In this episode I'll show you how to use a manual lens.
AdoramaTV presents, Exploring Photography with Mark Wallace.
Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of
Exploring Photography right here on AdoramaTV
brought to you by Adorama, it's the camera store that has everything for photographers
like you and me
so check them out right here at Adorama.com. Well on this episode we're going to talk about manual
lenses. Now manual lenses have been around, in fact the original
camera lenses were all manual, in other words you had to manually
select the aperture using an aperture ring and you had to manually focus
that lens as well. Now with newer cameras like the new
Leica M Rangefinders there is this new Sony A7S
there are a bunch of Micro Four Thirds cameras, there are a bunch of new video cameras
that allow you to put lens adapters
and throw just about any kind of lens on those cameras. Now the advantage of
that is you can put
just about any kind of lens you want on your camera now, but the disadvantages
because the brands are mismatched and the technologies are mismatched
you lose the ability for autofocus and the ability for the camera to automatically
change the aperture value, so a lot of photographers are going to
older or even newer manual lenses in fact this lens right here's is a brand new
50mm Leica lens.
Nikon has got a beautiful 1.4/ 50mm
totally manual lens, there are a lot of lenses out that are absolutely manual.
The nice thing about them, they are prime lenses, they aren't zooming in and out
they're prime, they're
fixed focal links, that means that the optical quality is spectacular
so that's another reason a lot of photographers are using those lenses now.
The question is though, how to use them in what are the numbers on here?
Well it's pretty easy on all manual lenses there is
a dial that will allow you to change the aperture value, and that's the same as on any SLR
you are changing the aperture value in the camera
just letting you set the aperture manually that's great if your videographer
and you're using a manual lens on
a camera like the Panasonic AF100 or a newer camera, because most of those require you to
set the aperture
in the lens. The other thing that's really awesome about these lenses
is they have a distance and a depth of field
gauge right here, and so what that allows you to do is see
how far away you're focusing and how much
you're focusing. Remember when we focus we don't just focus
at a distance, we focus at a distance and a
depth, and so on this lens I can see that maybe I'm focusing at 6'
and I can also see how much is going to be in focus before
I ever press the trigger. Now to really be clear on
the distance and depth of focusing I've asked a couple of models to come and help me out
and so we have Daniella and Carolina
from Columbia and they're going to help me show you the distance and depth
difference, so let's do that right now right now. Right now that Daniella and Carolina
are in place, and my Spanish is horrible, excuse me for not saying your name right,
now that they're in place we're going to show you how you can not only
focus for distance but for depth as well. So what we are going to show you here is that
Daniella is about 6' from the camera, so I focused right at 6'
just under two meters,
and then back here Carolina it is at
about 12', maybe 15' so with our aperture wide open
our depth of field is really shallow so let's shoot that picture first
I'll show you exactly what I mean, so we're looking right here perfect, make sure I'm in
focus. Alright so now we have one person
thats in focus, now I want to change my depth of field by changing my aperture, I'm
going to change my aperture by really small
by going to f/16, and now I'll take the same exact picture
and now look everybody's in focus from start to finish, so we went from a depth
of field that was really shallow
right here all the way to a depth of field the started here and we are all the way back
here so we've got lots of focus.
Hey, before we continue I want to remind you that Adorama has some awesome photography contests
it's absolutely free to participate and you can win some great prizes so
click the link and enter today!
Alright well let me show you exactly how a manual lens works
this is a Leica 21mm f/3.4
lens, this is one of my favorite manual lenses.
Now on this lens and all manual lenses there is an aperture ring
it lets you adjust the aperture value just like you would on an SLR instead of looking
through the lens and doing it, you just do it
right on the lens itself and then it also has a focus
ring and that will show you exactly how far the focus is so maybe you are
4' or 8' or 15', whatever it is
and then below that on most lenses there is a depth of field guide and you
can look and see if I'm
focusing maybe it at 8' at f/3.4
f/8, whatever you're at, exactly how far your are in focus by the numbers on the
side of the lens, and if you change the aperture value
you'll see that you get even more depth of field and you can just look at the
lens and see
how far you're focusing and then how far the depth of field is so you can see distance
and depth all at the same time. For example if I set my focus here to
8', and then set my aperture value to 8
we can see on the depth of field scale that I'll be in focus just beyond 3',
just about 3.5'
all the way over here to the other side of just passed infinity,
or if I went to f/16 you would see that
we're starting our depth of field over here at just about 2'
all the way, way beyond infinity, or if you wanted the opposite of that
I can go to say f/3.4 at about 4'
and now you can see we will be in focus just beyond 3', so about 3.1/4'
all the way over here to about 5' so we can see exactly
how much is going to be in focus. Now the nice thing about that is
you can preset your lens, the focus and the depth
and this is called zone focusing, so you're saying, hey I want to shoot at about
8' away, so you set this at 8'
and you want to have everything in focus from, let's say about
4' all the way to infinity so you just set it at f/8
and you look on your depth of field gauge and see
exactly how much is in focus, once that's set you can put your camera and your
lens together
and then you can walk around and anything you see that's about 8' away is take
a button, and you click it, your shutter button
and that picture is going to be in focus and that's awesome if you are a street
photographer you can set your lens up in advance
and as you're walking through the city you can just take pictures without
ever having to look through the lens or through the rangefinder you can just point
and shoot and you're going to get photos that are in focus as long as you're about
8' away. Now if you're a photojournalist or maybe a sports
photographer or wedding photographer you can basically do the same thing.
If you're a sports photographer maybe you would set the distance from your camera to the
end zone or maybe the finish line whatever it is and then set your depth of
field so you have some leeway, so
a little bit of leeway so maybe if you don't get it at exactly the right moment
you're in focus a little bit before and after that finish line or the end zone or
whatever it is
or where the wedding is taking place you get the idea. Now the benefit of that is
it's actually faster than an autofocus lens because there is no focusing
involved once you have it set-up
you can take a picture and bam, the picture is in focus and I've got a bunch
of great pictures using this technique
this is it's own focusing technique from all over South America specifically street
photography
because really, nobody knows I'm taking a picture because I'm not even looking at
my camera, a lot of people say that's cheating,
I say its getting some great pictures, but you can decide well that's how you use a manual
lens it's something I really love doing and once you start using these I think
you'll find
that the ease of use is really terrific and the picture quality
is superior to what you might get with a zoom lens. Thank you so much for joining
me for this
episode of Exploring Photography, don't forget that you can subscribe to AdoramaTV
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