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The best single piece of advice I've ever received as a photographer wasn't about technique. It was about equipment.
It came from my friend and photo-mentor Candice Cusic, a wedding photographer and photojournalist who won a Pulitzer Prize as part of a Chicago Tribune team in 2000. I was getting ready to buy my first professional photo equipment and told her I was interested in a Nikon lens that could zoom from a wide 24 mm to a mid-range 70 mm. That's about the range of the most common "kit" lenses, the relatively cheap pieces of equipment that often come at a discount with first-time cameras.
She convinced me to change my mind. Here's why.
Photography is an active art form. Its goal is to bring the viewer into a situation in an affecting and visceral way. You can't do that if you're just standing in one spot. But that's just what you'll end up doing if you need to operate a zoom lens.
On the other hand, a prime lens – one with a fixed focal length that can not zoom – will make you a better photographer. That's because it forces you to "zoom with your feet," or move closer to your subject for close-ups and scuttle backward to go wide.
Prime lenses also tend to be much cheaper than comparable zoom lenses. Without moving parts, all the money goes toward great optics.
Soon after picking up my first equipment (a refurbished Nikon D700, a Nikon 24mm prime wide-angle lens and a Nikon 50 mm mid-range prime lens) I got hired to shoot an event where people threw fine colored powder at one another and made a huge mess. (Think the Hindu holiday of Holi stripped of cultural and religious substance.) My employer also hired a much more experienced shooter for the same event. He didn't want to risk getting powder in his camera so he stuck a zoom lens on it and shot from the periphery. With my prime lenses I didn't have a choice. So I stuck a plastic bag with a hole in it over my gear and dove into the fray.
In the end, he hated all of his images. From outside, he just got the backs of people's heads and a pinkish cloud. But forced into the middle of thing I made a picture that sold for several prints and won a minor award. That's the shot at the top of this article.
Later, shooting a story in Israel alongside a gaggle of pros, my prime lenses forced me to cram into the gap between my praying subjects and the Western Wall. In the end, my shot ran in newspapers all over the world even though many more experienced (and frankly more talented) photographers were at the same event:
This is the kind of shot you get when a prime lens forces you to zoom with your feet.
Rafi Letzter
My friend Christian Wilson, a very talented wedding photographer in Chicago, recently scrapped all of his zoom lenses in favor of primes for this same reason. Here's one of his recent shots:
If he had a zoom lens, he might have been standing on the other side of the room when the groom grinned at him from midair. But a prime lens forced him to get close, and that's how he got this oddball beauty of a frame.
Even if you aren't shooting action, prime lenses are your best bet when taking pictures. They make you think with your whole body. Hopefully you'll climb on things and get down on the ground looking at all the possible shots. Even if you just shoot on your cell phone you can get the same effect with a camera app that doesn't have a digital zoom feature. If you want great pictures, this is the best equipment choice you can make.
