It’s important to remember that if you were to track in towards an object or character, there’s a chance you would see the slider within the frame. Therefore, it works best when you track from left to right or right to left.

5 measuringtools

A lot of what we have discussed with wide angles falls on the use of psychological methods to affect the audience. What about practical on-set applications?

As different cameras have different sensor sizes, you will need to adjust the lens groups accordingly. This handy calculator will let you know what field of view you have with most consumer and professional cameras.

Using an 11mm over a 50mm can help you a lot with camera movement. You might not always be in a position to use a track and dolly; perhaps the location is too small or you physically can’t bring one, but a one-meter slider will be no trouble.

The compression of space through the utilization of a telephoto lens can be applied for inspired instances. A telephoto will heighten the intensity of action and movement head-on. It compresses space through the z-axis and makes objects in the foreground, mid-ground, and background seem closer together.

In previous posts on this blog, we’ve discussed Tools of Metrology that either can be found in your daily life or were ancient measurement tools, and it’s a topic we’d like to return to here. While we often track the refinement in measurement units and tools since Metrology was established in the 18th Century, it’s important to remember that humanity didn’t simply flip a switch in the 1700s and suddenly begin caring about standardized measurement. The journey toward standardization was thousands of years long, taking place on multiple tracks in civilizations around the world.

Measurement tools used in ancient times laid the foundation for tools, units, and techniques that would later be adopted by the International System of Units (SI) for the formation of the metric system. And many of these tools were advanced and refined to the point where their ancient forms are still in use today. Below are 5 more of the earliest and most important Tools of Metrology:

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Measurement toolsin research

Using a telephoto lens visually increases the distance Braddock has to cover and raises the audience’s psychological distress. Will he get there in time, or will he fail? If you just focus on Benjamin’s head for the first few seconds, it almost looks as if he is not covering any ground at all.

The space around her has also become claustrophobic; we can no longer see the surroundings or location. The change in the field of view has suddenly made this character very much alone, despite the fact that her size and placement have stayed the same throughout each image.

Measurement toolsonline

Take the scene below from The Graduate. Benjamin Braddock is sprinting to the church to stop a wedding. He is running out of time, and he needs to get there fast.

As a wide lens distorts the distance of objects near and far, it also increases the amount of movement with the use of a slider. Suddenly a one-meter slider becomes a good few seconds of tracking. A standard lens will show a slight amount of movement, but a wide-angle lens (wider the better) will show a noticeable amount of movement using a one-meter slider. A telephoto lens will show little to no movement.

If you have three minutes to spare, I highly recommend checking out the snippets in the embedded video below. It’s from the documentary Cinematographer Style (2006), and the section below has a segment from Cinematography maestro Roger Deakins.

Each lens changed the dynamic of the composition, and most importantly, they also changed the image’s psychological values. To understand how to use this to your advantage, let us first look at what has happened.

A wide-angle lens has a wider field of view, which exaggerates the size and distance of objects near and far. The enlargement of objects closer to the lens can add importance to objects in the foreground. At the same time, because of the perspective distortion, it can be an excellent tool to add surreal characteristics to an actor’s face when the camera is extremely close. (See below: The City of Lost Children).

For example, with the correct camera placement, a car swerving to miss a man standing in the middle of the road could look like it missed him by inches when, in fact, it missed him by a safe distance. Take a look at the following shot from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (featured in this clip from Vashi Nedomansky):

Measurement toolslist

Long before there were laser levels, or even bubble levels, the ancient Egyptians needed to ensure the pyramids and other structures were level to ground with analog measuring tools. The solution was a simple A-frame (likely wooden) with a string hanging down from the center of the “A”. A weight placed at the end of the string would then drag the string in one direction if the A-frame level was placed on a surface that was not perfectly flat. Markings could be placed on the crossbeam of the “A” to indicate how far off of center the measured surface was. This simple design (who’s only real limitation was the size of the frame) would remain in use until after the formation of the SI in Europe. The invention of vulcanized rubber allowed for mass production of the spirit level, which overtook the A-Frame Level for the first time.

We mentioned Galileo earlier as one of the fathers of the Thermometer, but for the invention of the Barometer, we actually turn to his assistant, Evangelista Torricelli, in the 1640s. While studying the effects of air on drawing water out of deep wells, Torricelli designed an experiment to submerge a tube of mercury into a mercury bath and seal the exposed end. As the mercury moved down the tube away from the sealed end, Torricelli reached two conclusions: one, the weight of the air above the bath must be supporting the mercury in the tube still above the surface, and two, the space in the tube above the mercury must therefore be a vacuum. This was one of the first experiments to challenge the long-held belief that “nature abhors a vacuum,” but later texts run by Blaise Pascal and his brother-in-law in 1646 would confirm Torricelli’s theory and prove that atmospheric pressure varies in different weather conditions and at different altitudes. The invention of the Barometer revolutionized how we understood weather patterns, and they are still a primary tool for meteorologists in predicting the weather.

