Techniques for Prime Lens Photography
Zooming with your feet
Beginner Photographers are often told to ‘zoom with your feet’. Even with access to zoom lenses, the ability to move the camera while maintaining a specific angle of view is one of the most important lessons for beginners. But still, many photographers prefer zoom lenses to lighter and optically superior primes.
This article aims to be a catalogue for photographers hesitant to move to prime lens photography, or even simply dipping a toe for the first time. It’s a list of the techniques required to make prime lens photography viable in demanding environments which traditionally cause photographers to reach back for their zooms.
Shooting with two cameras
I apologize for leading with the most expensive suggestion, but shooting with two bodies really is the most effective tool for getting the most out of a prime lens kit. If you shoot weddings, events, live music, or any settings where the action cannot be repeated another day- you need two cameras anyway. It can be tempting to invest your entire budget into the best camera possible, but cameras fail. They get dropped, worst-case scenario they get stolen.
The upshot is that you need two cameras anyway, and two bodies of roughly equivalent specs will provide more advantages than one highly capable camera and a backup that lives in your car (Could you shoot a full wedding on a Nikon D70? This was the only backup I brought with me for years into my career).
I don’t believe you need two identical bodies, and have taken advantage of the ability to use cameras with complementary specs. For my use case, an A7 and A7R series in combination provide good hybrid shooting capacity on one body, and a great megapixel count on the other.
I have previously used an A9 and A7R3, which gave options for speed and crops depending on which body paired with which lens. Some will argue that you need two identical bodies to form muscle memory, but at the current rate I’m forming muscle memory around a new body or two every 2–3 years anyway, and that’s been no issue.
Once you’ve picked your bodies, you’ll need a way to comfortably carry them. The industry standard for wedding photographers is the Holdfast Moneymaker, which has a standout look and a secure attachment for two bodies.
Personally, I wasn’t a fan of carrying around a harness before each shoot. All it took was another photographer mentioning how the slack in their harness had slammed a 24–70 into the corner of a table, for me to look elsewhere. I settled on the Spiderholster, a tiny belt clip that accepts a nubbin threaded into my cameras. Provided you don’t mind holding your cameras without a strap or harness, I find it holds my camera close and secure, while giving absolute freedom once it’s loose.
Crop crop crop crop crop
The worst photography advice I have ever received came in the form of a compliment. “You would never have to crop,” said a client who probably delayed my compositional improvements by about a year.
Zoom lenses crop inherently. A photographer has to learn not to rely on the convenient crop, and to use the zoom function as easy access to a range of focal lengths and their relevant perspective compression or distortion.
Prime lens users have to crop, both in order to gain back a fraction of the flexibility of zoom lenses, and to fully realize a composition that we very rarely nail perfectly at the time of capture.
Are you crop-averse? Seeing as I was for years, the arguments come ready-to-hand. You’ll lose megapixels, but ultimately megapixels are overrated. Larger-than-life-size prints have been made from cropped 12mp shots on my Nikon D700. The largest images I have ever been printed are significant crops from the APS-C Fujifilm Xt-3. You reduce the relative size of your sensor. So? Spend a year using a Fujifilm APS-C sensor and you’ll never begrudge cropped full-frame images again.
What prime lens shooters may lose in megapixels, their lenses more than makeup for in superior optics. Unless you’re truly at the precipice of your megapixel count, some of those pixels will be summed to improve sharpness in the print. But prime lenses, which are already sharper than zooms, don’t need this advantage.
Sony cameras have an APS-C crop mode which can be assigned to a custom button. It generates a raw file that is lower megapixel but otherwise identical to the other files (18mp on my A7Riii, 10mp on my A9). You can just crop the regular files, yes, but there’s something to be said about baking your intention into the file. And the fact that these files take up less space on your card is an additional bonus.
The photomerge/stitch
Like cropping, the photomerge technique is available to zoom and prime shooters. But it’s prime shooters who will find it most advantageous. By shooting a few additional frames on either end of your subject, you can combine shots and create a larger canvas. Not only will the resultant shot be wider, but you keep all of the advantages of your longer lens, and increase your megapixel count.
Think of the stitch as the opposite of cropping- you add megapixels, and end up with the depth of field rendering of a much faster lens (35mm f/1.0 anyone? Just stitch three portrait orientation shots on your 50mm 1.4).
