Zoom or Prime Lenses

If you are taking photographs using a camera with interchangeable lenses than you will be making various decisions about what lens to use. Why not take a look at my previous photography post on Focal Length of Lenses.

This post will quickly discuss why you might choose a zoom lens or a prime lens for you photography.

- What is a Prime Lens?

• Prime Lenses have only one focal length.
• They come in many many different focal lengths (i.e. 20mm, 50mm, 100mm and so on.)
• You cannot zoom in and out.
• Usually cheaper in relation to quality.

- What is a Zoom Lens?

• A Zoom Lens has a range of focal lengths.
• This means that as you turn the zoom ring it moves through 20mm-100mm (for example).
• This is zooming.
• Zoom Lenses are convenient.
• Its like having many lenses all in one.
• They are a wide angle and telephoto at the same time.

The focal length specification of a prime lens will describe itself as 50mm (one number). A zoom lens will describe it’s focal length as 20mm-100mm (two numbers). In other words, the zoom lens is like many prime lenses in one.

So why would you bother with a prime lens? It sounds restricting.

Zoom lenses are said to be improving in quality but are still regarded as not as good a primes.

Prime Lenses are considered to assist in better quality, sharper and cleaner photographs.

One is designed for a sole purpose and one is multi-tasking.

At university we were all required to use prime lenses and not zoom lenses. There are many reasons for this other than quality. It also makes you think much harder about what you are doing.

Thinking Harder:

Prime Lenses make you think harder. Rather than being able to control your environment by bringing it closer to you or farther away whenever you desire, you are forced to concentrate you energy on a common mode. You have to think harder to plan how you will photography the subject given the circumstances. You choose a certain prime with a certain focal length for a certain purpose and then stick to it.

It also takes  a lot of pressure off you – you do not need to photography everything in sight in 20 different focal lengths. As you cannot zoom in, you don’t!

Thinking more about the process will also get you more in touch with photography as a medium as you learn not to take the photograph for granted. Your input is increased and you final shot is achieved through higher levels of creativity and understanding of how the camera works in relation to your viewpoint, the world and the science of the lens.

There a benefits to zoom lenses of course. Freedom to take one lens with you means you needn’t worry about photographing all sorts of moments and subjects.

Thanks for Reading,

Dan

Focal Length : Quick Lowdown on Lenses

Focal Length (mm) is about how wide or narrow the field of view is and how close the subject appears through the lens.

The shorter the focal length, the wider the angle of view (wide angle). The longer the focal length, the narrower the angle of view (telephoto). That also corresponds with how “zoomed in” the image appears to you. A wide angle appears to be “zoomed out”, and the a telephoto appears “zoomed in”. Simple.

Wide lenses are low in millimeters, i.e. 20(mm). Narrow lenses are high in millimeters, i.e. 200(mm). The range is enormous. 50mm is considered standard and similar to the way the human eye sees.

Physically, Wide angle lenses are short and telephoto lenses are long.  i.e. photographers you see at the side of a football match have massive lens as there are getting close shots of the action from far away. A wide angle lens is very short.

Wide angle lens allow you to stand close to the subject and still maintain a wide view. Telephoto lens bring things closer to you.

Macro Lenses:

Macro Lenses are for close ups. They have a long barrel and can focus on subjects that are extremely close to the lens. They are designed to focus on a small area and capture the object the same size as it appears in real life (ratio 1:1). Macro Lenses are designed for the above so are not so good to use for other photography.

If you are on a budget, you can get lenses that claim to be good at macro photography too! Comparable to most things in life, equipment that is multifunctional is not as good as something specific to one purpose. But thats up to you to decide. Here is an example of a lens with macro capabilities which is also a wide angle lens.

You can also set your compact digital cameras to a macro setting. Turn the dial to the picture of a “flower”. Use it for close ups. Wahey!

Macro lens range from 50mm-200mm. Apply the same theories as explained earlier.

Prime & Zoom Lens:

Just a quick note – Prime lenses are one fixed focal length (i.e. 50mm, 80mm or 100mm for example) which means you cannot zoom in and out. Zoom lenses can adjust to many focal lengths, as it can zoom in and out.

Prices of Lenses:

Range from £70 – £10,000+

I have bought a wide angle lens that cost £200 and I use for everyday photography. When I was a student I never paid more than £380 for a lens.

Telephoto lenses that are the very expensive ones.

“Prime lenses” are better quality. You have to pay much more to get better quality out of “zoom lenses”. There will be a post on Prime and Zooms another time!

When you have considered the above you can apply the rule that in general, the more you pay the better the lens. But in the end, you can make great photos with cheap lens too if you are clever and creative.

Lens are tools, like paint brushes. You choose what kind of brush stroke to use, before you apply the paint. You have a rough idea of what you are aiming for and the intent of the brush stroke. Its part of the process for designing the photograph – the perspective. It also has practical uses, so you choose based on physical variables too. Such as, will you be far away from your subject? If you use a zoom lens, you centainly won’t need to think that much… is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Thanks for reading,

Dan Larsson

Packing Your Bag & Things Not To Forget

If you are like me, you don’t like carrying to much. Sometimes I wouldn’t bring my text books to school because they were too heavy – everyone did it – no wonder we were all sharing.

Anyway, First there is a tip that will help you pack in the first place.

Its not always possible, but could you choose only one lens to take with you?  Sometimes it pays to keep things simple. If you are going out to shoot landscapes you don’t need a telescopic/telephoto lens. If you are shooting wildlife, then you won’t want a wide angle lens.

