most people that i tend to see using the sony cameras favor this 16 mil wide angle prime lens
and it's doing a great job and look how close that is to me it's incredible but personally
i prefer using a 30mm lens like i'm going to show you in just a minute i don't particularly
want to see all this space behind me and one of the things people say about my videos is they
really connect with me and feel like it's just me talking to you right now and i think part of
that comes down to this wider crop that i tend to use plus my background is photography i've been a
professional photographer for 17 years or more and i would never take a portrait of somebody with a
wide angle lens i just know it's not going to be flattering the face is going to get distorted more
on a wide-angle shot like this than it will if you shot on a telephoto zoom lens that's why typically
portrait lenses would be a hundred mil equivalent so although there is a lot less distortion in this
image here i still can't quite settle with this being the go-to lens so let's have a look at this
through the 30mm lens now 30mm in this position is not good so we've got to move the camera back
now now i personally much prefer this 30 mil but obviously my monitor at the minute is in the way
so i just need to slide this down a little bit and this would be more typically how i would sit and
how it would work and look at the difference that lens is much further back this time
i personally really prefer this and actually if i want to while i'm working out this i could kind of
push that out the way and i'm working away without feeling like there's a camera looking at me over
the back there interesting isn't it that we've kind of put my head in the same position in here
but you're seeing a lot less of that background behind me and it isn't as distracting it's just
something back there but a bit of nothing really so what do you think that you're liking the 16mm
lock with that wider view behind or do you like this can you notice a difference in my face
now obviously we need to take into account this distance and for some of my customers they're not
able to get a light stand or a tripod that far back and so being able to attach to the front
of the desk is a major plus others would actually like to have that camera further back like i say
you've got the space there why not put it further back and just get it off the desk
here if you're anything like me i like to keep this desk as clean and uncluttered as possible
and so yeah shoving it back there it's not a bad thing but as i say for me really it's just this
feeling of shooting through at this angle rather than the wide angle if you can imagine it you know
this sort of zoom is coming more straight when it's on a wide angle it's going like this so
it's just catching so much more of that space behind me and again for some of you that might
be an issue maybe you're in a smaller room and you don't like that you're picking up the walls at the
side you've only cleared off a fairly small area that's black behind you this lens will really help
you to keep this small space now some of you might be asking why are we even using these prime lenses
why wouldn't we just use the lens that comes with this camera it covers through the range of 16 and
30 so why buy two different lenses when one lens can do it all and probably it's the lens that
you've already got well the real reason that we're using prime lenses is to get a wider aperture
to let more light come into the camera this is kind of the wrong way around really because we
we talk about a wide aperture but the number gets lower so you might find on your lens it's an
f 3.5 this lens here will go down to 1.8 and that is just getting wider and wider and so
the benefits of that are firstly that i don't have to have additional lighting on so strong just this
ambient light in the room is often good enough and so i can use a light like this in front of me
set right down to about 10 or 12 percent just to put some key light on my face here
but it is so much nicer than if i were needing to have this output like 60 if i'm recording away if
i'm on a live that can give you a headache having a bright light in front of you or two little leds
whatever it is that you're using so letting more light in means that these additional lights can be
turned lower and that is a big plus but the main reason we're using prime lenses is to blur that
background and we're going to see in a second i'm going to switch this over put the kit lens back on
and you can see just the impact it can have so let's try it first of all at this 30 mil so with
this kit lens at 30mm zoom f5 is as good as i can get and as you can see what a huge difference so
going from an f 1.8 wide aperture we've now made this hole smaller that the lights coming through
f5 and this is what we get so now we need to increase the iso to get back to the same thing
so i've just had to turn the iso up to 1250 and that's quite a big increase and the quality will
start to go when you're increasing the iso like this it's basically like a brightness control
inside the camera but as you're doing it it's just losing detail we'll always keep that iso
as low as possible so yes we can kind of match it but i don't know about you but i don't think
this looks as good and notice that that is more in focus behind me so while we've got the kit lens on
why don't we do a quick test with this at the 16 mil end as well and see how that compares
so here it is this is the final place of this one now this does come down to an f4 because this is a
variable aperture so well i'm zooming in and it's out there at 30 the lowest it can get is 5.6 but
now i'm widening this out to 16 or actually this is 18. i'm actually at f4 so i can take that iso
down to a thousand i don't want to get all technical on you but someone's going to ask it and
i need to be true that we have actually changed this around slightly so with this kit lens on here
uh and not as bad but it's still not getting as blurry as it was before when we had the 16 mil on
here so iso 1000 uh f4 and a 50th that we always shoot at because we're in the uk if you're in the
states you would be on a 60th so what do you think guys uh do you stick with the kit lens is there is
enough of a difference in this personally i absolutely think it is worth getting a prime lens
for this then really back to the start do you go for that 16 or do you go for the 30 popping them
up on the screen here again uh really that's up to you what look do you like what is more convenient
uh do you want that extra width do you want it in tighter do you want it clamped to the
desk if you've got some space there i'd love to hear what you think what you come up with
there are other lenses these are probably just two of the most common ones and certainly the
ones that we've chosen to use here so i've just put the 16mm 1.4 back on whoa can you
see the difference the amount of light that this lets in that we can't do on that kit
lens so let's just dial this back down there we go so much better back down to one two five
iso and you can see how much of a difference that's making back there now before i leave you i
want to tell you about a new video that we've been working on comparing this small little sony zv one
to this 6400 now this one has a built-in zoom on it so we can't be putting these prime lenses on
but this will actually go down to 1.8 or 2.8 depending on which end of the zoom we're on so
i reckon it's going to be really fun to put this alongside and compare it if you want to check that
video out you can see it up here well i hope you enjoyed that and i'll catch you in another video