Anyone know of a good focal le…
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Anyone know of a good focal length/camera shot guide?
Flortale
Posts: 611
in The Commons
Anyone know of a good focal length/camera shot guide?
I'm looking for a tried and true methodology that's already been figured out by a professional.
If over the shoulder shot, set focal length to X.
If above the knee, set focal length to X.
If head shot, set focal length to X.
If X shot, set focal length to Y.
I'm looking for a workflow, or a checklist that ensures my focal lengths are always proper.
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I hate to break it to you but there isn't a one size fits all guide to using a camera. Photography is an art form (and virtual photography, which is what DAZ does, is no different). You can get some general guidelines if you spend time studying photography, but they are only guidelines. Study and practice is what you need to do. And be grateful that we are in the digital era now and not using film like it was when I started learning. Much less expensive to experiment now. ;)
Just to help you get started I'll give you one guideline. For studio portraits many photographers use a focal length between 100 and 300 mm.
Good luck to you.
A professional photographer must have a methodology or workflow, especially if he's been honing his craft for years. I'm sure a phtoographer or movie producer has shared a nice little cheat sheet somewhere on the net that I can follow.
Not really - the same photographer may use different focal lengths (zooms) from differnt distances to capture the same framing with different moods, just as they will use different lighting for different effects. There are lots of guides and cheat sheets on line for photography, look at those and experiment.
Head close-up or head and shoulders = 100mm focal length
Waist up of one or more chatpracters = 50mm focal length
Full height of characters = 30mm focal length
The focal length affects the flatness or curved distortion of the subject
100mm for a close-up of a face or a portrait will not curve the face like using a 50mm or 30mm lens will. Using a 30mm lens for a waist-up shot of two characters will curve the characters, so use an "as the human eye sees it" 50mm lens. 30mm for a full length single or group shot will allow you to get all the characters in the frame and "place" them in their surroundings. This is VERY simplified, but it works. Just try it.
For vast landscape views, use a 22mm focal length. The smaller the focal length number, the wider the angle of view, but the more distortion. The higher the focal length number, the narrower the angle of view, but the flatter the image will look.
Try this.
https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/tips-and-techniques/understanding-focal-length.html
There's also InaneGlory's products in the store - Photographer's Toolbox - which, in addition to giving you some background on settings, provides pre-set up cameras, which (if you learn through trying/testing like me) are really handy resources and starting points:
https://www.daz3d.com/inaneglory
thx these links are very helpful
You should just use what looks good and works. There isn't really any wrong ways to do anything if it looks right (and remember often photos are cropped anyway). Virtual lenses also don't have lots of the technical limitations of real world lenses.
I use 50-100 (80 is nice too and has a long history as a fashion lens).
Do people really use 300mm? Though I own a really nice 300mm lens I wouldn't ever think to use it as it would be pretty unflattering due to the "flattening" effect.
I have these and they are very helpful
These are what I use:
Head shot : 300 - 500 mm
Half portraits : 105 mm
Full : 65 mm
corner/dutch tilt : 35 mm
Those are my preferences, not necessary others
Oh yes, they have. But not in a sense of "use exactly this when doing that". They know how a focal length in a given situation creates a specific feeling and adjust according to what they want to achive. So all the comments made here apply. There is no fixed rule. But there are values that work to create a specific feeling and other do less so. We had a situation where a "wannabe" pro photographer wanted to make corporate portraits - you know those ones where the people look frindly, trustworthy and inviting. He decided to use 35 mm at an angle. When I saw this setting on his lens I smiled and knew in advance those pictures will not be taken even though he had not yet pressed the button.
If you download the two attached renders and switch between them in an image viewer you can easily get the difference of 55 mm and 35 mm. For the given context - a homing frindly feeling - 35 mm is just wrong. But if I would create an image where the girl does not like being there and stands in a rejecting pose then the 35 mm might be a good choice.
