Free tool
Shot visualizer
Specify lenses, focal length, and aperture for your shot lists with this handy tool.
Shot size
Medium close-up. Chest up. The face leads, with a little of the world behind it.
Lens (focal length)
85mm. Short telephoto. A narrower view, so the camera stands further back. Faces look even, and the background softens and draws closer. 24° view.
Keep the framing: the camera moves so the shot size stays the same. That change of distance is what changes perspective.
What's focal length?
Focal length, in millimetres, is the optical distance inside the lens from where it brings light to a point to the camera's sensor. It sets how wide the view is: a shorter number sees more, a longer one sees less and magnifies more. The lens is the glass itself. A prime lens has one focal length; a zoom lens covers a range. So when people say "an 85" they mean a lens at 85mm. Here every lens is on a full-frame camera.
Aperture
f/2. Very shallow focus and easy background blur, with half the light of f/1.4. In focus: 2.37 m – 2.47 m.
f/2 lets in 1/2 the light of f/1.4. On a lit street at night, with the shutter at 1/50 s (180° at 24 fps), f/2 needs ISO 800.
What's an f-stop?
Aperture is the opening in the lens that lets light in. The f-number is the focal length divided by the width of that opening, so a smaller number means a bigger opening. Each full stop (f/1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8, 11, 16) lets in half the light of the one before. A bigger opening also means less of the scene is in focus. How much is sharp depends on distance and focal length too: closer to the subject or on a longer lens, the in-focus slice gets thinner.
The camera at their eye height. Neutral: the audience meets them as an equal.
The camera doesn't move. The frame holds and the action plays inside it.
Shot list
Set up a shot above, then press “+ Add to shot list” to start one.