Zoom and prime lenses are preferred lenses when shooting a short film.
A short film production requires the use of the right camera, lighting and sound equipment. For its camera lens requirements, there is actually no single lens type that serves as a perfect lens to use in all short film projects. In general, it is important to have suitable lenses that can shoot close-up shots, medium shots and long shots for your film.
Zoom Lens
A zoom lens is a very versatile type of lens, often used in short films. Since a film requires shooting variations of shots that should look near or far from the camera, the zoom lens is a practical choice. It enables the filmmaker to shoot different shot distances, from tight shots to wide shots. Different zoom lenses are available for prosumer and professional cameras, like the Angenieux brand, that features a 12mm to 100mm zoom lens. However, there is a downside to using zoom lens. Aside from being more bulky than most non-telephoto lenses, it has less light-gathering capability compared to prime lenses. You generally need a stronger light source to properly expose your footage with a zoom lens. Unlike a zoom lens that has a changing focal length, prime lenses like telephoto, wide-angle and macro lenses have fixed focal lengths.
Wide-angle Lens
A wide-angle lens is an important lens that allows the filmmaker to shoot master shots and establishing shots of the story's scenes and locations. This prime lens allows you to document a wide coverage of a scene. It is ideally used for landscape shots and shooting full shots of a house, a room, or any other place that should be seen on the film as a large location. Generally, this is a short lens that offers a clear shot of all elements on frame -- unlike when using longer lenses like telephoto lenses, where you must choose whether you want to focus the foreground or background elements in your shot.
Telephoto Lens
A telephoto lens is an important lens used in filmmaking because it makes it possible to shoot close-up and extreme close-up shots of your subject. This type of prime lens offers better image depth, where you can choose which part of the scene should be focused and which ones to blur. The telephoto lens brings the subject nearer the frame. It is a long lens typically used when showing the character's emotions and featuring more details of the face or any other object shown on the film. Shooting with this lens requires the camera to be placed significantly farther from the subject being shot. Depending on the actual size of the telephoto lens, the camera should be at least 10 feet away from the subject.
Macro Lens
A macro lens is designed to shoot close-up shots without being significantly far from your main subject. This is often used when shooting very small subjects such as earrings, pins or insects and you want them to look big enough to fill the entire frame of your shot. This type of lens makes your small subject appear much larger than it looks in real life. Unlike a telephoto lens that requires a longer distance to properly shoot your subject, a macro lens is a more practical lens to use when filming close-up shots using short-range distances.
Tags: zoom lens, close-up shots, lens that, telephoto lens, prime lenses, shoot close-up, short film