Hello everyone, I'm new here so forgive me if this question is in the wrong section. I own a Canon 250D DSLR. I want to shoot video in my campervan. It's a very small space. I have roughly 4 feet of space in front of me to set up my camera. It's just under 6ft wide I need a wide angle lens that will capture from side to side and from my head to the waist as I play an Instrument. I also want a blurred background. What lens would you suggest? Thanks in advance
Welcome Ritchie to the forum. You have two choices, use a fisheye lens or choice two is a 28mm with a 0.45x lens which is a scew on filter. The fish eye lens is a more expensive option but better quality for your video , where as a 28mm lens would be cheaper and more commonly available . The 0.45x lens is also freely available, I have a varity of them, l puchased at OP shops. The draw-back with this option is some people do not like using the extra glass with the two screwed together but I have had no issues with this setup as I use 720P video which is suitable for you tube, etc.
I would suggest something like this....... Canon EF-S 10-18 mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM review - Introduction - LensTip.com I am not sure what sort of money you wish to spend, so I am unsure if this would fit into your budget. I had a quick look at this review, and it seems to be a pretty good lens. Not sure that you are going to get that with a wide angle lens. But have a play around, and see how you get on. Gary
I mean there are options for a fast lens like a 16-35 2,8 but they are not cheap at all. My rokinon is a 14mm 2.8 but its fixed length and manual focus, if you know exactly what mm fits your van setup something like that may be an option to explore....You may need a fixed lens to get the 2.8 need to blur the background. Gary is also on point that 10-22 would be a good pair with that camera and a bit more versatile if you need to adjust the crop of the video your shooting. Who knows you may end up with nice wide zoom for most things and finding a fast wide lens for specific video.
Thank you for all your replies. I already have a canon EFS 10 - 18mm lens. Yes I think this lens will work fine for the small space in the campervan, but the problem is I can't get a blurry background with this lens. Would I need a brand new lens or is there any way I could get a blurry background with this lens
I was looking on youtube at this lens. Does anyone have it? I can get the blurry background with the f2.8 What are your thoughts? Thank you in advance for your help Richie
which lens are you looking at specifically? you said "this lens" but did not list a specific lens, there are hundreds of lenses which are 2.8. To your question, the blurry background is created by shallow depth of field, the term is called BOKEH, different lenses create it better than others, but it is also very mathematical ... That said the simple answer is you not only need a lens that can be shot wide but you need to shoot at a wide aperture. Regardless of the lens you have which your using f2 with be blurrier than f4, which is blurrier than f8 etc. Here is the difference on 14mm lens 1 meter away, f2.8 has about .5meter sharp window, shooting wide open at 4.5 on your 10-22 will have a 1 meter sharp window before getting blurry. You will get some effect shooting the lens wide open, but you will need a wider aperture to increase the effect. It may prove difficult in a very small area to get the effect your looking for. This effect is also easier with longer lenses where you can shoot them further away from the background behind them This would be 85mm @ 2.8 shot 3 meters away, as you can see the dof is extremely shallow and anything a meter behind the subject would be very blurry. You may need to explore, what you can get with your existing lenses and then what lens you can fit in your van and get an acceptable crop, keep in mind each lens has a distance which is the minimum from subject which it will focus. I doubt you could get to 30m in your van and have a crop you would like, and I can promise you by the time you hit 50mm you won't be able to get anything but a head shot. I would try 10mm @4.5 and 22mm at 4.5 in your van and share the results, we can probably suggest whats possible.
I would suggest reading up on depth of field, you can also google for a depth of field calculator to play with numbers of the settings in camera like i provided above.
Thank you very much for all the info. I don't have a clue what it all means but I will now go and do some in depth research on this and come back to your info you provided. Very helpful thanks. The lens I forgot to mention was the Tokina atx-i 11-16mm f/2.8. I'm not sure if it will work with my Canon SL2 camera. So when you say "I would try 10mm @4.5 and 22mm at 4.5 in your van and share the results, we can probably suggest whats possible." Do you mean I should buy this lens Canon EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 USM I'm a total novice with all of this so thank you for your help
Nope, I misspoke i was thinking it was the 10-22, i forgot there were two of these similar lenses. ( I do not own any EF-S lenses) Do not rush to buy a lens. The 10-22 would be a very slight upgrade to the 10-18 in the respect it can go as wide as 3.5, but you need to play with the calculator and get a feel for what is happening with the bokeh. I suggested you shoot wide open on what you have and see how close you can get to your desired outcome. See what mm works best for you. For example, If the 18mm end works well you may have options faster than 2.8, at 20mm and 24mm you get into options that more like f1.8. That tokina, seems like an pretty nice upgrade to the existing lens you have though, 2.8 may or may not have enough bokeh for your what your looking for, but it will surely be better than f4.5 on your existing lens.