100 is a nice flattering headshot focal length. I have a 70-200 lens and if I have the room, I will shoot tight headshots at 200. My 85 prime lens is great for waist and up portraits as well. it doesn't make the nose too big, which is what you have to watch out for with wider focal lengths. For full body shots I use a 50 mm and I will not go wider than that. One of the things you have to take into consideration with Daz is the frame size. If you are shooting portrait, to mimic a full frame 35 mm camera you need to set the frame width to 24 mm. if you are shooting a horizontal you can leave it at the standard 36 as long as you were using a 3/2 crop ratio.
I just leave it at 36 and change the aspect ratio to 2x3 which is what it would be if you turned a 35mm camera, which has a frame size of 36mm wide x 24mm high which is 3x2, to the vertical to take a portrait which would have a frame size of 24mm wide x 36mm high which is 2x3.
It's all about what you're trying to convey. If you want to create a relaxed feeling, you'll use a longer lens, but if you are trying to create a dramatic intimate or claustrophobic effect (fine line there) you'll use a shorter focal length. When I was taking photography classes, 80mm was considered the standard for portraits, but a lot of folks prefer longer lenses now. And then you have to make sure you're getting everything you want into a shot if it's a larger scene. Lens length will change your angles, and you may not always want that. Maybe you can change your angle and maybe you can't.
Do a lot of stuff, watch a lot of videos, study a lot of photographs by famous photographers, think about what you're doing and things should come together. The book Nothing Personal by Richard Avedon and James Baldwin changed how I thought of portrait photography, along with his fashion photography (Calvin Klein, etc). Diane Arbus and Irving Penn are also amazing, as are many others.
A long while ago when I was using film the recommended focal length for portraits was 135mm.
Depends on what you are shooting. Most studio photogrphers, myself included use 50mm to 85mm, as these produce the best results native to what the eye sees. 35mm is good too for tighter spaces but can cause distortions. My go to is 50mm 1.8 for boudoir but damn if i can't ge tthat to wrok here. lol
135mm is my go-to for portraits. 70mm is typical for waist-up or full-body. 50mm is what I'll use if I have more than one figure in the scene and I want to get some of the background in there.
Just remember one key piece...the shorter the lens, the wider the angle...so the shorter the lens, the closer you move to the figure, the bigger their nose is going to get. So watch out for that distortion. It can be very unflattering for faces.
Also, if looking for something that will help you translate real-world lens values to DS, this is what I use. I don't use the stock DS camera anymore - https://www.daz3d.com/ig-photographers-toolbox-35mm-cameras
When using a typical 35mm wide, film camera the lens that came with it was usually a 50mm focal length lens which is considered a "Normal" lens. i.e. when holding an image of a scene in front of the scene that was imaged, the perspective and angles should be about the same as what your eye sees. i.e. "normal".
(i.e. not wideangle and not telephoto, just "normal")
And as others have said, for tighter more "flat" images a typical 35mm camera would use a 135mm focal length moderate telephoto lens. The idea is to get a litte farther away from the subject, yet still get a tight detailed picture of the face & shoulders. Because the closer you are to the subject the more you get blooming of the nose and front of the face and forward shoulder.
Using a longer focal length lens and getting farther away yields less perspective distortion of the images.
I keep saying "on a 35mm camera" because they have been used for so many decades by so many people that they are sort of the defacto standard for camera buffs. Much is referenced to what is typical for 35mm cameras. However, a larger format camera like a Hassleblad or Mamiya that uses larger film would often use an 80mm focal length lens as it's "Normal" lens, simply because of the mathematics of the optical path. And I believe that a "Portrait" lens for that type of camera would be around 180mm. Fortunately though, most people speak of lens focal length as if it were for a typical 35mm camera except when specificaly talking about a larger format camera.
But these are only guides.
One can take some awful photos with the best of cameras and intentions.
I'm not sure if DAZ Studio designed their virtual lenses around typical performance of 35mm cameras but I would hope they did.
Take a look at the images on this page https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4164807
You could set up a simple DAZ scene with a person in front of a house, with simple lighting. Then, create a new DAZ camera, and WITHOUT MOVING THE CAMERA OR ANYTHING IN THE SCENE, make a series of images, changing ONLY THE FOCAL LENGTH, from very short, like 10mm and go up to 1000mm. Like - 10mm, 20mm, 34mm, 50mm, 75mm, 100mm, 150mm, 200mm, 500mm, 1000mm.