Cinematic Footage and the Types of Camera Lenses You Should Use

Understanding camera lenses

Capturing great cinematic footage requires a combination of different factors – you need great framing and composition, as well as the right lighting. But above all else, selecting the right camera lens is imperative. Whether you’re shooting a narrative film or a YouTube video, having a solid understanding of different types of camera lenses will help you achieve the best footage possible. So today, we’re going to do just that – read on to take a closer look at understanding camera lenses.

Together with a digital camera’s sensors (or a film camera’s film stock), each lens will give the resulting footage a particular look and detail. Whether you’re shooting a narrative film or a YouTube video, experimenting with different types of camera lenses will certainly help in shooting cinematic footage.

How to select a camera lens

When you start looking at the best lenses for videography, you’ll want to consider and understand the following factors.

• Aperture: Aperture tells you how much light can get through the lens to the sensor. When an aperture’s blades (the diaphragm) are widened, the F-stop (or F-number) goes down, and when the aperture is gradually closed, the number goes up. The more light that makes it through, the better the lens will be in darker scenarios. In other words, the smaller the lens aperture number (f/1.4, for example), the more light entering. You may hear lenses with low f-stops described as a “fast lens”. They also allow for a much more shallow field of depth.
• Focal length: This refers to the lens angle of view – how much of the scene is captured and how large individual elements will be. The bigger the focal length (100mm, compared to 12mm, for example), the more magnified the image.
• Fixed vs. zoom: There are 2 main types of camera lenses – fixed (usually known as primes) that remain only on one focal length, or zoom, which have the ability to move between a focal range. We’ll discuss this further below.
• Crop factor: Depending on the camera you’re using and its sensor, you may need to consider crop factor. For example, micro-four thirds sensors have a crop factor of 2.0 when compared to industry standard 35mm full-frame cameras. This means that a 12-40mm lens fitted to a camera with a micro-four thirds sensor actually produces an image equivalent to the 24-80mm range.

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• Image stabilization: While almost all camera bodies now come with in-built stabilization, you’ll want to check whether this is the case for your lens. It can drastically affect how you shoot a scene, especially with handheld cinematography.
• Color refractive correction: Light tends to behave quite strangely. Because different colors will bend differently as they pass through a camera lens, there’s the potential for some strange color shifts. You’ll want to research this for any cinematography lenses you’re researching.
• Distortion: This is rare because lens manufacturers try to take it into account, but occasionally straight lines towards the edges of a frame might come across as bent, either in or outward. You’ll want to check your lens for this and consider the implications.

Lens focal length and focal length size guide

Below, we’ve compiled a table that roughly divides up the different focal lengths available, helping you to understand what each one does, as well as when and where it’s best used.

Main types of camera lenses

No matter the types of lenses you’re considering, they’ll fit into one of the above focal lengths. Let’s take a look at the main types of camera lenses below to help you better understand which one is right for you.

Prime lenses

Prime lenses can come in all types of focal length, but it’s always fixed. It can’t zoom in and out. Instead, camera operators must physically move a camera toward a person, object, structure, or landscape to capture it in greater detail or move far back to capture things in wide-angle. Purists would consider prime lenses superior to zooms, as they tend to produce a much higher image quality. This is because they’re fine-tuned to deliver at one specific focal length and also tend to be a little faster and brighter.

Terry Gilliam, the director behind 12 Monkeys, Brazil, and other surrealist classics, is well-known for using the 14mm and shooting Dutch angles with it. The 14mm has even informally been called “The Gilliam”. As you will notice in his films, the 14mm lens, along with his placement and camera framing, gives his actors and scenes a sense of surreal distortion.

Zoom lenses

A zoom lens has several different focal lengths all in one. For example, a 24-70mm offers you everything from 24mm to 35mm, 50mm and beyond. While they may not be quite as sharp as a prime, zoom lenses are valued for their versatility. Using a zoom allows you to quickly frame up your shot and experiment with different options in the same scene without having to physically move around.

Wide-angle

The wide-angle lens is exactly what you’d expect – a cinematography lens that enables you to capture footage at a wide angle. Anything in the 14-35mm range is considered a wide angle, and typical use cases include landscape and architecture videos.

Standard

A standard lens sits between the wide angles and the telephotos. The focal length of a standard lens is considered the most similar to how we as humans see the world, so cinematographers will often use this type of lens for a more grounded, natural look.

Alfred Hitchcock was a big fan of the 50mm, and you can see it in his films. Unlike with Gilliam, there’s hardly any distortion in Hitchcock’s movies—just the details of the scene rendered in a realistic, though still uniquely cinematic way. Iconic Japanese director Akira Kurosawa also used the 50mm and other types of camera lenses at focal lengths down to 35mm to replicate how the human eye sees things.

