Fraser Speirs Cocoa and Photos

The Second Step in Photography

There has been a lot of talk on various blogs about new photographers’ next steps. Most comments surround the (many) virtues of the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens. John Gruber, Dan Benjamin and James Duncan Davidson kicked it off on an episode of The Talk Show. Recently, Bill Bumgarner chimed in about his newly-acquired 50mm lens.

I Twittered up a minor storm a while back by saying:

I don’t fetishize the 50mm lens. It’s often too long on APS-C sensors.

I don’t decry the points that anyone made about choosing the 50mm lens as a first additional lens for a new photographer. John Gruber’s characterisation of this lens as “the best deal in photography” is perfectly appropriate. It is by far the cheapest route into the sub-f/3.5 lenses. It’s wonderfully small, light and sharp. I still own one myself and it was, indeed, my first additional lens.

There are two parts to most discussions about this lens: its fast aperture and the fact that it is a prime lens. Now, don’t get me wrong, I adore my prime lens kit of the 50mm f/1.8, the 85mm f/1.8 and the 100mm f/2.8 Macro. I’m not anti-prime lens in any way at all. That’s not the point. The point I want to explore is why people believe and assert that a prime lens will make you a ‘better’ photographer, for some value of ‘better’.

Firstly, lets define “better”. What does it mean to become a better photographer? I’ll develop a positive definition in a moment, but first think about what the difference between the good photographer and the great photographer is not: in the age of autofocus, TTL metering and the various common exposure modes, the difference is not found in a photographer’s deep understanding of which setting to use.

What sets great photography apart from good photography is not the technical at all, it is nothing more or less than the impact of the photograph on the viewer. Technical mastery of the camera merely separates the acceptable from the unacceptable, and could even be argued to be orthogonal to the impact of the photograph.

That said, why advocate prime lenses for beginning photographers?

Modern cameras provide several axes of fiddling - shutter, aperture, ISO and zoom setting are just the Big Four - and a prime lens teaches the new photographer that one can indeed produce excellent photographs without having to consider every one of these axes for every shot. By mounting a fixed lens, you remove one axis of fiddling - the focal length to use. To take this line of thought a step further, consider making heavy use of your camera’s Program mode. Then, all you have is your camera position and your sense of timing to play with. That’s really stripping photography back to its beating heart.

What the prime lens really teaches you is this: constraints lead to creativity. There is much more to think about in photography than just shutter/aperture/ISO/zoom. Instead think about where you put the camera. How near do you go, how high or low? How are you arranging the elements of the picture to communicate with the viewer?

Where I differ from some photographic commentators is the noble notion that whatever was good enough for Robert Capa or Cartier-Bresson should be good enough for you and I. I strongly disagree with any claim along the line that prime lenses are somehow a purer expression of photography than zoom lenses. Yes, we all love elegant equipment and, heaven knows, the Leica M8 is burning a hole in my heart right now. However, the existence of historically important photographs taken with prime lenses only serves to disprove the counter-claim that zoom lenses are a necessary precondition to good photographs. It doesn’t prove anything much about the virtues of prime lenses.

My own opinion is that learning to handle an ultra-wide-angle lens in the 10-25mm range is an even better photographic education than a prime lens, but that’s another post for another time.

I have to agree with you… the 50mm is a bit long for a digital sensor - somewhere around 75-80mm isn’t it at that point? Nonetheless, 80mm is getting into perfect portrait range (although, some argue 120mm is the perfect portrait — I say, “what is perfect”?). However, I’ve shot a number of concerts using nothing but the 50mm lens and would say its incredibly versatile given you have the ability to move at will. If you don’t, then its pretty useless as any prime is. There’s pros and cons to each lens, and your summary applies to pretty much any prime, and I like it.

But I still want a 35mm f/2 or faster. And those are ridiculously expensive, for god knows what reason. Its just different internal dimensions of glass versus the 50 (and maybe an extra piece or two)… it can’t cost THAT much more to actually make, and if the camera manufacturers were smart they’d market that as the “Digital 50mm” or somesuch as its “normal” for the newer sizes.

Now if I could only get someone to buy my ebay items so I can afford the D300 ….

Sigma makes a relatively affordable, APS-C sized 30 mm f/1.4 that many people like. It’s probably the closest to a “digital 50″ as you can get. I haven’t bought one, but I do often bring my Nikon D50 with its 50/1.8 along as my only lens, and it works nicely. On the other hand, if I have good light, an 18-135 zoom comes in very handy too.

I’d argue that fast prime lenses like the 50s teach new photographers how to work with shallow depth of field, which helps composing. And learning to compose a picture, and to wait for the right moment, are more important than all the myriad settings.

