The Complete Handbook of Video Camera Lenses

Chapter 1: Understanding Video Camera Lenses

The video camera lens is not an accessory. It is the image. It is the single most consequential component in your entire imaging chain, and it stands between your camera's sensor and the scene you are trying to capture. A fifteen-thousand-dollar cinema camera can be rendered mediocre by a poor quality, poorly matched, or incorrectly maintained lens. Conversely, a modestly priced camera equipped with a high-quality, properly adjusted lens can produce footage that clients and audiences will accept without question. The lens dictates the angle of view, the depth of field, the amount of light and its character, the color, and the overall resolution of the final image. The camera sensor and digital processor simply record and interpret what the lens projects onto them. If that projected image is soft, distorted, or full of aberrations, no amount of post-production wizardry can fully compensate. This is the foundational reality you must understand before you can make intelligent decisions about what to buy, how to use it, and how to maintain it.

One of the most common mistakes made by those new to video is to think of a lens in the same way they think of a lens on a pair of sunglasses. It feels like a piece of glass that you put in front of the light, and you see the result. Instead, a modern video lens is a precision optical instrument comprised of multiple individual glass elements arranged in groups, all working together