A Gaggle Of Prime Lenses
Where do you want to stand?
In a galaxy far, far away…
Sorry, that Star Wars opening was the first thing that came to my mind when thinking about my first interchangeable lens and the camera that came with it. Or is that the other way around? Why that phrase? I don’t quite know but it has something to do with how long ago that was and that the first Star Wars was released the same year as that first camera/lens combo came into my possession.
For a very long time that one lens, the normal lens as everyone called it, was my only lens. On 35mm film cameras that bundled “kit lens” was almost always a 50mm. In many ways I’m glad for the years I spent with the constraint of one focal length. That constraint taught me many things far before I could articulate them with the correct photographic vocabulary. The most important thing is how important it was to choose where you stand in relation to the subject you are attempting to portray. I’ll venture that where you choose to stand is the most important choice you make with a close second being when to release the shutter.
At first, the choice of where I stood had everything to do with framing the subject. Hard lessons to learn because framing dictates the endless choices of composition. Without realizing it I somehow started to notice what is referred to as perspective. Perspective is tricky to work out on your own with one lens. That critical aspect of the relative size of things changes entirely based on where one stands. I think that notion of perspective made me slowly understand wide-angle lenses and telephoto lenses far before I obtained either.
I don’t remember when the light bulb turned on but I do remember pondering why prints I made of the same “framing” looked way different depending on if I stood closer than when I stood farther away and cropped the enlargement to get the same framing. I noticed it on portraits first.
Slowly I became aware choosing where you stand first, then choosing the framing was super important. My next purchase was a 135mm so my tight portraits didn’t need to be cropped like they did when I used my 50mm. My next lens a few years later was a 28mm. That 28mm was a bear, it took me a very long time to figure out how to use it. Fast forward a decade and I finally learned that the closer you are to a subject the faster everything changes with tiny changes in where you stand, camera angle, and relationships between foreground and background.
When a zoom lens is attached to the front of my camera I tend to treat it as a bunch of primes. I still choose where I want to stand first then choose the focal length. This might sound like what everyone does. In reality I see many photographers choose the zoom setting based entirely on where they happen to be standing. It’s a very different mentality resulting in very different pictures.
The mini-project I’m working on now (working title = Water Colors) has everything to do with where I choose to stand. The gradients of light on the water, the intersection, and the arrangement of objects within that gradient, all of it changes wildly a step or two in either direction and just as much if I stand, sit, or lay down.
As I narrow down the aesthetic, color palette, and level of abstraction I’ve been experimenting with the best focal length to carry with me for overall visual cohesion as I collect images and refine what the overall project will look like when I finish this fall. I’ve ventured out with 35mm, 50mm, and 75mm equivalent fields of view. I’ve almost settled on the 75mm field of view (speaking in terms of 35mm full-frame) but just to be sure I decided to take my trusty and very versatile 105mm f4L out for a spin.
The opportunity for framing with any of the wides was extremely limited based on framing and the huge number of things to arrange in the frame. I am glad I experimented a little bit as the 24mm angle of view gave me some ideas related to this project and the possibility of extending the concept but truthfully to pursue those visuals I’m going to need to be in a boat.
My trusty, do anything 50mm would work. Even so, a very short tele like 75mm seems to be the perfect framing for all of the places I was choosing to stand.
The 100 to 105 was just too tight and gave fewer opportunities than even the wides which surprised me. You may ask, why not just bring the zoom, choose where to stand, and frame away... I am looking for a very cohesive visual aesthetic for my target of 20 photographs and at this point the way I am looking at the project I think I may want a very similar perspective and geometry in what ends up in my final selections. Looking at it another way I am also limiting where I can stand and the size relationships of things in the frame.
This project is weird for me as I can usually choose my perspective and where I stand arbitrarily. Here I must choose based on the light, the sky, and a fixed arrangement of “stuff” I cannot move. I see and talk to many photographers that primarily shoot landscapes and use a zoom based on where they are standing instead of figuring out where they want to stand and then choosing the framing. Is that a habit based on merely having a zoom? It may sound the same but in practice, it is very different and produces very different results.
I don’t know how many of you use primes vs zooms but in either case, choosing where you stand first may be an eye-opener if you’ve not approached subjects that way before.