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Choosing the Right Lens

Lesson 17 from: iPhone Photography & Mobile Photography

Philip Ebiner

Choosing the Right Lens

Lesson 17 from: iPhone Photography & Mobile Photography

Philip Ebiner

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Lesson Info

17. Choosing the Right Lens

Lessons

Class Trailer

Course Introduction

1

Welcome to Class

00:50
2

Why Are Smartphone Cameras Awesome?

02:10
3

The Course Challenge: Capture Your Day in 5 Photos

09:03

Camera Basics for Mobile & Smartphone Photography

4

Intro to Camera Basics

01:14
5

Exposure

03:56
6

Focal Length

01:46

Lesson Info

Choosing the Right Lens

All right. So we're out here in the field, we're at a pier on the beach and basically, I wanna talk you through uh three different angles or three different lenses that we can use on our phone just to show you an example. So let's pull out our phone and we'll stick it Sam right there. And right now the phone is uh middle, medium range, right? So we can see that we can take a picture here and that's middle right now, let's go to wide. Now, that would be a typical wide shot, right? We can see much more of the area we can see up into there, we can see down, I'll take a picture here so wide versus medium, right? Versus telephoto. So that's the long two times telephoto on the mobile phone. You see the difference between the three photos here as they're lined up. But you can see even at telephoto, I can zoom in a little bit more and get a different photo. You see there's people down there and stuff, but you can see the difference between telephoto and wide and those are two huge different as...

pects that we've been taking photos of and I haven't moved my feet. I'm in the same spot doing 23 different sizes, 12 and three. So let's talk about compositionally. Now in the wide shot, look at this composition, you see a lot more, you see the leading lines in the upper left and I can tilt up so I can see more and take a more interesting photo or I can tilt down and I get a lot of foreground, right? So you can have that kind of shot. Now, midrange, you can see how I can kind of select a midrange cycle here. I can take a photo right here or I can do it. And you see, I have less lines in the top. Now, I don't have as many leading lines and the bottom is getting cut off a little bit and I don't have as much foreground when I'm looking down. So you have a little bit more choices. Now, when we go long lens, things start to get compressed a little bit and everything is, is really tight, right? It's got a little bit of a different look, you can see longer down. You don't get to see as much leading lines and obviously the foreground is just sand. So the benefits of the three are really different. I like using the wide angle a lot in a situation like this because you can really see everything that's going on and there's a lot going on. Now. If I wanted to shoot a person really far away and you weren't as close, that would be the benefit of having a sort of long range zoom lens. Um And then the mid range is kind of just that normal, like pick up and see what you see. It's much more similar to my eye right now. That's what looks normal to me. Um But for me, creatively, I really love this wide angle lens. I mean, look, even if I go down, if I get down really low, you can really see some cool sand objects. And this is talking about moving the composition around, but see how cool the wide is when you get stuff really in the foreground. So let's look at this from outside the pier. Now, the sun's facing right right into my face. So it's a little hard for me to see. But let's take a look at our camera. So this again is a mid range. That's a nice composition. Maybe we'd move it up and shoot with the pier at the bottom. Let's see what it looks like on the super wide man. Look at that. We're almost getting salmon there. But if we shoot super wide, see how different the composition is. The pier looks really far away really long and we look like we can see a lot of things. Again, the sand is in focus sand is in the foreground. Now, what does it look like with a telephoto lens. So midrange and then telephoto man, that's actually pretty cool looking way out. You can see the pier and it's silhouetted because of the sun, but it changes, it changes quite a bit the look right to go from a long lens like that to a wide angle like that. Two hugely different emotions. And you can see how that would make a huge difference when you're shooting something for a landscape. I would tend to go wide so you can see everything. But what's really cool about this is because we have a center point like the pier, you can kind of silhouette the sun right behind it and uh and really get as close as you can and over the water. So these are just some basic things to consider when composing photos and thinking about your lens choice. Keep in mind whenever you throw up something you take a picture, you can always switch quickly between all three lenses or really in between the lenses on some cameras. The cool thing about mobile photography again is your entire lens kit is in your pocket. So don't just be, don't just adhere to what you have that pops up in your camera. Remember you can change it and really try and say something with your compositions using that focal length forward and backward.

Ratings and Reviews

Joanna
 

Definitely geared to beginners, but the class has a lot of good information. As an advanced camera photographer still trying to get to know my phone camera better, I learned a few things I didn't know (like you can use portrait mode for selfies, what hyper lapse is and the VSCO app). Nice job!

user-d195e3
 

Good course for everyone starting out and needed to have some more basic info beyond the common snap shot. I had wished for more info on using mobile in the more professional field like when switching from camera to mobile. Additional lenses and flashes and things like that. But this course was obviously not targeted at this. So overall still a nice brush up.

Barbara
 

Great class. Well organized and clearly presented. Would be very good for beginners and mid level users. highly recommend.

Student Work

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