Lenses for student/new film makers

Getting into the film or even television can become extremely expensive. Especially if you buy your own kit, with the boom of DSLR's shooting HD footage has become somewhat cheaper. The problem is a filmmaker never has a full kit and quite often has to find ways to use what they have efficiently  or even make their own DIY builds (See my previous post on this) http://zodiacvfx-dan.blogspot.com/2013/02/diy-filmmaking.html.

It's known that both the camera and lens impact the quality of the image, but ultimately you can have a fairly cheap body such as a 550d or even a 60D like myself and its the lens that makes the difference. I remember watching a Corridor Digital video in which they said the captured image is only as good as the glass it passes through. This is where the problem is for student film makers, decent lenses are usually 100's of pounds especially if you are looking at Canon's L series. 

So how can you work around this? Well there are many cheap good lenses out there, of course they aren't going to be the same quality as the expensive ones but for starting out they do the job. The canon 50mm prime 1.8 is not only cheap, but it provides amazing results for the price and I think it should be part of a new film makers arsenal. My first lens was a sigma 18-200mm 3.5-6-3 lens, at first I struggled with the lens as I realized to get a decent shot, I had to have my ISO turned up in the 1000's, I was quite dissapointed with the lens, but as I learnt more about lighting, the lens became quite useful again, like I was saying it wasn't the quality of an L series, but the shots looked great and soon made it into the edit. With properly lit shots, I could shoot with a higher shutter speed, lower aperture and a lower iso meaning the shots came out as intended and allowed me and the crew to manipulate focus how we wanted too. Like I was saying on my previous post, using lower quality kit, in my opinion forces you to learn how to use the kit properly, so when it comes to having a L lens, you fully understand how to use the lens and manipulate different things to get what you want.

So if you are a new film maker don't let your equipment put you off, you can make a movie on almost any camera, and most computers come with editing software. Get your kit together and make the films you want to, don't fall into the trap of "We will make the film next year when I get some new kit" film it now and make it happen.