Exploring Vlogging: Selecting the Best Cameras & Lenses

A Vlogger’s Guide To Camera Lenses

Richard Bennett

Nov 01, 2022• Proven solutions

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The staple of any vlog is the talking headshot, a shot of the speaker talking directly to the audience. You can compose this shot with different kinds of lenses for your interchangeable lens camera.

But which kind of lens is the right lens for you as a vlogger?

In this article, I’m going to help you figure that out.

• Part 1: Three Focal Length Groups: Wide, Standard, Telephoto
• Part 2: Vlogging With Each Focal Length Group
• Part 3: Crop Factor
• Part 4: Focal Length Equivalency Table
• Part 5: Aperture
• Part 6: Vlogging With a Fast Lens
• Part 7: Optical Image Stabilization

Three Focal Length Groups: Wide, Standard, Telephoto

There are three main ranges in focal lengths that camera lenses can be categorized into wide, standard, and telephoto.

Wide-Angle Lens

Wide-angle lenses can “see more.” They allow more of your scene to fit inside your frame. Objects that are closer to the lens appear much bigger while objects that are further away appear even smaller. Perspectives are also enhanced, making close objects and people that just make it into the sides of the frame appear more stretched out. Out of all the other ranges in focal lengths, wide-angle lenses will appear the least zoomed in.

Standard Lens

With standard lenses or normal lenses, you won’t get the stretched out objects or enhanced perspectives that you get from wide-angle lenses. Instead, standard lenses are meant to see scenes as the natural human eye is meant to see them. If you shoot a scene with both a wide-angle lens and a standard lens from the same position, you’ll notice that less of the scene fits into your frame. Standard lenses will appear more zoomed-in than wide-angle lenses, but less zoomed-in than telephoto lenses.

Telephoto Lens

Out of all the other ranges in focal lengths, telephoto lenses will appear the most zoomed in. This can be beneficial for the shooter who wants to get a closer shot of a scene without having to physically be in close proximity to the scene. Objects that are further away in the background also appear larger and closer than they would appear on wide-angle or standard lenses.

Vlogging With Each Focal Length Group

You can get your talking head footage using lenses from any of the three focal length groups. Depending on how you plan to vlog most of the time, though, one of the three focal lengths might be more suitable for you.

When to vlog with a wide-angle lens

Wide-angle lenses are the most commonly used lenses for vlogging. Wide-angle lenses are great when you need to be close to your camera. This might be the case for you if your recording space is small or if you want to film yourself as you hold your camera up with your own hand.

Being close to your camera not only gives you the option to use your camera’s built-in microphone, but it also gives you the option to make use of camera-mounted shotgun microphones.

When to vlog with a standard lens

Standard lenses are great when you have more space to be further away from your camera. The perspectives in your shot will look more natural through a standard lens, making your talking head footage feel more corporate or professional. You’ll also be able to get blurrier backgrounds using a standard lens versus a wide-angle lens.

Being further away from your camera, however, means that you’ll have to use a separate microphone positioned closer to you.

When to vlog with a telephoto lens

As telephoto lenses are even more zoomed in, you’ll need to be even further away from your camera to fit yourself inside your camera frame. Why would any vlogger ever need to be that far away from their camera? One word… teleprompter. If you want or need to stick to a script, you’ll have to be far away enough from your camera that it doesn’t appear like your eyes are scanning left to right. You then close in the distance with a telephoto lens.

In the above video, Marcos Rocha compares different focal lengths for talking head videos. Which focal length range do you like the look of?

Crop Factor

Focal lengths in camera lenses are measured in millimeters. You can vlog yourself handheld with a 24mm lens on a camera with a full-frame sensor (the sensor is the piece of hardware inside your camera that turns the light it receives into a digital image). But if you use a 24mm lens on a camera with a smaller sensor, like an APS-C sensor or even smaller Micro 4/3 sensor, more of you will get cropped out (see below).

