5 Lenses Famous Filmmakers Love Using

INTRODUCTION

In filmmaking, the choice of lens is more than just technical - it’s emotional. A 50mm can feel real and honest. While a 14mm warps and distorts characters’ worlds. 

In this video, we’ll break down five popular focal length lenses that famous filmmakers love: how they shape the image, why they’re used, and what they reveal about the filmmaker behind the camera. 

WHAT IS FOCAL LENGTH?

Each cinema lens comes with a focal length which is measured in millimetres. In practical terms, focal length determines how wide the field of view is and much of the scene you see, how close or far away subjects appear, and how space and depth are rendered on screen. 

Wide focal lengths like a 16mm captures more of the environment and exaggerates depth, while a more ‘zoomed in’ telephoto lens like a 100mm compresses space and isolates subjects.

Even though focal lengths are always consistent, if they are used on different sized camera sensors that capture a greater area, the images’ field of view may appear wider or tighter.  

Lenses can either have a fixed focal length which doesn’t change - called a prime lens - or come with a range of different focal lengths that can be chosen - called a zoom. 

Different manufacturers produce primes in different focal lengths. However, there are some popular primes that are often used, such as an 18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 100mm and 135mm.

Most filmmakers and cinematographers use various focal lengths throughout projects depending on what is required for each shot. However, some do have lenses which they hold in higher regard than others.

Let’s take a look at some of these lenses now, starting with a 50mm.

50MM

It’s often said that on a full-frame sensor, a 50mm lens closely replicates the field of view and spatial perception of the human eye. It doesn't distort space like wide lenses, nor compress it like telephoto lenses.

For this very reason Yasujirō Ozu favoured a naturalistic 50mm - so much so that he used it to exclusively shoot almost all of his many movies - abandoning all other primes.

He wasn’t alone in this, with other films such as Alfred Hitcock’s Psycho also apparently shot almost exclusively with a 50mm.

Because of the simple optical design of these lenses, 50mm primes are typically smaller, lighter, and cheaper to manufacture than other lenses. For this reason they’ve often been used all throughout cinema’s history - and can be found in almost every single set of prime lenses which are manufactured - from vintage to modern.

This simpler design also made it possible to manufacture this lens with a fast aperture - making it great for maximising the out of focus bokeh in shots, and allowing filmmakers to shoot in lower light conditions. 

A famous example of this is in Barry Lyndon where Stanley Kubrick used a 50mm Carl Zeiss lens with a ridiculous stop of f/0.7 to shoot painterly, dimly lit candlelight scenes.

Even today, when cinematographers want to shoot wide open with a super fast stop, they’ll often select a 50mm prime. Whether it’s a cinema lens like a T/1 Panavision Ultra Speed, or a stills lens like a f/1.2 Sigma Art.  

40MM

A focal length which is a little less popular amongst cinema lens manufacturers - is a 40mm. A shade wider than a standard 50mm, it’s a nice middle ground between that and the popular 35mm. 

Great for portraits without distortion, yet also wide enough for medium or lightly compressed long shots.

Some 40mm models include the T/2.1 Zeiss Standard Speed, the Cooke S4, or modern large format primes such as from Sigma, Arri and Zeiss.

This focal length was famously used by Gordon Willis to photograph the majority of The Godfather. If you look at the wider shots you’ll see they have a little more compression and no distortion of straight lines, which differentiates them from the more traditional long or medium shots which are shot on wider focal lengths that expand the space and make characters feel smaller in the composition.

Although a 40mm spherical lens, which we’ve discussed so far, is a medium-wide focal length, when a 40mm anamorphic lens is used it actually feels like a much wider field of view which distorts and bends the edges of the frame.

So while a 40mm spherical lens on Super 35 cameras is often favoured for mids and close ups, a 40mm anamorphic lens is regularly used for wider shots. 

Much of Wes Anderson’s earlier work which was shot in the anamorphic format used this focal length. In fact his DP Robert Yeoman confirmed that around 90% of  Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums were done on a 40mm Panavision Primo anamorphic lens.

Because the field of view of this focal length is expanded and feels a little less telephoto when it’s paired with a larger format camera sensor than Super 35 - it can be used as an all purpose lens for both wides and close ups. 

This was the case for the long takes in 1917, which were almost entirely photographed by Roger Deakins with a large format Alexa Mini LF and a 40mm Signature Prime lens.

