Prime Lenses page 57

Everything you need to know about prime lenses

A prime lens is a lens with a focal length. This ensures you proactively assess your composition and depth of field. The various measurements are ideal for wildlife and sport photography, but also reportage and portrait photography. We are on hand to explain prime lenses.

What is a prime lens?

Prime lenses are lenses with a fixed focal length and, in contrast to the zoom lens, do not have the ability to zoom. As they can only take photos from one particular angle of view, they offer superior quality. In addition, being lightweight and slim means they are very suitable to take with you when travelling, in the wilderness or on a city trip.

Huge range of prime lenses

The greatest plus point of prime lenses is they come in all shapes and sizes. That's really handy as this means the focal distance range can run from just 10mm (ultra wide-angle lens) to 800mm (super telephoto lens). So, there's a suitable lens for every photographer, whatever their photographic style. The most popular focal lengths are 35mm, 50mm and 85mm lenses. As each brand has lenses in its range there are plenty to choose from, so make sure you find a lens that fits on your camera and matches the type of images you wish to take. Whether that's architectural, nature, wedding, sport or wildlife photography; you'll find a suitable prime lens for your particular needs. Moreover, their affordable price means you can buy more than one.

High speeds and large aperture

Because prime lenses focus from a single viewing angle, the aperture is much larger. This makes these lenses much more light-sensitive than their counterpart, the zoom lens. This also gives you the option to work with faster shutter speeds, yielding you significant quality gain. Besides this benefitting your composition, it will also minimise camera shake. As the likelihood of this happening at faster shutter speeds is much lower. The reduction in noise also makes the photos far more defined than with a zoom lens.

Stunning depth of field

An important facet of composition is the depth of field that must come to the fore. Stunning results can be achieved with prime lenses, primarily because you can blur the background well in relation to the key subject in the image. As you cannot zoom it is easier to attain optimal depth of field with the focal distance.

What brand to choose?

Do you have a particular brand in mind? We have various top brands:

Samyang | Sigma | Zeiss | Canon | LensBaby| Sony