Speaker 1: When it comes to shooting music videos, seeing how big of a selection there is when it comes to finding a lens to use for your camera, it can be overwhelming. So a common question that I get asked a lot is, what's the best lens for shooting music videos? So over the last decade, I've been shooting music videos and I've got my hands on a lot of different lenses. And what I've noticed is I tend to use these two lenses in every single music video. And in a lot of cases, I could actually shoot the entire music video with just these two lenses. So I'm going to talk about what those lenses are. I'm going to give you guys examples on how you can use these lenses and also show you what the shots look like with these lenses. Alrighty, you guys. So the first lens is right here. It's a 55 millimeter Sony Zeiss F1.8. If you've ever heard the term nifty 50, a 50 millimeter can do some damage, man. What's good about 50 millimeters is it makes people's faces look good. So I tend to use this lens when it comes to getting real close up shots of like the artist's face, real close up shots of maybe like if it's a brick wall and I want to show the texture and I want to get real close to it just so you can see all the little details. I'll use that lens. I feel the 50 millimeter lenses are good for more of the cinematic look. I feel that people are getting really used to the way that our phones look. So like if you pull out your phone and you go to take a picture of a person standing there, right? Usually with the millimeter that the phone juice, it's like full body. It's pretty far away. So that'd be like a lower millimeter lens, maybe like in the twenties, right? Now, when you throw one of these on, you're getting a lot closer. It's very complimenting to people's faces. I wouldn't recommend this, but when I first got started shooting music videos, I had a Canon T3i and I believe they have $130 50 millimeter F1.8 lens. And I used only that lens, only that lens for almost my first 100 music videos. What are the cons to using a 55 millimeter? Let's just pretend that it's 50 millimeter. Okay. The cons would be right here. If I was using a 55 millimeter, it's going to be like this on my face, right? So another shot also, when I was doing a lot of, uh, beginner music videos was the, the shot of the artist driving in the car and he's rapping to the camera. Whenever I would try to get that shot with a 50 millimeter, I was like right up in his face. All you seen was like his eyes and mouth. And that was impossible until I started getting like lower millimeter lenses. So that would be a con. Another good thing about this lens. It's a F1.8, which means I get to lower the aperture down to 1.8. So the lower the aperture, the more blurry background you get, right? And that's another, I would say downside of people that use their phones. It's really hard to get that separation where you get the hand in focus and then look, my, my, my face is out of focus. It's damn near impossible to do this with a phone. But when you got that 1.8, you get that buttery background bokeh. I love this lens. Use it a lot. You may be thinking, what the hell is the second lens? The second lens is the one that I'm using right now. It is a Sigma art 24 millimeter F1.4. So this is a F1.8 that goes down to a F1.4. Right now I'm filming at 1.8, but that 1.4, you can get even more shallow depth of field. Depth of field is this, my hands in focus, backgrounds all blurry. What's the money shots with the 24? 24 is really good for stuff like this. You see, you see my upper body, right? Or I'll get farther away from the artist. If I, if they have like cool shoes that match the shirt and the hat and they want to get the whole outfit in there, I'll throw the 24 when using a gimbal, it's better to use a wide angle lens, right? So the higher the millimeter of the lens, let's say you're using the 55 on a gimbal or even like an 85 on a, on a gimbal. It's very close. So you're going to notice all those little jitters. Gimbals are smooth, but they're not perfect, right? So there's still going to be somewhat of jitters. And so you want a wider lens when it comes to doing like gimbal shots. So my go-to is usually the 24 right here for gimbal shots. What are the cons of the 24? Well, the 24, I wouldn't do close-up shots with the 24 millimeter, right? It's not very complimenting to the face. When it comes to close-up shots, you want a higher millimeter lens. And that's where, you know, we're talking about this bad boy 55, you get a 50 millimeter, 35 is a common ground in the middle. But again, we're not talking about that in this way. We're talking about the 55 and the 24 millimeter. Another thing, both of these lenses are prime lenses. They're not zoom lenses. What I've found and what I've heard is prime lenses are sharper than zoom lenses. So I tend to only shoot with, with primes. Prime for dummies is it, the lens doesn't zoom, right? It's 24. It is what it is. If you want to get closer, you can't twist and zoom in. You got to move closer. You want to get farther away. You can't twist and zoom out. You got to back up. Pretty simple. Let's pretend that I'm on set right now. I'm about to shoot a music video. I'm probably going to throw the 24 on in every scene that we do. So let's say this is the scene right here. The artist is sitting right here, wrapping to the camera. I'm going to use the 24 and get this kind of wider shot. Then I'm going to throw on the 55 and get a close up nine times out of 10 at just about every scene. I'll get the close shots of just the, you know, the face performance. I might throw the camera on a tripod and use the 55 and then go over to the 24 to get more of the wide shot where you can see the scenery. You can see if we're in a grungy spot and there's some cool columns or things going on. I'll go with the 24 with that. When using the 55, it's cool when you get really close to the artist, you know, it gives a good shot variety. I would say what makes a music video look amateur is you can tell that they have one lens, right? So every scene is this. It's waist up. I'm wrapping here. It's waist up. I'm wrapping there. It's waist up. I'm wrapping here. It's waist up. I'm wrapping there. Being able to get that good variety, right? The close up shots and the far shots. These two lenses can cover a lot of ground. Are there any cons to these two lenses? I think just the fact that you have to carry two lenses with you where it would be easier just to have a zoom lens that you could just be able to use both. Like if there was a 24 to 70, then you could technically use 24 and zoom it into the 50 or 55 or even 70 if you want. That would cover more ground. But again, what I found, what I've heard is prime lenses are sharper than zoom lenses. So I'll go to these. I'll put links to both of these lenses in the description. If you're serious about music videos and you want to take your learning to the next level, you want to see results, you want to get results fast. I'll put a link in the description to masteringmusicvideos.com. Either join the waitlist or the course is available now. That's all for today guys. Do me a favor, get the video a thumbs up, subscribe for more. I'll see you guys next time.