camera/lens for bedroom blogging

Fingers Mcginty

Howdy ,
Looking for some advice
I'm shooting guitar youtube videos in a smallish room and looking for a camera/lens recommendation. I already had a canon eos 200D and heard that the 24mm 2.8 f stop pancake lens would be suitable but because of the smaller cropped sensor i was too zoomed in and couldn't get myself plus the guitar in the frame with the blurry background effect going on (which is a must)
There is 3 feet between me and the camera with only 8 feet behind me.
I'm looking for a camera/lens setup that would suit my needs
Thanks

CelticRambler

Short answer: can't be done. :cool:

The advice you received was about as correct as you're going to get. If you're looking for a "whole body" shot from a camera placed only 1m away from you, then you'll need a shorter focal length than 24mm, but (without getting too pedantic about it) the shorter you go, the larger the depth of field, meaning more and more of the background comes into focus (or rather will be less out-of-focus). Added to this, you'll get more and more distortion of yourself and the guitar.

It sounds to me like you really need a two-camera set-up if you want your head in the shot too - or re-shoot the talkie bits.

Thirdfox

Or just a camera phone which has AI filtered bokeh on videography - no idea if they have that for video, they do "fake" bokeh for photos anyway.

Physically as mentioned above it can't be done.

Fingers Mcginty

what about a sigma 16 mm with f stop of 1.4 ?

CelticRambler

Still the same optics. These are "landscape" lenses, so usually focused on some interesting feature up close knowing that just about everything in the background will be in "good enough" focus too, right back to the nearest mountain. By opening up the aperture, all you're going to get is way more light than is good for a video's shutter speed (and you'll be able to see what's in all the shadows behind you too).

You can get a feel for how impossible this is by looking at any skype/zoom/whatever web-cam interview - the backgrounds are all in focus, because webcams/phones typically use short-focal-length lenses. The "easy" fix in this case is to change your background and/or get creative with lighting; the optics of these short lenses are just wrong for what you're trying to do.

Adrian.Sadlier

Fingers Mcginty wrote: »

what about a sigma 16 mm with f stop of 1.4 ?

This will yield a depth of field of (in focus) of only 21cm at f/1.4, 1 metre subject distance. That won't get the guitar and your face both in focus. Stopping down to f/2.8 will give you double that which should work. You will not get a bokeh affect with a ultra-wide angle lens. However, if you light yourself (say from both sides (and not behind you) this might give an acceptable result.

Fingers Mcginty

I've decided to go the cheap skate route and try to get the effect with my android phone. It has a decent camera and I have manual control with the open camera app. I'm able to use the rear facing camera and share the screen wirelessly to my monitor to ensure the frame is setup correctly Hopefully it will yield decent results.

SilentBee

If the room is small, you will need to go wider than 24mm. I suggest a canon M system camera with the 11-22mm which gets you to 16mm equivalent at the widest. Most of the Canon M cameras have selfie screens and mic inputs and can be had at good value second hand. Use the search function here https://pxlmag.com/db/camera-search to filter for mic/focal length/selfie screen.

thedarkroom

Fingers Mcginty wrote: »

Howdy ,
Looking for some advice
I'm shooting guitar youtube videos in a smallish room and looking for a camera/lens recommendation. I already had a canon eos 200D and heard that the 24mm 2.8 f stop pancake lens would be suitable but because of the smaller cropped sensor i was too zoomed in and couldn't get myself plus the guitar in the frame with the blurry background effect going on (which is a must)
There is 3 feet between me and the camera with only 8 feet behind me.
I'm looking for a camera/lens setup that would suit my needs
Thanks

I’m not familiar with Canon equipment but the 200D is a cropped sensor so I think this should work on your camera
https://berminghamcameras.ie/canon-ef-s-10-18mm-f-4.5-5.6-is-stm.html
It’s a 10 to 18mm lens and will definitely give you the coverage you need. However, if you insist on shooting from one metre away and want to get a wide coverage then you cannot about some sort of distortion.
Why do you have to have so much space behind you?
I don’t know how technical you are but sounds like you have some sort of idea, so why not use something like Zoom to record your videos, using it’s greenscreen facility to put in whatever background you want.
You could hang a green backdrop on the wall behind you, move further away from the camera, thus reducing the distortion created by the wide angle. Using the Zoom App and your camera connected to your computer to feed live to it, it should work fine. Zoom could record your tutorial to save to your desktop. I have done it several times to produce tutorials for class and I’m very happy with the results.
With the backdrop about 2.5 metres by 2 metres in size, using a focal length of 18mm on your camera, it would mean that the camera would need to be about about 2 metres away to give a wide shot showing you from the waist up with your guitar. Using the green screen facility on the Zoom app, you could have any background you want behind you while recording, and you can have it as blurred as you want.
If you think that this might be a runner, I can give you a bit more info about how to get it to work.
Failing that, what you are trying to achieve is next to impossible to do without a very expensive lens, extreme wide angle, and distortion because of how close you will be. You won’t get a blurred background optically because, with such a wide angle required, the depth of field will not allow the background to blur to any great effect. Your only option would be to use some sort of electronic intervention to do it, such as available on some mobile phones. I’m not aware of any cameras that can do it or what software might be available to do it when editing. I’m sure there must be something.

thedarkroom

Sorry for the long post, I went on a bit. I hope it’s of some use.

ED E

CelticRambler wrote: »

Short answer: can't be done. :cool:

Disagree.

I zoom weekly on a APS-C body with a combo of lenses but really using a Sigma 18-200 at 24mm which is 38mm odd after the 1.6 crop.

get myself plus the guitar in the frame

The OP doesnt need his toes in. On a FF sensor at 24mm you'd get plenty in for the guitar on twitch style setup. Something like this.

thedarkroom

ED E wrote: »

Disagree.

I zoom weekly on a APS-C body with a combo of lenses but really using a Sigma 18-200 at 24mm which is 38mm odd after the 1.6 crop.



The OP doesnt need his toes in. On a FF sensor at 24mm you'd get plenty in for the guitar on twitch style setup. Something like this.

That looks good and the background is blurred too. What distance was the camera at and how far away the background? The OP had the camera to subject at 1 metre and subject to background at about 2.5m.
I’m not familiar with that lens but I would expect that at 24mm the fastest the lens will open would be about f4 or 4.5. That works well.

Fingers Mcginty

I'm looking at a cano m50 with the sigma prime lens 16mm f 1.4 ... might get me good results hopefully.

Boredstiff666

Canon 17-24mm 2.8 L USM. Would that work?