Having spent a lot of my time travelling to take photos, I am very much in the mind set less is more these days. There are some very good reasons to minimize your kit bag, especially when travelling or pounding the streets of a vast city. Not least amongst them is the weight.
However, there is another, much underrated aspect of the lightweight kit, the creativity boost it can give you. In particular I am a big advocate of the one camera, one prime lens school. It’s something I try to do frequently as I feel it helps me see shots I might otherwise pass by.
Today I am going to take a look at why and how shooting with a single prime lens can boost your creativity. Let’s start with a primer – if you will excuse the pun.
What Is A Prime Lens?
I am sure many of you will know the difference between a prime and a zoom lens, however for those just getting started in photography, it is this. A zoom lens allows you to change the focal length, zoom in and out as it were. The first lens most new photographers will have will be a standard zoom. This will move from moderate wide angle, around 28mm to moderate telephoto, around 70mm. There are many different zooms available from wide angles, through standard to telephoto.
A prime lens however has only one focal length and often carries the moniker, fixed focal length lens. They are often smaller, lighter and have a faster maximum aperture than similar lenses. This makes them less versatile over all, but more useful for traveling light and shooting in low light situations. They can also boost your creativity. Let’s get into why?
The Power Of Limitation
It might seem a very odd concept that limiting the amount of gear you take, can boost your creativity, but it does. By limiting yourself to a single focal length, you are actually opening up many more photographic possibilities, but why?
Put simply, it makes you less lazy. With a zoom, you can take a position and take multiple different images at different focal lengths in different directions. A fixed focal length, however, forces you to move. You need to move closer or further back to frame the shot. You can get much tighter compositions because you are doing this. Not only that, the moving in and out, inspires you to also move the camera in other directions in order to get a variety of shots. You will find yourself moving left and right, up and down much more.
This movement, this changing of position will teach you much more about perspective than using a zoom. If you zoom a lens in whilst standing on the same spot, contrary to some, your perspective and background compression doesn’t change. However, moving in and out to frame a shot with a prime lens does change the perspective. It’s an often misunderstood subject and I made a video that explains it here:
Understanding Field Of View
Another aspect of using a prime lens is that it gives you a much greater understanding of field of view. This is the angle in front of you that your lens can capture. A wide angle, as its name suggests, captures a much wider field of view than a telephoto.
Restricting yourself to a prime lens and using that frequently, can train your mind into understanding the huge effect different fields of view have on the look of an image. For example, spending a few weeks just shooting with a 24mm prime will give you a greater understanding of the relationship between the foreground and background and how that is exaggerated on a wide lens. It will teach you how parallels are also thrown off by the slightest up or down movement of a wide lens.
Going to a moderate telephoto prime after a few weeks with a wide will seem like a major shock, but again it will start to train your mind in how a telephoto can compress a background and how that is related to the camera – subject – background distances.
Now all of that can be learnt from a zoom lens, however if you are constantly changing focal length in order to get the right composition, you are less likely to be paying attention to the effect that focal length is having on the look of the image.
Why Going Light Is Good
As mentioned earlier, prime lenses tend to be much smaller and lighter than zooms. Given that glass is a major weight component of any camera kit, the smaller the lens, the lighter our camera will be.
That’s a very good thing for creativity. If you are bogged down with a front heavy camera and an excessively weighty camera bag, you are going to tire much quicker. The more tired we are, the less creative we become.
I am sure like me, you have headed out, early one morning, with the best intentions of spending several hours shooting only to find yourself tired and lacking in inspiration after one or two. Going with a single prime and a small camera bag allows you to walk further, shoot and more importantly, see more.
When you do start to tire, it’s much easier to grab a coffee with lightweight gear than when carrying a large camera bag with a tripod.
What Prime Lens Should You Take?
This is entirely subjective but to my mind you should take a focal length that challenges you. One that takes you out of your comfort zone. If you shoot a lot of your work at wider focal lengths, take a moderate telephoto, perhaps an 85mm. The reverse is true if you tend to shoot telephoto, take a 24 or 35mm.
One of the most challenging primes you can use is the nifty fifty. Because the 50mm is quite similar to the field of view of our eyes, it can be tricky to make images look visually different. For this very reason, it’s a great lens with which to push your creativity.
Shooting with a single prime lens might seem counterintuitive in an age where virtually every camera is sold with a zoom. However, by applying the reasoning I have given above, you will find that restricting your focal length is actually incredibly liberating.
So why not take a prime lens challenge. Set yourself a number of shoots or perhaps a number of weeks with which to go out and shoot solely at one single, focal length. You will be glad that you did.
Further Reading
- 7 Reasons Why Prime Lenses are Better Than Zoom Lenses to Improve Your Photography
- 3 Prime Lenses to Consider for Street Photography
- How to Make the Most of the Affordable 50mm 1.8 Lens as a Portrait Photographer
- Want to Fall in Love With a Lens? Try a Prime Lens
- How Photographers Can Use a Prime Lens to Improve Their Technique
- How Using Just “One Lens” Will Elevate Your Photography
