Shooting Primes

In recent months, my photography passions have been greatly seduced by shooting prime lenses rather than the more commonplace zoom lenses that dot the modern SLR landscape.

Although I don’t think of my abilities as a great highlight in the massive sea of amateur photographers, I would at least hope that I have enough vision to convey a message in each capture. Within this medium, the use of the prime or fixed focal length lens serves to extend creative composition by the user.

The great early masters of the art of photography were limited to only shooting these devices as things likes zooms, matrix metering, or even roll film were either not available or not apt enough to capture the desired scenes. In comprehending great works by such visionaries like Ansel Adams, it is amazing to note that these were crafted using this technology that is so underappreciated today.

In my ever growing collection, I have six primes:

· Nikon 10.5 f/2.8 DX
· Nikon 16 f/2.8
· Nikon 35 f/2
· Nikon 50 f/1.8
· Nikon 85 f/1.8
· Nikon 105 f/2.8 Micro

Standing apart from the multitudes of zoom lenses I have, these gems stand out in their ability to funnel my creativity into a single boxed view of the scene about to be captured. They help push the user to focus on composition in method by limiting the ability to grow or shrink the photo size through the use of the zoom. With the prime, to change the box size, you must move towards or away from your subject which also modifies the relationships of objects within the frame at the same time thus changing your composition. This in turn forces you to further understand your composition and put more thought into it as you create.

In addition to the creative side, there is also the “speed” factor related to these lenses.

Optimally, I would shoot at ISO 100 at all times, if I could, but with typical zoom lenses (f/3.5 – f/5.6), those speeds are greatly limited by smaller apertures especially when zooming in closer to your subject.

Prime lenses lack this limitation and offer 2 to 4 times more light through the lens an onto your sensor (or film).

For a photographer, this greater amount of light corresponds to the “speed” at which either the shutter can be set or the ISO/ASA rating of the film/sensor being used.

Ansel offers some wonderful explanations of the relationships between Aperture, Shutter Speed, and Film Speed, in his series of books “The Camera”, “The Negative”, and “The Print.”

In essence, these break down to a 1:1 ratio between all three elements.

Doubling the ISO is equal to doubling the shutter speed or increasing one f-stop on the lens (roughly).

So, at ISO-100 with a 1/10th shutter speed at f/1.2 would be equal to:

· ISO-200 with a 1/20th shutter speed at f/1.4
· ISO-200 with a 1/10th shutter speed at f/2.0
· ISO-400 with a 1/20th shutter speed at f/2.0

ISO speeds start at 100 and increase by powers of 2 from there. IE: 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1600 (with 3200, 6400, 12.8k, and 25.6k being further multiples now being seen in digital cameras).

Apertures start ideally at 1.0, 1.4, 2.0, 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32 being the common major numbers. More information about f-stops is available here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number and about apertures here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture.

This increase in “speed” allows me to shoot indoors under very low light conditions at lower ISOs. Again, ideally I would prefer the lowest possible ISO setting on my camera (ISO 100 or ISO 200 depending on the model) as this gives me the least amount of noise.

For illustration purposes, I will include several recent prime lens photographs utilizing this technique.

jp