Prime Lens VS Zoom Lens ? Which one is better?
Most beginners will get confused about whether to choose a prime lens or a zoom lens. Compared with the prime lens, the zoom lens is much more convenient. Only slightly twist the zoom ring you can enlarge or narrow your image instead of running around.
We are not here saying which one is better. every lens has its cons and pros. Choosing which lens depends on our requirement. But in daily practice, using a prime lens frequently will largely improve our photography techniques. In this article, we will simply talk about the advantage of the prime lens.
1:Composition
When it comes to composition, the zoom lens seems more convenient. We just need to adjust the focal length. But this also brings the problem. The convenience of the zoom lens makes us lazier. Besides even we can adjust the size of the image, we are still unable to adjust the angle of the image so we still need to walk around to get a different angle.The benefit of using a prime lens frequently is to understand the focal length more and understand what angle and distance are best to shoot without previous framing. We can quickly observe the scene to imagine the shooting effect before taking out the camera. It is hard to achieve if using the zoom lens frequently.
2:Aperture and brightness
In most situations, compared with the zoom lens, the Prime lens can b create a large aperture more easily. This means we can shoot in the low light situation without reducing the shutter speed and increase the iso.Besides some high-end constant aperture zoom lens, most of the aperture of a zoom lens will change along with the focal length changing. Take the come C 18-55mm lens, for example, The widest aperture at 18mm is f/3.5, while the widest aperture at 55mm focal length is f/5.6 which is difficult to shoot in the low light situation. 50mm f/1.8 lens can provide more shooting opportunities even in the low light situation.
3:Depth of the filed
A large aperture will naturally introduce the shallow depth of the filed. But most photographers tend to use the shallow depth of field to highlight the subject in portrait or still photography. Although aperture is not the only element to affect the dof undoubtedly most prime lenses can create nice shallow DOF with a blurry background and nice looking bokeh.
4:Weight
As the complicated design of the zoom lens, So under the same focal length, it will be heavier than the prime lens. Canon standard 50mm f/1.8 lens is only 159g but a Canon 24-70mm f/2.8 is about 800g around.Many people may not use so many focal lengths, the purpose of shooting is clear, photography people or photography scenery.
5:Image quality
the essential part of a camera lens is the image quality. Although in the digital time, the design and quality of zoom lens have to get improvement. But relative speaking prime lens has its advantage. Cos prime lensThe prime lens just needs to optimize certain focal lengths while the zoom lens needs to be responsible for the entire image quality so it will not intentionally optimize certain focal lengths. This is why it
But notice that although zoom lens may not work so well as the prime lens at certain focal lengths but for most of us, this is acceptable for daily use.