On the other hand, understanding aperture, shutter speed, focal length, depth of field, sensitivity, and other things so well that you don’t need to think about them lets you make good compositional and timing decisions, and then have the tools to turn them into good images — including knowing when Program mode is most likely to get the results you want.

An interesting post — seen via Daring Fireball — about constraints and photography, since I decided to take a break from digital photography until further notice …

I agree with the idea that restrictions make you more creative. I’m sticking with my 36-year-old medium format Yashica Mat for now, with its fixed 80mm lens (which is about prime for 6×6). Manual everything else, and eyeballing the exposure since the built-in meter is not all that. Photographically speaking, the best decision I’ve made in a long time. No more axes of fiddling (nice term), and reduction of the photographic experience to its literal bare bones.

While I’m eschewing digital entirely, the idea applies just as much to digital photography; I’d drop even program mode. I would stick instead to a chosen ISO (say, 200 or 400), turn off autofocus, set all the controls to manual, ignore the meter. No zoom, no meter: just you, the subject, and the two parameters you can really control: aperture and exposure. I find that the ’sunny 16′ rule works surprisingly well.

And I see your ‘Leica M8 burning a hole in my heart’ and I raise you a ‘Leica MP burning a hole in my bank account.’

“constraints lead to creativity”. Indeed. Using a prime is a fine idea: it makes one to go ‘zoom with your feet’. Personally I’ve never had much with all those options (axes of fiddling) in the first place, but then again I still use slides in my Contax. And this almost exclusively with the f1.4/50 or f1.4/85 Zeiss primes, in Aperture priority mode (another axes of fiddling removed). ‘Pry from dead, cold…’ & all that jazz.

As to hole-burning things combined with the mentioned educative 10-25mm range: God only knows how much just thinking about a Carl Zeiss Distagon f2.8/21mm is tormenting me…

Rubbish. Technical skill isn’t what separates acceptable from unacceptable, it’s what separates good from breathtaking. How can you ever hope to learn anything in program mode? Moving from one shooting situation to the next, you have no way of guessing what combo the program is going to choose, or if that combination of factors is really appropriate to the image you want to make. When you look at something you shot in program, how can you judge your success? One shot may have come out brilliant, but it was pure dumb luck that got you there, and you wouldn’t be able to reproduce that luck if you wanted to, without reading the EXIF data and then manually setting your camera to the same the next time you were in the same shooting conditions and desiring the same effect.

Program mode? Sorry, I don’t agree. If you want to strip photography back to its beating heart then make a pinhole camera or something.

But yeah, constraints definitely do lead to creativity.

Agree completely. At a digital photography forum where I participate, we’re running a challenge this month (about 40 participants): Only use one prime lens for the entire month. I saw the opportunity to use my recently-acquired 135 mm prime, and it has been a great learning experience.

In one way, it lets me worry less about focal length and focus on the basic composition. In another way, it forces me to select my subjects more carefully, and think about the best way to approach it with my particular FoV. Highly recommended!

@ChuckEye: my point, which I may not have made clearly enough, is that technical excellence may be a necessary condition for great results, but it is certainly not a sufficient condition.

I haven’t shot with a 50mm in a long time… I have an M3, but only 35mm and 90mm lenses! I AGREE about using the wide angle… it really forces you to work and develop your compositional skill, much more so than a normal or zoom. And yes, program mode could be a good way to work on composition, but I think drawing would be better! Sketch a little, here and there. Then take some pictures of it. Or take pictures and sketch them, or sketch famous pictures. Or keep the two separate… whichever way, it can only help your sense of composition.

But photography is about LIGHT, and since that is your medium, I’m not a fan of program mode. If you learn apreture and shutter speeds, you will be MUCH better at sensing the light and capturing it in the way you want to. PLUS it slows you down, which I think is a very important aspect of using a prime lens. Take more time with each picture and you will better understand your process, what you need to do to take the pictures you want to take.

And I’ll third that Leica burning something business… and raise y’all a 50mm noctilux.

I also have to disagree about program mode. If that’s what you’re going to do, why not just use a digicam? To me, the point of using a fast prime (which is about all I use - one that no one has mentioned is the Canon 100mm 2.0 - my favorite protrait lens of all time) is that it enables you to start thinking of photographs in three dimensions: not just what will be included in the frame, but how the objects in the frame “stack up”. Program mode prevents this. I’m all for simplifying as much as possible, but frankly this requires giving up too much…

Prime lenses have their place, but you’re absolutely wrong when you say that by removing the zoom ring “you remove one axis of fiddling.”

You don’t remove the axis of fiddling at all: you just move it down to your legs, where’s it’s VASTLY less convenient to fiddle. Now instead of turning the barrel, you have to move forward, watching where you step, asking people to move, or shoving aside security to get to the front.

