(The “Myths and Platitudes” series of posts concerns common photographic beliefs that may be questionable.)
Sunlight illuminates submerged boulders near the cliff face along the High Sierra Trail – Sequoia National Park.
Some time ago I shared an article about landscape lenses and identified it as “part 1″ of a two-part series: “Photographic Myths and Platitudes – ‘Landscape Photography Lenses’ (Part 1).” A few days ago a reader emailed questions about lenses for landscape photography and as part of my reply (see “Landscape Lenses” in my “reader questions” series) I referred him to the older article… and realized that it has been almost 4 1/2 years since I shared part 1! It is way past time to write part 2!
The issue I did not address in part 1 is a perennial one: Whether to use zoom or prime lenses for landscape photography. Given how often the question comes up, it might seem surprising that I didn’t write about it sooner. I put off dealing with it for several reasons. It can turn into a pretty big subject. Some might regard it as the sort of issue that only interests a few people, since today most photographers have moved happily to zooms. It is a subject about which folks can become quite passionate and even adamant.
The arguments for using prime lenses for landscape photography include the following:
Primes can produce higher resolution
Primes may better control certain kinds of image distortion
Using primes will slow you down and make you think more about your photography. (Or, conversely, using zooms will make you lazy.)
Great landscape photographers have relied on primes for a long time.
Primes provide some features that aren’t available from zooms
Before dealing with the question, let me reveal my own background and point of view. I’ve photographed long enough that when I started out there wasn’t really much choice — zooms weren’t really an option, so we used primes. As a consequence, I shot with only primes for many years. For some time after good zoom lenses became more readily available — and even after I owned a few — I continued to accept that idea that they were optically inferior and that I should use primes whenever possible. Eventually my thinking evolved further, to the point that I no longer use primes for landscape photography. (I still do use them for other types of work, such as street photography, but that’s perhaps a topic for later.)
I no longer give a lot of credence to the points favoring primes in my own landscape photography. Let me explain why, and acknowledge why there can be some reasonable differences of opinion.
Primes can produce higher resolution — Technically this is still generally true, but there are some very important qualifications to consider. At one time the difference between the image quality of a typical prime and that of a typical zoom was significant. Today the difference between excellent zooms and primes has decreased a lot, to the point that some zooms produce image quality that is arguably equal to or occasionally better than that of comparable primes. In most cases I think that should be enough of an argument regarding image resolution, but let me deal with a few additional aspects of this.
It is true that some primes still test better than the best zooms at the same focal lengths. But the differences are so tiny as to be meaningless in all but the most extreme and marginal cases, and even there the potential gains (if all other parameters are perfectly optimized) are so tiny as to be more theoretical than real when it comes to actual photographs. Here we are not talking about the difference between good and bad, but the differences between really good and really good.
Primes can produce better image quality at the largest apertures — and they can have larger maximum apertures than most zooms. However, it is rare for “typical” landscape photographers to shoot at the largest apertures, and at the more typical landscape apertures the differences (which are often quite small to begin with) diminish to imperceptibility. Two lenses that differ at f/2.8 are often virtually the same at f/8, f/11, or f/16.
Primes may have better image quality in the corners. This is often (but not quite always) true. But the differences tend to be at their greatest at the very largest apertures, and those who typically don’t shoot their landscape subjects wide open find that the corner quality improves a lot as you stop down — again, to the point that the differences are usually meaningless. In fact, the best recent zooms perform very well in the corners wide open and are extremely good stopped down a bit.
In the end, while “sharpness” or resolution of lenses is not an unimportant thing, it is not the only thing. When we are comparing primes and zooms that both produce really excellent image quality, we have to ask whether the difference are even visible and whether they are more important than other aspects of lens performance. (More on that topic below.)
Primes may better control certain kinds of image distortion — In general, zooms have tended to be a bit more prone to certain kinds of image artifacts and distortion including chromatic aberrations, barrel/pincushion/mustache distortion, vignetting, field curvature, and so on. However, there is a lot to talk about here.
Lens designers have made steady and impressive progress in narrowing what used to be a larger gap between primes and zooms. Today the best zooms often control these issues at levels comparable to primes. (And primes are not immune to them either.)
Some of these “distortions” are not really visible in photographs. While a bit of pincushion or barrel distortion might be visible in architectural photography, with its plethora of lines, except in extreme cases they are generally invisible in landscape photography. Some distortions, such as vignetting, are frequently regarded as pleasant and are even introduced to prints in post.
That brings up another important point. Even when these things are visible in photographs, they are quickly and easily eliminated in post-processing.
Using zooms will make you lazy — Ah, my (not!) favorite pro-prime and anti-zoom argument! This one has a basis in human nature and the observation that some casual photographers will use the zoom to frame the primary subject and shoot from wherever they are rather than moving around to find the best possible composition. That approach exists, but that doesn’t mean that zooms are bad. In fact, if you watch me shoot with primes and zooms you will often find that I move around more and take more time finding the right composition with the zoom rather than the prime, probably because I have more options to work with. Let’s look at this one a bit.
Focal length differences do much more than let us fill the frame by zooming rather than moving. Focal length variation is an important compositional tool, and zoom lenses give you more control over this aspect of your photographs in several ways. One of the most important has to do with the relationships between a primary subject and secondary foreground or background subjects. Shooting with a prime you can move forward and backward to have your primary subject fill the frame as you wish. However, foreground and background secondary subjects then simply end up being what they are at the given focal length. Varying the focal length while framing the primary subject the same way lets you make background subjects larger of smaller relative to the primary subject. For example, with a longer focal length you can limit the area of the background subject that is included in the frame and perhaps decide to place a non-distracted small section of that background behind your primary subject. With a shorter focal length you can include a much wider angle of background behind your primary subject and you can make the background seem smaller and more distant by comparison. With a long lens you may be able to step back and include foreground objects in the frame; with a wide-angle you can move up in front of those subjects and exclude them.With a zoom lens you can carefully and precisely fine-tune these relationships so that they are exactly the way you want them in your composition.
