Prime Time

In the past week, both The Online Photographer and The Talk Show podcast, featuring a discussion with James Duncan Davidson, made the case for using a “normal” fixed focal length or prime lens rather than the ubiquitous zoom lens. You can follow the links to read / hear the detailed arguments.

Normal, fixed focal length lenses (loosely defined as a 50mm lens on a 35mm film or full frame sensor camera your mileage will vary on reduced sensor cameras) offer good speed, usually superior optics when compared to their zoom counterparts and are often genuine bargains. As a lesson in seeing I suspect most everyone new to photography could benefit from such an experiment. I’ve seen far to much photography done by standing in one place and letting the zoom do all the framing.

I would like to add a second variable to the above experiment. If you are new to all this and out shooting landscapes (and if you aren’t then why aren’t you) use a tripod for every shot. Spot weld, super-glue, use the tape of your choice or just use the 1/4 x 20 threaded hole in the bottom of your camera and bolt the camera to three legs.

Combining a fixed focal length lens and a tripod is bound to really slow down your picture taking. Repeatedly setting the tripod, fiddling with the tripod head, framing the scene, fiddling with the tripod head again, framing some more, only to discover that your framing sucks is going to get frustrating.

However, as you lose spontaneity, you gain precision. Eventually, framing will become tighter. Shutter speed becomes less important and depth of field is now yours to control. If little else comes of this, you may (finally) learn to marvel and appreciate the effort and the skills of the folks who use view cameras…