Measuringtoolsengineering

If you aren’t too familiar with focal length, we have the insight for you. In brief: A short focal length will have a wide field of view, and a long focal length will have a narrow field of view.

Human foveal vision (this is the angle of view in which we can clearly see detail) extends to around 40°. A standard lens (commonly 50mm) is the lens that produces the closest representation to our field of view. A 50mm lens has around a 39.6° field of view when used on a 35mm sensor, hence the term standard lens.

At first glance, the Thermometer is one of the last pre-Metrology measurement tools to be invented, as Gabriel Fahrenheit and Anders Celsius both made critical contributions to the measurement of temperature in the early 1700s. But the concept for the Thermometer, an air bubble forced to different elevation points in a liquid by the liquid’s expansion or contraction due to changes in air temperature, can actually be found in Ancient Greece around the first century BCE. Galileo is credited with further perfecting the design of the Florentine Thermometer made in the 1650s by Andrea Mariani. Florentine Thermometers primarily used water or wine as their liquid, but through testing Fahrenheit discovered that mercury had more stable expansion and contraction rates in 1714. And in 1742, Celsius would take the mercury design and apply decimalization to create a more accurate base-10 temperature scale. Both Fahrenheit and Celsius’ contributions to temperature measurement remain in use today.

Measuring equipment for cooking

Lenses are more than just tools to get you closer to a subject or fit more of the landscape within your frame. A different lens can give your image an entirely new meaning with the correct application.

As previously stated, the compression of the z-axis slows down anything moving toward or away from the camera. This is ideal for isolating a character that’s moving toward the camera.

Here are three shots with the same relative framing and subject: A woman sitting in a chair, filling almost two-thirds of the composition.

A telephoto lens is ideal for isolating and freezing subjects. Let us use the example images. The image shot on the 24mm is a lot more personal and inviting. Although the image shot on the 180mm has the same framing, it isolates the character and puts her at a distance from the audience.

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Perhaps the first recorded attempt to track the passage of time throughout the day, the ancient Egyptians created large stone towers called Obelisks to honors gods and kings. And each Obelisk was an offering to the sun god, made to the right height and positioned so that the first and last light of the day would touch the peak. Markings on the ground could then track the shadow the sun cast on the tower throughout the day and tell time. Smaller versions of this same principal, called Sundials, became popular in Egypt and Ancient Rome before the later inventions of the Water Clock and Hourglass. Although sundials are still popular as decorations or at historical sites, they ultimately were not accurate enough for precision time-telling, as the Earth’s changing axial tilt alters the length of daylight hours throughout the seasons each year.

I have a very strong feeling about lenses. I’m here talking to you, and personally, I’m sitting here talking to you, and you’re filming me from over there probably on a single. Where I rarely do that, see I shoot singles inside of here [gestures to close proximity]. Unless it’s for effect. I think it’s a totally different effect for someone in the audience, looking at something on the end of a 100mm lens, opposed to something that’s been shot on a 27mm up close.

Protractors have seen many varied uses throughout the centuries. The simple, half circle with a flat edge design allows for the angle of two intersecting lines to be measured. The modern Protractor, the design of which is largely unchanged, was developed by Joseph Huddart for naval navigation at the beginning of the 19th century. The tool later became useful for construction and helped expand our understanding of geometry. But a much earlier version of the tool is now believed to have been used in Ancient Egypt by the architect Kha, who helped build pharaohs’ tombs circa 1400 BCE. This design featured a full circle resting on a flat bar. When the bar rested on a line or surface, it would produce a plumb line through the angular markings on the circle to read the angle.

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Telephoto lenses, unsurprisingly, have the opposite effect to wide-angle lenses. The entire composition becomes compressed, foreground objects become a blur, and distant objects appear closer. There is less emphasis on movement on objects moving to or away from the camera.

The items listed here are more than just ancient measurement tool names. Many of these tools are still in use today in some form, and they help illustrate how even before the discipline of the Metric System, the SI, and the formal study of Metrology, humans were developing advanced measurement techniques that allowed them to accomplish engineering and construction feats that changed the very shape of our world.

This shot was achieved through DP Hoyte Van Hoytema’s use of a 2000mm telephoto lens. The compression throughout the composition keeps the actors and the plane at their relative size and decreases the space between the actors and the plane, creating a sense of tension and fear. It looks as if the aircraft is going to collide with the two characters. The man on the left also shares this concern with nervous body language. In reality, the plane was a safe distance away.

With the wide-angle, it’s almost as if we are part of the conversation with the character; we are in her inner circle. The image shot on the telephoto lens completely cuts us off as an audience member. We are no longer part of this character’s inner circle. We are almost intruding on her space, and we should not be there.

Objects appear to be farther apart on a wide-angle lens, depth perception is greatly exaggerated, and movement along the z-axis is enhanced. The shorter the focal length, the more perceptual distortion of objects—in particular on the objects that appear closest to the lens.