Production Skills- 16mm Lenses

This week in Production Skills we carried on from last weeks session of looking at the 16mm cameras, we started to look at the different lenses for the cameras and the different capabilities of each lens. The first thing we talked about was lens mounts and the two different Arri mounts, the first been the Arri Standard and the second the Arri PL. The PL mount is incompatible for older Arri mount lenses but the standard can be a bit weak in strength and ability. The two main different types of lenses are 'Prime Lens' and 'Variable Lens', the prime lens can't adjust the focal length but as a better F Stop and the variable lens is more commonly known as a zoom lens.  

When detaching lenses from the camera you need to press in the buttons on the side and twist to remove the lens, make sure not to touch the lens on the glass as it can damage and ruin shots as well as the lens. The lenses can range from 10mm-100mm, the ones we have available are the super wide 10mm, 16mm, 24mm, 25mm and a 300mm. They all fall into different categories with around 12mm been wide, around 25mm been standard and finally around 50mm been telephoto. We then studied some documents online that mentioned 'Angle of View' but only had the numbers for 30mm, the list was 24mm = 84°, 50mm = 47 ° and 100mm = 18°. We then looked at 'Aperture' which is Iris Control, this determines how much light comes in and controls the depth of field. When adjusting for light, it's good to remember that 1.4 means more light and 16 (The highest it can go) means no light, you can get a better idea of much light there is by using a light meter. For the light meters our course provides you need to switch it on and change it to film mode, make sure it's set at 25 and that the ISO is at 250 before taking a reading. When focusing the camera and lens by eye, you need to focus through the eye piece, start by locking on the eye piece and looking for the grid that appears on and at the bottom of the lens, adjust the eye piece so the grid is in focus. 

This was all the areas we focused on during this lesson on 16mm lenses, which gave us more information on the options we have when it comes to filming on film.