A photographer I met while shooting a wedding in Reston, VA a few years back sent me an e-mail. It was good to hear from him especially as he wrote kind words about how I shoot and the images I capture.
It was funny in that he was asking about the lenses I currently use and he made the statement which I used as the post title.
A 70-200 is; a zoom lens, a big lens, a compromise and is not in my armamentarium.
I don't shoot zooms for a number of reasons, three of them are above.
The lenses I use are all "fast prime" lenses. That means that they are designed and manufactured to do one thing only and that is to produce the sharpest and cleanest image at a given focal length. I often think of the sports car Vs suv analogy when asked to expand on this thinking. Well here goes; A sports car is designed primarily to be fast, take tight corners in its stride and often with comfort being of secondary importance though that may not always be the case. An suv on the other hand is designed to go where the sports car just can't i.e. recently ploughed potato fields, hey forget the recently ploughed part :) any field.
In recent years we have seen attempts to narrow the gap between the two extremes with the result that our choices are much greater and not only is the sports car now a much more comfortable, and safer, driving experience but we also have a wide selection of suv's which are indeed fairly sporty. However you still can't throw them round corners with impunity nor can you cross the proverbial potato field in a vehicle with virtually no ground clearance.
It's the same with lenses; the quality of zoom lenses today is simply superb. I've actually owned a few and tried many. However I want to capture images at the extremes without compromising image quality and I want to have the sharpest cleanest image possible so I do compromise by not having the range, of focal lengths, that I might have and I do compromise by paying a lot more for "fast glass" so that I can continue to capture the type of images I do in the lowest levels of light and using what I consider, the highest quality "glass" available.
So why limit myself to two or three lenses? Well I normally shoot with two camera bodies on me all day, my longer lens is on my right shoulder my standard/wide is round my neck, if I have a third it's a wide one and not surprisingly it's on my left shoulder. This never changes. I know where each is, I see the image I want, I know, by instinct, experience or maybe just because I'm the seventh child of the seventh child, where I want to be and I move into position and raise the appropriate body and lens for the shot. Do I feel limited in my lens selection? Not at all, because I am so in tune with the framing of each lens and I know what my choices are I don't loose time or shots by wondering what focal length to use. Having only two, or maybe three, lenses handy makes me think harder, see clearer and ultimately shoot better. That's me, that's how I do it, it's not the right way nor is it the wrong way it's simply what works for me.
