Christmas is around the corner, and you might or might not be looking for interesting lenses to give to your favorite cinematographer as a present (including yourself, of course). Maybe even vintage ones because, as we often hear, they have character. What gives a lens personality, though? Seasoned cinematographer and educator Tal Lazar answers: its flaws. In his MZed course “The Art & Science of Lenses,” he revisits all common lens aberrations, explains why they appear, and demonstrates how they influence the image. Let’s take a glimpse! Technicians define aberrations as a failure of an optical system to focus all of the incident light rays coming from a point on the object to an image point. We – filmmakers and photographers – should see them rather as creative opportunities. After all, as Tal Lazar reminds us, every lens has aberrations. This is what makes them characteristic and special. We look for optical solutions that tell stories rather than perfect ones, right? That’s why some cinematographers even degrade lenses so that certain aberrations become more pronounced. Film stills from “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” by Andrew Dominik, 2007 Naturally, it’s both an exciting and complex topic, so if you want to watch all the demos and explanations in greater detail, head over to “The Art & Science of Lenses” course by Tal Lazar on MZed.com. Lens aberrations: spherical The aberration Tal Lazar begins with is spherical. Due to the lens’s curvature, light rays that hit the...
Published By: CineD - Today