Telephoto zoom lens

A telephoto lens is anything beyond 85mm, giving you a narrow field of view and a magnified image. Using a telephoto lens is a more considered choice, reserved for things such as sports, wildlife, documentaries, and interesting frame compositions.

Fisheye lens

Fisheye lenses are quite an artistic choice. They’re ultra-wide-angle lenses that produce a very strong visual distortion (visible bending of the frame) intended to create a wide panoramic image. This is an abstract, creative lens that may possibly be used for property shoots, too. Famous Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai deliberately chose to shoot many of his iconic Fallen Angels (1995) with an extremely wide-angle lens.

Macro

A macro lens is a really specific type of camera lens that’s designed for the sole purpose of capturing images very close to your subject. An extreme close-up shot is effective. These types of camera lenses are great for wildlife shoots if you’re focusing on something like insects, or underwater critters.

Infrared

Perhaps the most specific lens of the lot. An infrared lens captures infrared light that’s virtually impossible to see with the naked eye. You may use a lens like this for medical instrumentation, life sciences, surveillance, and security and defense. Interestingly, Greig Fraser recently caused a stir in the industry by shooting a sequence of Dune 2 (2024) on infrared lenses.

Anamorphic lenses

Almost all types of camera lenses are spherical. However, there is a special class of lenses called anamorphic that gives filmmakers flexibility with the aspect ratio (width and height of projected footage) of their motion picture images.

Spherical lenses don’t affect the aspect ratios. Anamorphic lenses, however, do. When an anamorphic lens is used, the image is compressed while recording and then stretched out to achieve wide and cinematic aspect ratios in post-production. Directors like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson are fond of using an anamorphic lens, but they can get quite expensive and may not be the right choice for most filmmakers.

Lens speed and other considerations

Another thing to think about is lens speed. If you’re trying to capture cinematic footage for your short film or YouTube video, you’ll want a lens with a wide aperture that can let a lot of light and detail in.

A fast lens has a low f-stop number. A really fast lens would be something like a 1.4, but this can get expensive. So, you can also look for f-stops of 1.8 and 2.0.

If you need to, rent some of the lenses mentioned above. Experiment with primes and zooms and with lenses that have a range of low f-stops. With practice, you will find the right cinematic lenses for your project.

F-stop

F-stop is a measurement of how wide a lens aperture is. When an aperture’s blades (the diaphragm) are widened, the F-stop (or F-number) goes down, and when the aperture is gradually closed, the number goes up.

This is the best way to understand F-stop. But, if you want the optical definition of F-stop, it’s the ratio of the lens’s focal length to the aperture diameter.

Lens speed

If you’re trying to capture cinematic footage for your short film or YouTube video, you’ll want a lens with a wide aperture that can let a lot of light and detail in. A lens with a wide aperture is called a “fast lens”.

Fast lenses have low f-stop numbers. A really fast lens would be something like a 1.4, but this can get expensive. So, you can also look for f-stops of 1.8 and 2.0.

If you need to, rent some of the lenses mentioned above. Experiment with primes and zooms and with lenses that have a range of low f-stops. With practice, you will find the right cinematic lenses for your project.

Sensor size

Another factor that will determine how lenses interact with a camera is its sensor size. In digital cameras, the sensor size is a measurement of the sensor, with 35mm film being the benchmark against which it is compared.

DSLR camera sensor sizes are either APS-C (Canon uses 22.2 x 14.8 mm, while others are 23.5-23.7 x 15.6 mm) or full frame (36 x 24 mm). Full frame is a buzzword these days in digital cinematography, as the 36 x 24mm sensor size comes closest to motion picture 35mm film. In other words, a lot of information can be packed onto that sensor, just as more light can be exposed onto 35mm film versus, say, the much smaller 8mm film format.

Crop factor

As mentioned above, DSLR cameras have significantly smaller sensor sizes relative to the reference size of 35mm film. So, when filmmakers started using DSLR cameras with the lenses that had been optimized for 35mm film, they saw that images were being cropped. Another way of thinking about it is that if a DSLR and 35mm film camera use the same lens, getting the same optical information, the DSLR camera will crop out more of the field of view than the 35mm film camera.

To calculate the crop factor relative to 35 mm film, you just multiply the camera’s crop factor with the focal length of the lens. So, for example. If you use a 24mm lens on a camera with a crop factor of 1.5, you get a total crop factor of 36mm.

Wrapping up

As you may have gathered by now, when it comes to choosing the best lens for filmmaking, it all comes down to your wants and needs as a cinematographer. There is a lens for every scenario and it’s up to you as the creative to pick the right one for the job. Using the tips and advice here, you can now make an informed decision confidently!