35MM

Switching to one lens wider, we have the 35mm. Like a 50mm, this focal length is also a staple in almost all spherical prime lens sets both new and old.

Unlike the 50mm this wider lens captures more of the background world that surrounds characters. While at the same time still being usable as a portrait lens for close ups - albeit with a bit more width and a bit less bokeh than singles shot on medium to telephoto lenses.  

In fact I’d say shooting on a 35mm is about right on the edge for where close ups still feel comfortable, any wider and you start to get into more distorted wide angle territory. 

In my opinion, the most natural field of view that feels similar to how our eyes see the world is somewhere between a 50mm and a 35mm focal length - making this range great for not distracting audiences and letting the more naturalistic camera language blend into the background of movies.    

The ability to use a 35mm for both close ups and wides makes it a very versatile lens - to the extent that it’s often been chosen by cinematographers who opt to shoot projects with mainly one focal length.

This was the case on Call Me By Your Name: which was exclusively shot with a Cooke S4 35mm lens by cinematographer Sayombhu Mukdeeprom. He chose this focal length, as he says, to photograph the characters “in relation to one another and in perspective with their surroundings.”

27MM

Next up we have a 27mm. Like the more unusual 40mm, which sits somewhere between the standard 50mm and 35mm focal lengths, so too does the slightly less common 27mm occupy a middle ground between the standard 35mm and 25mm lenses.

The 27mm is a little less common in vintage lens sets - with the 25mm being a more popular choice - but is found more often in contemporary Super 35 and especially large format prime kits. Such as, the Sigma Aizu, Blackwing7s or Cooke S8s. 

Instead of a 27mm some cinema lens manufacturers make a 28mm or 29mm - such as Leica or the Zeiss Ultra Primes. 

When moved further from characters this lens widens frames - giving a more expansive feeling to interiors or locations. When it’s brought closer to people, it starts to subtly distort faces in a more cartoonish way than what the human eye sees. 

The 27mm exaggerates space to make figures in the foreground feel larger and characters in the background feel smaller in comparison.

This embellished view of reality is perhaps why this lens has sometimes been used by filmmakers to inject a little more of a comedic undertone into scenes. For example it was used to shoot the entirety of Bottle Rocket - Wes Anderson’s first film.

The 27mm, along with the 32mm, has also been frequently used by Roger Deakins and the Coen brothers to shoot some of their darkly comedic dialogue scenes. 

Using the 27mm for both wider coverage of dialogue and close ups. 

Other directors, such as David Cronenberg, also favour this focal length even when used for non-comedic purposes. Using a wider 27mm, like he does in many of his films, means the camera needs to be physically closer to the actors, unlike when you shoot on a more optically close telephoto lens which places the camera further away. 

Being within touching distance to the actors gives shots a different feeling - which brings the audience physically closer to the scene in an engaging way. 

18MM

Finally we arrive at the extreme wide angle world of focal lengths in the teens. A particularly popular lens in this range is the 18mm - which is the widest focal length in many prime lens sets, such as the Zeiss Super Speeds or the Cooke 5/i.

Although some sets do come with some even wider primes such as a 16mm or even a specialist lens like an 8mm.

Traditionally the 18mm was mainly used for wide shots - to optically expand the field of view to better capture vistas or get a wide shot in tight interior spaces. However, through the years many filmmakers have broken convention and used it as a portrait lens for shooting close ups. 

This subversion has happened through cinema’s history from directors like Orson Welles, who used an 18mm to intentionally distort the faces of characters in unflattering ways, while at the same time layering important information across different planes of the image from foreground to background. 

This has continued into contemporary cinema with certain DPs, like Emmanuel Lubezi, becoming particularly known for pushing this super wide angle look in the work of many directors he collaborates with: from Terrance Malick to Alfonso Cuaron and Alejandro González Iñárritu. Although in some of these films he treats the 18mm almost like his telephoto lens - shooting some shots up to an ultra wide angle 12mm. 

Using these lenses to shoot close ups puts us right in the shoes of the characters, being so physically intimate and close with them that the experience becomes visceral. 

The 18mm also comes with a deeper depth of field, when combined with the extreme width of the field of view it allows audiences to see much more of the background of the shot - which better contextualises the landscape and makes the world around them feel more immersive and present.