A lot of people here (and on DF and other linking blogs) seem to be enamored with primes because they’re more “basic” than zooms. I don’t know of a single professional photographer I’ve talked to who agrees. The photogs I know who shoot mostly with primes tend to be portrait or landscape shooters who do so because, generally speaking, primes are sharper. But try and find a documentary photographer or photojournalist who only uses primes.

Primes and zooms both have their place. A person might get a few great shots with the $50 f/1.8 (which is, I agree, a fantastic lens at a fantastic price; the Nikon equivalent is basically the same), but there are hundreds or scenarios in which a wide-range zoom will get amazing shots that the photog carrying only a 50mm prime will never have a chance at.

I love the colorful and crisp shots I’ve gotten with my Nikon 50mm f/1.8, but I never leave home without my 18-200mm, either.

I started photography with a 10D, a 24-85. I picked up a couple zooms. I used the “green mode”, then I started experimenting with aperture-priority mode. I got a 50 1.8 prime. Updated that to a 50 1.4. Picked up a 5D. Bought a 35 1.4L.

And now I find myself shooting exclusively with the 35 and 50. The “foot-zooming” doesn’t bother me one bit. And because I have shot thousands of pictures with the 35L, I now have a instinctive feel for the compostion before I even raise the camera to my face. I can see a picture develop in my head, and I move to the precise spot where I need to be, raise the camera to my eye, compose it and fire.

I find shooting with primes to be superior to using zooms. I think less about fiddling with doohickeys and whatnots, and more about taking the picture.

And now I have this desire to strip away even more. I bought a cheapo Seagull which I totally winged it with. Manually setting everything. Eyeball the exposure. Shoot, smile and hope for the best.

I realize what I have may not work for everyone, but it works for me.

“You don’t remove the axis of fiddling at all: you just move it down to your legs, where’s it’s VASTLY less convenient to fiddle. Now instead of turning the barrel, you have to move forward, watching where you step, asking people to move, or shoving aside security to get to the front.”

I’m not sure if it’s “less convenient”. I find it more convenient, because it frees up my fingers to use on the focus ring or aperture. It’s inconvenient having to multitask with the zoom ring. It comes almost subconsciously when moved down to the legs.

Whether or not it’s more convenient, zooming with the legs is in many ways superior. When you just “turn the ring” - it’s just like cropping the photo. You don’t alter perspective, or the relationship of the subjects in space. If you lazily just turn the zoom, without moving with your feet, you are missing out on many options to improve the picture.

Moral of the story - even with a zoom lens, you should be using your legs. So, where’s the added inconvenience? A zoom means you have to use your legs and fingers for composition, with a prime, it’s just the legs.

A lot of people here (and on DF and other linking blogs) seem to be enamored with primes because they’re more “basic” than zooms. I don’t know of a single professional photographer I’ve talked to who agrees.

Well, I’m a professional. My main love for primes is the wide aperture. I do a lot of low-light performance photography, so I need every stop I can get.

But the “simplicity” or “basicness” of the zoom is another important factor. It makes them better optically - fewer lens elements to distort the image. In my work, I haven’t used a zoom lens for a number of years.

Followed via DF and JDD… hello from Redmond

I don’t subscribe to the notion that zooming in-and-of-itself somehow makes for a worse photo or worse photographer. I think that prime lenses are simply better all around because (like JDD says) the larger aperture lets you do things that you just can’t fake, or change by moving. If there was such thing as a 24-80 f/1.8 lens that was as sharp at every focal length as the primes it replaced, then I would be willing to sell all my wide/medium primes and buy one. But that lens won’t, doesn’t and can’t exist, so the primes will still fill that need.

I also strongly agree with the posters that feel Program mode is a waste of time. Yes, it lets you forget about things and play point-and-shoot. It’s a nice way to get familiar with what effects settings will have on things, but I can’t think of any reason to recommend someone use it over aperture priority, especially if they care about really learning. Removing things to worry about, whether ISO, aperture, or shutter speed, doesn’t make those parameters go away, it just means the camera is doing it for you, and you’re not in control.

50mm is the perfect portrait lens for me on my 350D

My son turns one in just over week and I have been furiously snapping flash free portraits all year.

In the last twelve months I have probably removed my 50mm 1.4 about 4 times. 98% were shot with aperture priority.

I say “keep it simple stupid” is a great approach to learning photography.

This like people who say they write better css with TextEdit. It’s techno snobbery, nothing more.

I love it, everywhere these issues pop up opinion flames heat up.

I have a great collection of lenses, both primes and zooms and each has its place. There is no perfect single lens and neither primes nor zooms are best.