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In order to make up for the cropping that occurs, you will need to use a wider lens on cameras with smaller sensors to get the same shot you’d get with a full-frame camera.

Focal Length Equivalency Table

This table shows you the focal lengths needed to achieve the same shot between cameras with different sensor sizes. In order to take a shot as wide as the shot I took of myself with the 24mm lens on my full-frame camera, I would need a 15mm lens on an APS-C sensor camera or a 12mm lens on a micro 4/3 camera.

Aperture

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The next thing to consider when you’re looking for a lens is the aperture, the hole (often adjustable) within the lens that lets light in. Aperture for camera lenses is measured in f-stops (f/1.4, f/1.8, f/2.0) - the smaller the f-stop number, the larger the aperture (bigger hole letting even more light in).

Because larger aperture lenses let more light in, they need a shorter time for cameras to compose an image. This is why larger aperture lenses are also called “fast” lenses.

Fast lenses are more expensive because they cost more to produce. There’s a lot more that goes into them, including larger and higher quality glass elements.

But do you even need a fast lens?

Vlogging With a Fast Lens

Pros of Vlogging With a Fast Lens

• Better low-light performance
• Better autofocus performance
• Better “bokeh” (out-of-focus areas, like your background, having that nice blurry look that you see in a lot of movies)

Cons of Vlogging With a Fast Lens

• More expensive
• Moving subjects more likely to get out of focus when shooting with a large aperture
• Better continuous autofocus performance needed when shooting moving subjects with a large aperture

Optical Image Stabilization

Finally, you’ll have to decide whether or not you want your lens to have built-in optical image stabilization (OIS).

OIS is very beneficial to have on a lens if you’re a vlogger who films mostly handheld footage. Although this technology adds to the price of your lens as well, it can greatly help you to capture smoother footage that may otherwise be shaky. Nikon calls this technology “Vibration Reduction” (VR) for their lenses.

In the above video, you can see how much OIS can help to stabilize your footage. MicBergsma simultaneously compares the footage between two GoPro Hero5 Blacks, one with OIS on and one with OIS off.

If, however, you are shooting most of your vlogs on a tripod, you won’t need a lens with OIS.

Looking for ways to set up your talking-head shot for YouTube with any of these lenses? Check out our post on 4 Ways To Set Up Your Talking-Head Shots For YouTube .

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Video Creation Journey: From Adobe Premiere to YouTube

How Do I Use Adobe Premiere To Upload YouTube Videos?

Benjamin Arango

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Whilst getting the editing and post work just right on any project is what we all aim for, the ultimate aim is for other people to see our creations, and the most popular way to achieve that is YouTube . Chances are, if you are producing video, you will be putting some of it on YouTube at some point, so let’s have a look at the most efficient way to get your work from Premiere to YouTube.

Check if your computer meet the Premiere System Requirements >>

This is a basic tutorial about Adobe Premiere, professional video editing software. However, if video editing is new to you, consider Wondershare Filmora , which is a powerful but easy-to-use tool for users just starting out. Download the free trial version below.

Download Mac Version ](https://tools.techidaily.com/wondershare/filmora/download/ )

How Do I Use Adobe Premiere To Upload YouTube Videos

1. Master Copy

Before exporting your work, it is important to first create a master copy of your project that is ‘as is’, in that it reflects the settings and codecs used in the original footage.

To do this you simply select the sequence within the Timeline or in the Project Panel, and go through the menu tree via File > Export > Media to bring up the export dialogue.

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To create your Master Copy, simply select the first option of ‘Match Sequence Settings’, this exports a file that is of the same quality as your original footage, essentially producing a digital copy of the work for archiving before anything else is done.

With you work safe and secure it is now time to look at ensuring the project is suitable for YouTube. With our sequence selected in the Timeline or Project Panel again, we go through the same File > Export > Media path to bring up the media export dialogue as before.