This is the function behind the brenizer method, but I stole it from conceptual self-portrait photographers like David Talley and Sarah Ann Loreth. When I discovered these photographers in 2011, it was common to only be able to afford, say, a 50mm 1.4, and so it became common to build out a scene using multiple shots.
Lightroom makes stitching really easy. The lightroom panorama function merges automatically, and renders a DNG that can be edited in the same way as the rest of your shots. You will have to pay attention to movement across your frames and overlap. I aim to keep my primary subject in the initial frame if possible and to overlap at least 30% between frames.
Judicious lens collection
This is coming from someone who has spoken out against Gear Acquisition Syndrome. But the reality is that a prime shooter will have to have at least twice as many lenses as a zoom shooter to cover an approximation of equivalent focal lengths.
It has become popular for wedding photographers to rely exclusively on a 35mm and 85mm duet. The advantages of never changing lenses easily combat the minor limitations of a medium-wide and medium-tele combo.
I have never loved 35mm, and feel much more at home with a 50mm, which presents a few issues. 50mm and 85mm (or longer) leaves no wiggle room in tight spaces, whereas 24mm and 50mm has similar issues at the other end. In the last year I set myself a challenge to never use my 50mm during music and events shoots: Relying on the 24mm 1.4 GM and the 85mm 1.8. With enough megapixels the 24mm was suitable all the way up to an emergency 50mm equivalent crop, and the 85mm would function as a 135mm using the aps-c crop mode. I’ve never felt the need to go longer than 135mm, as I can almost always get closer to my subject if I need to.
The reality of shooting with primes is that you will be changing lenses, so it makes sense to take advantage of this. Shoot at wide apertures, enjoy the light compactness of your lenses (Hopefully you didn’t buy Sigma arts.), and get used to changing lenses frequently. Some of the most fun you’ll have using prime lens is in the way they force you to strategise and make compromises.
Shooting an awards event and only have a 50mm? You’ll be moving back and forward a lot, but you’ll never be out of earshot from your subject. I’ve had clients rebook because hearing me clearly communicate with the subject up on stage made them feel confident that I was getting the shot.
Why shoot primes in the first place?
Thus far I’ve detailed tricks for how to make prime lenses function as efficiently as zooms, but modern zoom lenses have come a long way, and you may wonder whether prime lenses are worth any sort of hassle.
My bias is hard to reconcile here. I have never used zooms throughout my career, and on the occasion that I use one it can feel as alien as primes can for the first time user. However, personal preference notwithstanding, I still believe there are advantages which make prime lens photography worthwhile, and will detail these for different points in your journey.
For Beginners: Lenses can quickly swallow your photography budget, and early on you will probably find yourself looking at either lower-quality zooms, or equivalently priced prime lenses. The temptation to have every based covered is strong, but I’m here as a professional photographer to tell you that coverage for every single focal length is far less important than it may seem. You may find that learning just a single focal length at a time gives you the room to really hone in and master a lens before looking elsewhere. And once you fully understand, say a 50mm or 35mm lens, you may well realise you don’t need much else.
For Intermediate photographers: You already have a zoom lens or two, and perhaps are looking to upgrade to fancy f/2.8 glass. You may even already own and ignore a nifty fifty, on which you love the shallow depth of field, but find the focal length limiting.
I won’t tell you not to get the next lens you’ve been eye-ing, but I do think this is a great time to thriftily explore some of the things which zooms can’t do: If you can’t get wide enough, a 20mm f/2.8 will give you a unique angle your 24–70 still won’t cover, or a 24mm f2 or f/2.8 will provide less distortion and better sharpness in a more compelling form factor. If you find yourself wishing you could get closer, an 85mm 1.8 will provide unreal bokeh and reach still beyond that 24–70, at a fraction of the price.
If you’re lusting after that 70–200 but can’t justify it, you may well find a third party 135mm will give you everything you need. At this level, your kit zooms are probably feeling pretty limiting: A well-priced prime lens or two can give you a glimpse of performance not just up with, but in many cases better than multi-thousand dollar zooms.
For pros: When you’ve already got real money invested in great glass it’s hard to justify any further investment. For anyone at this level I recommend primes not as an upgrade but a challenge. Finding the art in what we do becomes a real challenge when you’re shooting every single day, and creative limitations can become a source for inspiration. Depending on your style, I again recommend starting with just one lens. A helios if you’re into artistic portraiture, perhaps a 14mm if you’re looking for a new perspective, or a fast, fast 50mm if you want to see what the best of lens design can resolve.
