How many of you out there are shooting zoom lenses? How many carry only primary lenses? How many carry both? This topic seems to come up quite often as of late, and in this time of technology moving faster than consumers an interesting question arises. Will primary lenses go the way of the dodo?

The end of the primary lens is less of an issue than film being eliminated, although more and more photographers, old and young alike, seem to choose zoom lenses over fixed focal lengths. My biggest fear has always been dropping or damaging a zoom in the field. If your zoom lens hits the concrete from six feet, you just lost your 28, 35, 50 and 75-mm lenses. If you drop a 50-mm, you just lost a 50-mm.

The technical benefits and drawbacks of both types of lenses are fairly well known; size, weight, sharpness, speed, depth of field and optical quality, respectively. Although in the last decade optics have come a long way, and the gap in image quality between the two is shrinking quickly. Most shooters seem to choose zooms just for the convenience and ease of use, and who can blame them.

There is another school of thought on primaries that claims fixed lenses help you think more about your photographs. I don’t necessarily subscribe to this theory, I do however believe in a different interpretation of it.

When I was studying photography the director of the program had a strict company line; “Canon makes the best lenses and the best auto-focus system, all of you should be shooting L Series zooms.” Little did we know that the guy was receiving a fat check from Canon every month. Needless to say we all pretty much went out and bought what he told us to. Several years later, still fighting with my own gear, I was continually less than pleased with my photographs.

So what did I do? I put the damn zoom down, and croped it with my feet.

By removing the ability to crop a scene within the camera without physically moving, we force ourselves to do several things, most of them unconsciously.

1. We slow down. The photographer must choose the lens they see fit to capture the scene as they intend. This also gives us a reason to stop and look at the scene again.

2. We move within the scene. The photographer must physically move to attain the vantage point that they envision the photograph should present. By doing so we observe more of what is happening around us.

3. We observe the scene more carefully. By slowing down the physical process and moving within the scene the photographer by default will observe the environment more carefully.

4. We anticipate change within a scene. A fluid subject demands we anticipate its actions. By slowing down and observing a scene, we are able to anticipate its movements.

5. We are immersed in the scene. The photographer essentially becomes part of the scene itself, no longer only a spectator from a fixed vantage point watching events unfold. This gives us a connection to our subject matter that our photographs will always benefit from.

Give it a shot. Put the zooms in a closet for a week, a month, a year, whatever. Force yourself into the scene, and always remember what Capa said…

“If your pictures aren’t good enough, your not close enough.”