Pros and Cons of Shooting With Prime Lenses

Lens types:

Standard Zoom: These are the most common type of lenses and practically all the kit lenses bundled with cameras fall in this category. The most popular being 18mm-55mm lens, which is good for general purpose photography and is commonly used by amateurs and first time photographers. A few years ago, the quality of these lenses was not good enough and earned a bad name for their manufacturers, realizing this the camera makers started bundling much better versions that gave very decent results.

Zoom: These are long-range lenses, which have longer focal lengths as compared with the standard zoom lenses. The popular lenses are 55mm-250mm, 70mm-300mm and 75mm-300mm. These lens are used by semi professionals and serious photography enthusiasts to shoot animals and birds.

Wide Angle: These lenses are most popular with landscape and nature photographers. The common wide-angle lenses are 10mm-20mm, 12-24mm and 11mm-16mm. Another variant of wide-angle lenses are called fish-eye lenses, that give maximum angle of view and in that process distort the view in a circular fashion.

All the above lens types are used by amateurs, serious hobbyists and semi-professionals. Then what is the choice of professionals? The answer is: Prime Lenses.

Prime lenses are the most coveted and preferred lenses, not without reason. With fixed local lengths these lenses provide the best possible results and truly complement a professional camera’s raw power combined with the photographer’s honed skills.

The following Canon prime lenses are most popular: Canon EF 14mm, Canon EF 50mm, Canon EF 85mm, Canon EF 100mm and Canon EF 200mm. Similar range of lenses are available from other popular camera and lenses manufacturers like Nikon, Sigma, Tamron and Tokina etc.

Advantages:
The most obvious advantage is image quality. All prime lenses are bought by professionals to obtain the best quality photographs from their camera gear. The general parameters on which the image quality is tested are: sharpness, distortion, vignetting & chromatic aberration. In all prime lenses, the test results show the highest ranking for the sharpness and lowest values for the other three parameters viz. distortion, vignetting and chromatic aberration.

As professional requirements demand the best images that can be used by clients, it is always prudent to invest in a prime lens as per the photographic assignments and budget.

Disadvantages:
The biggest disadvantage of using a prime lens is the fixed focal length. You will experience the limitations during the very time you start shooting with a prime lens. There is no zoom, which implies that you will have to compose the frame by moving farther or by going near to the subject and then take your shot. With practice and patience, you will soon be able to overcome this handicap and fall in love with your prime lens and discover the joy of photography all over again.

Another drawback of the prime lens is the price factor. All prime lenses, barring the very basic models, are much more expensive than their zoom counterparts.

In conclusion, it is always wise to invest and explore the possibilities of shooting with a prime lens. The resulting images are nothing short of awesome with razor sharpness that is the hallmark of a professional photographer.

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