Unstick yourself!

A recent meeting with a very talented young photographer, Peter McKinnon, prompts me to write about lens choices for a moment.

Peter, who is a student of mine in the Advanced Flash lighting workshops, showed me a wedding album and other wedding shots he recently did. He showed me a wedding he shot on his own,  entirely with a 24mm prime lens, and much of it at f/1.4. Never took that lens off. No long shots. No zooming. Just Peter and his wide angle lens. Fantastic work.

The 1D Mark IV makes a lens look 30% longer, so that’s 24 x 1.3 = 31mm. Roughly equivalent, then, to me using my 35mm f/1.4 lens on the full-frame 1Ds Mark III body.

Mmm. That would be liberating: one lens, a wide one, for an entire shoot. And I have mentioned before, for events this is my favourite lens.

Selective focus:

Cat, by Michael Willems (35mm, f/1.4)

Cat, by Michael Willems (35mm, f/1.4)

Low light ability:

Club, by Michael Willems (35mm, f/1.4)

Club, by Michael Willems (35mm, f/1.4)

And both, available light and selective focus:

Couple, by Michael Willems (35mm, f/1.4)

Couple, by Michael Willems (35mm, f/1.4)

So I checked. The last wedding I shot, I used my 35mm lens for fully 30% of the shots! I too love the shallow depth of field:

Bride and Groom, by Michael Willems

Bride and Groom, by Michael Willems

And I like the ability to get it in and to not have to worry about how to zoom.

Groom getting ready, by Michael Willems

Groom getting ready, by Michael Willems

So here is my suggestion: that you too spend an entire day shooting with one wide angle lens. This will free your mind from deciding on lens, zoom, and so on, and open your eyes to the photos in front of you. And that is what photography is about: photos, not cameras or lenses.

And you know what: I’ll do the same, on my next event shoot.

0 thoughts on “Unstick yourself!

  1. I just picked up the 50mm f/1.8 a few days ago, and it has made me look at everything in a whole new way. I’m on a 1.5x crop body (Nikon D90) and so it’s nowhere near the wide angles I’m used to shooting.

    I shoot at a lot of local concerts, so the low light ability is great. I usually shot these events with an 18-55mm VR, but I limited myself to the 50mm exclusively last night, with the exception of about 2 minutes with the wide angle to get some establishing shots of the whole band together… It’s amazing how limiting an aspect of your photography can inspire so much creativity in other areas.

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