2. Container

The first option we have to consider is the file format that our finished video needs to be in. Here you should refer to YouTube for its guidelines, whilst they do accept a number of file formats, digging through the YouTube help system to find the settings for highest quality we find that they recommend MPEG4 as the container, using the codec.

We can also see further recommended settings in this screenshot that will be covered later.

The good news is that Premiere automatically selects the appropriate container for us when we select our codec, however it is worth knowing the file type YouTube is expecting just to check yourself.

3. Video Codec

So having established that YouTube recommends the MPEG4 container using the codec, the first option we need to look for in the media export dialogue is to select the appropriate Format.

This is the first drop down in the dialogue box, and in this case we simply select from the list.

Once you select you can check the ‘output name’ field and see that premiere is automatically set the output file to .mp4 which is exactly what we need.

4. Preset

The next field we come to is the ‘Preset’ dropdown menu. This is a major help to most people, as Adobe have very kindly included large numbers of presets to quickly adapt video settings to suit specific uses. They vary depending on the exact version of Premiere you are using, and each format type does have its own list of presets, as we can see has a large number for YouTube, but also has many presets for specific devices (presets for iPad, Kindle, Nook, various other tablets and phones, Vimeo and a host of others) to make getting the right settings that bit easier for us.

It is important here to select the correct preset from the various YouTube options. You want to select the resolution and frame rate that match your source file, for the best results. So, if your source file is 1080p with a frame rate of 29.97 fps then that is the YouTube setting you would select.

Once a preset is selected a summary of the settings is displayed below, normally these will be well suited to your project, however you can fine tune anything you wish by selecting the video or audio tabs at the bottom which give you the chance to adjust each parameter individually. If you do this, you can save these changes as a custom preset by clicking the button at the side of the Preset dropdown menu and simply use it on later projects by selecting it from the list the same as any other, a great time saving tool.

5. Rendering

Once you are satisfied with the settings, either from the Preset alone or if you have adjusted anything yourself, you are nearly ready to render the file and export it.

For YouTube it is recommended you select the ‘Use Maximum Render Quality’ option to maintain the best output you can, it does add time to the render process but if you value the quality of your work it is worthwhile.

Finally you can choose a suitable filename and the destination of the file by clicking on the ‘Output Name’ field.

I normally use a filename that includes the destination medium so I can differentiate between different versions of a project and know which one to upload where, in this case I include ‘youtube’, but if I were planning on uploading clips of the project to vimeo as well for instance there may be a cut of the project with ‘vimeo’ in the name too. The destination is personal preference, because I do use filenames to differentiate versions I can put the various iterations into a single project file, others have folder structures for each type of file , so all YouTube output goes into a single folder and so on, how you organize is entirely dependent on how you work.

Once those are selected clicking ‘Export’ starts the rendering process, and eventually (how long depends on the speed of your computer and the size and type of file involved), you will end up with your YouTube optimized video in the location you chose.

Here I created 4 key frames that let the ‘Animation’ object move around the ‘Demo Text’ Object and finally come to rest below it. Whilst this type of effect does look very effective on screen, such is the ease of use of After Effects it really is just a few minutes work to achieve.

Learn more details about How to add text in Premiere >>

6. Uploading

Now you have your file, the next step is to go to your YouTube account and log in if you need to.

On the top of your homepage on the right is the upload button, selecting that brings up the select file menu as below.

You can either drag your file into the window or click on it to open a standard file browser to locate the desired file, click and the upload will begin. The dropdown underneath allows you to set the video as Public, Unlisted or Private. You can change this at any time once the video is uploaded as well.

This opens the upload progress window, where you can add in a name, description and tags as well as add the video to a playlist or adjust the privacy settings as the video is uploading.

Once the upload as finished, you can do final adjustments to settings and choose a thumbnail for the video. The final step is to click the ‘Publish’ button and your video will be processed and go live.

Benjamin Arango

Benjamin Arango is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Benjamin Arango

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