I’ve watched the 50mm meme fly around the web the past few weeks, mostly having to do with the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens which costs about $70 US. No doubt hundreds of people went out and bought this lens without realizing that to make use of what most like about it means turning the mode dial on their DSLR to Av so they can control aperture and open it up. On Auto or P this lens may be sharper than a cheap zoom but so what? The effect that people like is subject isolation because of shallow depth of field and bokeh, not just the 50mm field of view or possible sharpness of the prime.

Those of you who are reading this who want this effect: shallow depth of field for subject isolation, may make the mistake of thinking that the only way to get it is to have a fast lens and the most affordable fast lenses are primes. The geometry of the setup relative to focal length and aperture contributes as much to this effect as aperture alone. One can produce as much blur with a 300mm f/4 lens than a 50mm f/1.8 or even a 50mm f/1.2 L if the shot is set up right.

What all of this boils down to is people taking the time to learn a bit more about their equipment and about photography. There’s no right way to do it, no set of knowledge that every photographer should have, and no single lens or type of lens that’s best. However, setting the camera on P, in my opinion, may be a good way to take certain kinds of images but not the kinds of images that the fast 50mm prime lens meme comes with.

Photographers with some experience and skill can make do with almost any equipment. Photographers without much experience and skill may think getting a new fast 50mm lens will help, but in fact it’s the new lens coupled with setting the mode dial to Av that’s going to make the difference. Once you realize this you might be able to make do without the new lens and just turn the mode dial to Av and try this technique with the equipment you have.

Peace.

I have always preferred my 35mm f2 lens it is an Olympus zuiko on my OM4Ti. followed closely by the 28mm 2.8. the reason i love it is that it is fixed and forces you to move around and make choices before you shoot, I can almost guess the crop before I put it to my eye as I am so used to the field of view. The other reason and this was always true of Bresson and my favourite and most underrated photographer Tony Ray Jones ( he was my hero at college until his sad demise from leukeamia ) The slightly wider angle forces you closer to your subject so that the viewer of your images feels more a part of the image. the perspective is also better as I feel it keeps the relationship more in proportion between subject and background.

with the wider angle lens for candid work you can set the lens to the hyperfocal distance and be ready for almost anything.

any equipment is only as good as the eye and brain behind it,

I remember everybody rushing out to buy a Leica when they first saw Bresson,

Use what you have and make it work.

But above all - Enjoy it

just my ten cents worth

Gary

Just my $.02. I do quite some concert and available light photography. My absolute favorite lens is a 50mm f1.4 on a 20+ year old Minolta body. It is a haptic experience, and I did tons of my best b/w shots with it.
OTOH, while for my DSLR another 50mm f1.4 lens is decent, it is hard to focus manually (especially in dark situations), feels far less precise than the old version and combined with the DSLR 1.5 crop factor it rarely is the focal lenght I need.
Looking at my EXIF data, I do most of my DSLR concert shots either with an 50mm equivalent, with an 120mm or an 200mm equivalent.

And I don’t agree with the “Use program mode” statement.
Learning photography involves learning how to create reproducible results, and the automatic mode distracts from that. Sports photography? OK, the critical factor is shutter speed - short enough for an crisp image, long enough for motion blur. Portrait? Critical factor is usually depth of field. Enough for the person to be crisp, few enough to have a blurred background. (And yes, most times I break “ususal” rules, but then it is intentional).

Regards,
Tom_E

I don’t think Capa or Cartier-Bresson had only one fixed-length lens, and I think the proposition (fixed vs. zoom) is a false dichotomy. People use zoom lenses in still cameras for these overwhelming reasons: they are a convenient and fast way to change focal length, and they are cheap. Only occasionally do they offer a unique, artistic possibility. Because the emphasis is on flexibility, they also (with very few, or no, exceptions) tend to produce lesser image quality. But image quality is only one factor in image-making.

What fixed lenses do is allow you to have more cognitive control over depth of field. If you take away a zoom lens and attach a fixed lens, you’re not taking away one component of “fiddling”, you’re simply slowing it down. You choose a specific fixed lens based on its light-capturing abilities - aperture and depth of field - which are actually a level of complexity ABOVE the “fiddling” with the zoom lens (unless you REALLY know what you’re doing).

The great photography of the late 19th and early 20th century involved fixed lenses (only) on large format (4 x 5 or larger) cameras. Each shot was deliberate, in part because the camera was so large, the lens choice critical, and the medium expensive. The mid-20th century brought high quality images to light, portable cameras with small-format film, and a different kind of photography resulted.

Decide what kind of photos you wish to make, or experiment with the possibilities. But don’t make the decision based on the equipment you use - make the decision of what equipment to use based on what you’d like to create.

JohnM. Amen brother.