Point and shoot camera owners who have zooms can choose just one focal length setting as a good exercise. This can be a valuable visual learning exercise. DSLR owners have an advantage because it’s easy to remember to leave a prime lens on their camera.
For emotion-packed situations, in crowds, or when traveling abroad, the more practice you’ve put in with your photo gear, the more effective you will be in getting good images. Remember, your attitude is the most important piece of gear you carry as a photographer. When a student in my photo class asked what part of the camera is the most important, I answered, “It is the slightly worn “search for knowledge” button on the camera.”
But let’s return to those ideas for improving your framing. Here are two fundamentals for beginners and pros:
TIPS:
1.) Have a single bread-and-butter lens on your camera at all times. This lens is the one with which you can auto-focus, or focus manually, without looking at it, keeping your concentration on what you’ve composed through your viewfinder.
2.) Pick a focal length and stay with it for 100 frames. Use a variety of lenses, but let the prime lens stay on the camera body as the first lens of choice. Try lightweight, fast-focusing lenses. Allow a wide angle lens to pull you closer, until you are involved in the scene, so the pictures you make also pull your viewers in. They should feel like they are an intimate part of the action.
Having seen some advantages of a using single focal length lenses, I’d like to ask, “What is the bigger picture?” We’re all trying for better pictures, so how can this recipe help us as photographers?
“Fleet Blessing Crowd", McMillan
Wharf,
Provincetown, Massachusetts
20 mm, 1/125th, f/13, ASA 200,
digital capture