If you packed a wide angle lens and then a parrot arrives and sits on a branch near you, you may just have to let that moment pass and enjoy it with your eyes instead. Sometimes it helps you to focus your skills if you don’t bring a whole arsenal of lenses with you. Its up to you.

So what’s in your bag?

1. Blower (if dust or fluff gets on your lens you can blow it off).
2. Spare Film (in case you need more or bugger up some).
3. Film Containers (to protect the finished films).
4. Cable Release (if shooting in low light)
5. Lens Hood
6. Do you need a Tripod?

That may be all you need. In a well padded bag. Buy one with sections. There are even nice rucksacks now, expensive in some places. Shop around or buy one second hand, its only a bag not your duvet covers.

I was going to put cloth on the list. You need a cloth or piece of kitchen roll too. Its not on the list because I do not want to influence the way in which you clean your lens, that is another matter. I don’t clean lenses out on the field.

I use UV filters (see my UV filter post). This protects the lens. But if rain gets on my filter, I wipe off the droplets and blow any fluff off. That’s safe enough – but lens cleaning is a much more sensitive issue. DO NOT clean lenses with kitchen roll – use a brillo pad (that’s obviously a joke, but you can’t be too careful, so I should state that it is a joke to use brillo pads or kitchen roll to clean lenses.)

When you’re out you might ruin a film or two just by making mistakes. It happened to me a lot during my university course. So take plenty of film.

I used to forget to take the lens cap off when using my rangefinder. You wouldn’t make that mistake with an SLR. See my post on rangefinders.

To stop this I sellotaped a card on the back of my camera saying to TAKE THE LENS CAP OFF! You can do the same for other procedures you are not familiar of. An example for digital users, what about a note that says, “Am I Charged?”

Remember to tear off the flap of the cardboard box the film came in. The flap that has the name of the film and therefore the film speed. On some cameras you can slip it in a neat holder on the back of the camera or “film back”. Then you are reminded what speed to set both: your camera and “light meter” to.

Which brings me to another point. Remember to set the film speed on your light meter. It is easy to forget (if you are forgetful). If you have made this mistake and taken a whole roll of film based on incorrect settings on the light meter, take note of the ISO (film speed) you set it to. There is a way to save that film… potentially. For now I will just give you a link – “PUSH OR PULL” its very complicated.

Don’t forget, if you are bringing a tripod, where is the screw piece? It might be on another camera still and you may end up carrying a heavy tripod out for nothing.

I tend to set up my camera a little before I go out to. Whether that be setting the ISO on my digital camera (and choosing RAW or JPEG), or loading the first film at home. Screw the piece for your tripod into your camera before you leave. I think you do more prep work in Winter!

Good Luck out there.

 

Thanks for reading,

Dan Larsson.

UV Filters : Two Second Tip

What is a UV filter?

Apparently it brings out details that the haze of the sun stops. Its a bit like wearing polarised sun glasses.

Do I need one?

Use them to protect your lens. Once you’ve scratched your lens, you’re buggered. So why take the risk?

The argument is that it will reduce the quality of the final image in some cases. Its true, that if you are going to go to the bother of buying a lens in the first place then spending £30 on a very good B+H UV filter is worth it.

Look at it this way: you buy a nice lens and then stick a crap piece of glass in front of it. Why? Cos you don’t know any better you silly plonker!

If you don’t want to buy a filter the alternative is a lens hood. This is meant to protect from wind, dust, rain and light. It therefore protects the lens, and stops your fingers getting near it too.

If you scratch the filter, you buy another, your down £30, not £300. Sounds good to me.

Remember, before buying, check the size you need (in mm) if you don’t know, google your lens and check the specs.

Thanks for reading,

Dan Larsson

What camera to buy.

What camera should I buy?

Are you a student? If you are, and you know the basics skip 35mm and go straight to photography. The reason is, you’ll need to be finishing you course using  medium format or large format so there’s every reason to get used to it straight away and be confident enough to use large format in you second and final years.

When I was at school I progressed naturally through experimenting with all sorts. This meant I ended up spending enormous amounts of money too.

If I could equip you, I would give you one of the following:

Mamiya 7II, Mamiya RZ67 and, but not just, a half decent DSLR (digital SLR).

Cost: £1000 -£2000 ish.  For the DSR spend around £500-600. If you think that’s expensive, you are right! But you’ve just paint £3000 in tuition fees anyway. Think of it like this: buying two cameras that are half the price but are not as good and then buying a better one at a later date, now you are bankrupt and cant even buy film for the bloody thing.

The bottom line of my advice here is, for best quality use a large negative. In order to match the quality of the large negatives in digital you need to spend a fortune on a camera. More on that another day.

The numbers at the end of the camera models above refer to the size of the negative: 6cm x 7cm. For medium format photography, this is the optimum.

For example, walk into a photo shop with 6×9 negs and you are likely to pay extra. 6×7 is large and to get bigger you should move on to the very different and expensive world of large format. More on neg formats another time, plenty to say, plenty ways to get complicated.

Thus, to conclude, a medium format camera of 6×7 format will set you up for years of timeless (until they ban it, like they ban everything) photography. Its easy, it college-future-proof, its brilliant, top notch quality and nobody can fault it. You can now go out and think about the images rather than the bloody camera.

Thanks for reading,

Dan Larsson.