The Joy of Primes

Happy New Year, fellow photographers!

Wanted to describe my recent experience at an outdoor daylight location shoot, using all-prime lenses. I use a 7D2 camera, and I could have used my EF-S 15-55mm f/2.8 IS zoom, but for this particular shoot I really wanted to control background blur, so faster apertures made sense. The location was an Egyptian museum in San Jose, California. We in belly dance use this location at some frequency, as it has wonderful outdoor decor for the belly dancers. Having used the location several times before, I had recalled from work years past that some of my favorite fotos of dancers taken there were with the 85mm f/1.2L and the 1Ds Mk II.

So, for the rationales indicated, I was "primed" for this recent shoot to look at only using primes. The working distances are variable, so I kind of brought a range of primes, but in the end, only 2 primes were used -- that was interesting also, more on that in a moment. The lineup was: 35mm f/1.4 L, 50mm f/1.2 L, 85mm f/1.8, 100mm f/2, and the 200mm f/2.8L. I decided to not bring the 135mm f/2L. Long ago alas, the 85mm f/1.2L took a spill out of the camera bag at a shoot in LA, and it was too expensive to repair; seriously miss that lens.

The reasoning for this selection was basically to cover a range from medium-wide to very tight portraits. On location, things were a bit different, and two sweet spots kind of spontaneously emerged. The 35mm was just too wide at the location. The 100mm has been one of my favorite portrait lenses on a 1.6x FoVCF camera, but I later got the 85mm thinking it "matched" the look of the 100mm, but with a wider view. That has borne out. But at this location, those focal lengths just didn't work, for the working distances involved.

I already knew that on 7D2, the 50mm is a super sweet lens in general. And at this location, it was a really good lens for framing the whole body of the model, without distortion. Then there was the 200mm, which was quite surprising. It really made gorgeous looks, at the available working distances. But it was also a lens requring more care for good results. It was slower than the 50mm, but still allowed good background blur control. But because of it was so much longer, and with an effective FoV of 320mm, one had to be careful to keep Tv sufficiently fast. This tended to require pushing ISO, in order to have both blur (via large Av), but Tv fast enough to eliminate camera shake. I definitely improvised hand-holding, including the holding technique that McNalley advocates -- but it was a rather cold day in California, and working temperature was somewhat inimical to always having shake-free results (tripods are not useful for belly dance, the action is much too fast to follow with a tripod).

The real joy I experienced between the two lenses was in how walking around changed the view framed. It was a special kind of magic, something not ordinarily experienced with a zoom. The zoom certainly makes it easy to change the size of what you see through the viewfinder -- rather like mitigating working distances. But it's necessary to change relative size seen in the viewfinder with a prime, by moving in relation to the model; more particularly as you move, you are also seeing numerous alternative creative angles in realtime. For example, physical obstacles in your way force you to consider other angles.

I'm sure an epiphany held by some of you already: primes are special. This project changed my view a lot: prefer primes for location work, but tend to use zooms for studio work (where the size in the view needs to change, but approximately constant working distance is all that is generally available). Now primes for portraits in the studio of course make sense, because again background blur control is useful creatively.

Some samples from the shoot, hope you might enjoy, one from the 200mm, the other from the 50mm.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

There's no benefit to the 200mm f/2.8L II vs. the 70-200 f/2.8L IS II other than cost, weight and size.

idkdc wrote in post #17840123
There's no benefit to the 200mm f/2.8L II vs. the 70-200 f/2.8L IS II other than cost, weight and size.

Completely agree. I used to have the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, but just found it way too heavy. Albeit the IS feature was quite helpful. I understand from reviews and other photographers that the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II has incredible optics. But ugh, the carry weight. Nowadays, I don't even like using a 1D-series body, because of the heavier mass over a 7-series body.

The other interesting thing about the 70-200mm zoom range I discovered looking at years of my photography was that that there were mostly two focal lengths most often used: 135mm and 200mm.

Since I already had the beautiful 135mm f/2L, and the "other" view I tended to use was 200mm, it made sense to add the 200mm f/2.8L to complete a duet. Especially because it was very moderately priced compared to the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II. At the time, I was very fortunate that the 200mm f/2.8L II existed. Fair to your point idkdc, the optics are quite good.