going to hop
into a small studio.
We're going to start talking about
well can you really use a wide lens
or a long lens in a small space
and what's appropriate and what's not appropriate?
So that's coming to you on AdoramaTV next week
on Exploring Photography
so make sure you subscribe
so you don't miss a single thing.
Well thanks so much
for joining me this week.
Make sure you check out the links
that are in the description of the video.
Also check out the Adorama Learning Center
for more information on all this stuff
and it's going to be awesome for you.
Thanks for joining me
I'll see you again next time.