Prime lens

[Alun100]

Head on the idiot block. Whats a prime lens and to what application would we normally put a 28mm f/2.8 pls
or a 50mm prime lens?

[Muscat]

Re: Prime lens

In for a penny in for a pound here is my take on your questions.

A prime lens is a lens of a fixed focal length, i.e the 28mm or 50mm lenses would be prime

If I had a 28mm lens I would probably use it mainly for landscape or architectual work, it can be useful for small rooms where you have large groups but be prepared to either live with orcorrect the distortion

A 50mm lens is a great little all rounder, can be used for portraits, landscapes, architecture etc. it was what just about all the old film cameras used to be provided with as a standard walkabout lens.

As for being silly questions, as far as I am concerned the only silly question is the one that you don't ask.

[stalker]

Re: Prime lens

anything which is non-zoom is classed as prime usually...

advantage of prime is that there are no compromises in the design like you get in zoom lenses, so are typically sharper and faster (let more light in)..

[colin C]

Re: Prime lens

Sharper, faster, better quality, lighter and generally less expensive than zooms. The only zoom effect is carried out by your feet, walking towards, or away from the subject, to frame it how you want.

The downsides of prime lenses are that you need more prime lenses to adequately cover a reasonable range and the added cost of the extra prime lenses will be more than the equivalent zoom. Just looking at the ever popular 24 - 105mm zoom, you would probably need a 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, and 100mm prime lenses to cover the same area. Zooms are also very convenient for the majority of our photographs.

I compromise. For those areas of photography that are really important to me, I use primes. For everything else, I use zooms.

Colin

[briansquibb]

Re: Prime lens

I started out with zooms on the digital, but have not started to use primes where I know what shots I am going to be taking.

I currently have:

17-40mm, 24-105mm and 100-400 zooms
50mm, 135mm and 200mm primes (plus a 180mm macro lens)

They are all good I normally have the 135mm F2 as a standard lens with the 24-105mm F4 as a walkabout lens. The prime lens definitely give better results - especially in constrast and colour - plus the real and tangible benefit of being able to blur the background through shallower depth of field.

I also use the 135 as a landscape lens as which it gives excellent results.

The 50mm on a xxxD or xxD makes a good portrait lens

Brian

[Alun100]

Re: Prime lens

Many thanks to you all, I have no urgency to go out and buy a range of lenses just keeping a casual look out for whats on sale! The only lense I have are the two that came with the camera ef-s 18mm-5and sigma 70-300mm. I have taken previous advice i beleive it was Colin and change dthe x2 extender I had bought for a 1.4 . While I ' am interested in sports action photography I don't intend ignoring other subjects and would like to replace the latter with better quality lens and trying some scenery landscapes etc. Only firm plan at the mo is to buy the canon 100mm-400mm l series before the sporting seasons begin in 2011, but will watch out for other quality lens in the meantime.

Brian the 50mm on a xxxD I imagine you mean 1000D?

[briansquibb]

Re: Prime lens

Brian the 50mm on a xxxD I imagine you mean 1000D?

.... and the 300d, 350d, 400d, 450d, 500d, 550d ..

xxD I mean: 10d,20d,30d,40d,50d,60d, 7d

[DrJon]

Re: Prime lens

Do remember to multiply the focal length by 1.6x if on an APS sensor body, so in that case 28mm is more a walk-around lens and 50mm more a portrait lens...
John

[russelljtdyer]

Re: Prime lens

Like Brian, I started with zoom lenses. I had several of them. Now I have an obsession about going all prime. But that doesn't mean plenty of fixed focal length lenses for me.

I have two fixed lenses: a Zeiss ZE Distagon 21mm f/2.8 lens, and the Canon EF 50mm f /1.2 L lens. I'm about to buy a Zeiss ZE Planar 85mm f/1.4 lens.

I have only one zoom lens left: a Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS lens, the one with the green ring. I'd like to replace the one zoom lens I have left with a fixed one, but there's nothing out there as good and as small: it's collapses to a small length when at 70mm. If I could find a 300mm prime lens that wouldn't fill up my bag or require me to switch to a larger camera bag, I'd sell my last zoom.