Last week I talked to those of you who are just getting into photography. This week I’m going to go a little deeper and weigh out some of the bigger tech issues that fuel those endless photog-forum debates. IS or VR or SR or IIS? What does this really do for me, and do I need to spend the extra on it? How to utilize all those megapixels and when to comfortably know they’re not for you. And lastly, prime lenses–their benefits, and how they’re much more useful than you realize.
“That depends on what your definition of ‘IS’ is”
Canon’s has coined the term Image Stabilization or IS (Nikon uses Vibration Reduction, VR) for the set of tiny motors built into certain lenses. These operate on both a vertical and horizontal plane to reduce any motion-blur from shooting while handholding. Canon claims IS can give you up to three stops, and I’ve found it to be accurate in most cases. What that means is when you would normally have to shoot 1/80 @ 80mm, you can now shoot 1/20 @ 80mm and still get a clear shot. I’ve been very pleased with IS, and since I shoot almost exclusively hand-held, I almost always have it turned on.
Now, here’s when you don’t need IS:
When you’re tripoding. The tiny motors actually add vibrations when on a tripod, so if you find yourself tripoding a lot, you might not need IS in your lens.
When shooting motion in low-light. For example: people at a party at night or indoors. You might be able to clearly shoot still life at 1/20, but people moving around are going to blur in your shot.
Megapixels: when and how you use them.
Even though I talked about megapixels in my last post, I don’t like to spend much time on them. It’s relatively simple, but there seems to always be a lot of hype around them. A lot of megapixels come in handy when producing commercial images that are going to be printed high-rez or delivered to a client. You can do this with smaller sensor sizes, but typically the client will require something larger (a 35mm or greater).
A high megapixel count can also help in a practical sense, if not for a commercial client. By having a large sensor, you can hide some of the noise that comes with using a high ISO. It’s more of an illusion that anything else. For instance, if you have a 10 megapixel image and a 21 megapixel image, both with taken with a high ISO, and you look at them on the same resolution monitor, the larger megapixel image is going to look clearer for the simple fact that there are more ‘dots’ in the same amount of space. More dots equal more detail.
This is all true, but before you sell your first born to upgrade, here’s what you give up. Larger images take up more space in both your camera’s internal memory and your computers hard drive. A 21 megapixel RAW file can be up to 25 mb big and once you begin to edit it in post-production it can grow exponentially. And that’s not before you buy those huge memory cards–at this rate a 2GB memory card holds the equivalent of about two 36 exposure rolls of film.
This might not seem like a big deal compared to the value of having the extra megapixels, and if that’s the case, they might be for you. On the other hand, it’s important to know the trade-offs, because this is what will help you fulfill your goal: photography.
The power of Prime
When I first became interested in photography, I was aware of prime lenses, but I couldn’t see any benefit. They didn’t zoom (what if I miss the shot because of my perspective?); how do I know which focal lengths to invest in (seems my bag would be full of different primes, and I’d spend all my time switching between lenses)? All that hassel, why not just use a zoom?
Well, let’s start with what a zoom doesn’t have:
An overall sharp image. Many zooms have a sweet spot, but one of the principle arguments for zooms is their versatility. If this is the case, their versatility can be reduced to their sweet spot, which might not cover much more than a prime!
A huge aperture. A high-quality, fast zoom will have a maximum aperture of f/2.8. But it’s not uncommon to get a prime, one or even two stops faster. Primes always have the ability, because of their construction, to be faster. And faster ultimately means sharper.
Now, to address my original misgivings: ”I’ll miss the shot.” Presumably because the composition won’t be right. But one of the first things I learned when I started shooting with primes is that instead of missing ‘the shot’ I began getting the shot. That is, using a prime forced me into a creative region that a zoom would have never allowed. I had to learn (which happens quickly, by the way) to compose my shot with the focal length that I have. The result was quite encouraging, and I wholeheartedly recommend it!
Like the above, my misgivings were again disproved on the point of knowing which prime to have when. Originally I thought I would need to have ten different prime lenses in my bag to cover what my one zoom did. Instead, I learned that you do everything you need to do with just two or three. I even work with one sometimes. In my case, when I’m shooting only primes, I carry a 35mm and a 50mm because I prefer wide-angle over telephoto.
In closing, think of primes as the next step of your photographic education. Like a graduate degree that forces you to apply what you’ve learned in a generative mannor, primes help better define what kind of photographer you are. If you think I’m stretching it, try a prime exclusively for a while. As I said before, I can’t recommend them enough!