Choosing to zoom with the lens rather than, to use the common expression, “zoom with your feet” is sometimes simply a necessity, and this is especially true in landscape photography. Sometimes changing the size of a subject in your frame “with your feet” would require you to levitate 100 feet beyond the edge of a cliff face or drive 20 miles in 2 minutes before the light fades, or set your tripod up in 20 feet of raging water.
The zoom also lets you more quickly change from one focal length to another. When your lens is on the camera and both are on the tripod, you can instantly change to any focal length that the lens provides. When you use primes, you can change to other focal lengths, but only the limited number of them corresponding to the lenses you are carrying and only by taking the time to remove one and attach another in its place.
Great landscape photographers have long relied on primes — This is clearly true. Much of the great and iconic classic landscape work that we know and admire was done with cameras that did not use zoom lenses — the photographers shot with just a few prime focal lengths and still made beautiful work. If it worked so well for them, shouldn’t it work for us?
It could work for us, and I suspect that at least some prime-only shooters are looking for a link back to those great photographers who produced wonderful work in an era largely without zooms. But the fact that great work has been made with primes does not tell us that great work cannot be made with other lenses nor that photographs made with primes will be superior. In fact…
… there are quite a few photographers who did work in that older manner, many of whom actually began shooting large format film view cameras. Some still do. But among those that I know there has been a steady (and happy) move away from the older and more basic systems to smaller cameras largely equipped with zoom lenses! (One friend likes to tweak film traditionalists when he gives talks on his photography by saying, more or less: “Today I shoot digital. With zoom lenses!“)
Another common notion is that landscape photography is a thing to be done in a slow and deliberate and thoughtful manner, and that using easier and more flexible equipment leads one to a less thoughtful working process. My response to this one is pretty simple. You can still work slowly if you choose to. Sometimes I work as slowly and methodically as any LF photographers. But you can also work quickly when necessary — and quite a few landscape opportunities require quick work, as light fades, clouds drift, and subjects move. (Read the story of the making of Ansel Adams’ “Moonlight, Hernandez, New Mexico” for an example.) So, while you can work as slowly as you want with a zoom lens on your camera, you can also work faster when you need to.
Primes provide some features that aren’t available from zooms — There are two general responses to this. First, it is true! Second, the opposite is also true! So the real issue is to look at the strengths and weaknesses of both options and then determine which are the most significant in your photography.
What can primes do that zooms cannot do? Generally primes of a given focal length can provide larger maximum apertures than zooms covering the same focal lengths. Many of the main zooms including the most common ultra-wide, mid-range, and short telephoto zooms do not have apertures large than f/2.8. It is easy to find primes in most of this range with maximum apertures of f/1.4 and even larger, and f/2 apertures may be available at the longest focal lengths in this rage. Larger apertures will let you shoot at higher shutter speeds in lower light, perhaps letting you deal with moving subjects more effectively and simply extending the low light shooting range. The larger apertures also allow you to create very narrow depth of field. In some cases a single prime can let you shoot more quickly, since it eliminates the variable of focal length — and you have one less decision to make. Many primes are smaller and lighter than zooms. Primes are available with features that are not available (or not easily available) with zooms. For example, there are excellent tilt/shift prime lenses for DSLRs. (There are tilt/shift adapters that allow the use of some non-standard zooms from medium format cameras in manual mode only.) Some excellent primes lenses are available at very low prices. Certain types of night photography almost require the larger apertures of primes — particularly those popular shots that feature unnaturally visible images of the Milky Way.
What can zooms do that primes cannot? Primary they provide a great deal more flexibility and adaptability. A single lens can cover a wide range of focal lengths, and a complete and flexible kit might be built out of two or three lenses. They allow the photographer to precisely crop in camera, thus maintaining all of the quality of the original capture, which will be diminished if you have to crop in post. The reduce (and in some cases eliminate) the need to switch lenses, minimizing sensor dust and making it easier to work in windy, dusty, and similar conditions. They often come with image stabilization mechanisms, which allow hand-held photography at lower shutter speeds.
Since both have strengths and weaknesses, we have to ask how those line up with the needs of the typical landscape photographer… and you need to consider how they line up with your photography. To broadly generalize, a typical landscape photographer will need to shoot at multiple focal lengths, may have to shoot in challenging weather conditions, usually uses a tripod, generally shoots at smaller apertures, often carefully works out a composition to combine central, foreground, and background elements, sometimes has to respond very quickly to changing conditions, may produce large prints of detailed subjects — all things at which modern high quality zooms excel. If your landscape often requires larger apertures than those found on zooms, relies on tilt/shift lenses (and you aren’t interested in the MF zoom plus adapter options), and it usually done at one or two specific focal lengths, you might feel differently. Both lens types can produce outstanding image quality — good enough to make very large prints.
There was a time when serious landscape photographers essentially all used prime lenses. That time was decades ago. Today I see more of them shooting with zooms than with primes, and by a wide margin. In my view and in my experience it has become increasingly the case that zoom lenses generally are a better option for landscape photography than primes, even when image quality issues are paramount. For most photographers the potential advantages of primes are so small or else countered by stronger advantages from zooms that they will be better served by zoom lenses for landscape photography.
What are your thoughts?
G Dan Mitchell is a California photographer and visual opportunist whose subjects include the Pacific coast, redwood forests, central California oak/grasslands, the Sierra Nevada, California deserts, urban landscapes, night photography, and more.
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