Prime or Zoom, which is better?

[FrankMi]

I don't use my laptop to knock a nail into wood, I choose a more appropriate tool (my head or a hammer depending on the frustration levels).

Then you might get a kick out of http://www.wimp.com/dadipad/

[Designer]

Graham; you have nailed it!

To avoid the hassle and potential for dirt and/or damage, I would like to leave a "super zoom" on most of the time, with the flexibility of using special lenses for those rare special shots. I'm strictly an amature who likes to make the best of his limited photographic ability.

Thank you.

[Designer]

Ja! Dat ist ein wunderbar chopping board! That could be me in the video.

[lorenzobix]

zoom or prime, which is better?... better for what? by which point of view? capability?, weight?, optical quality?, resistance?, f-stop aperture?
for the majority of the situations, expecially if you get payed for a service, you'll need a zoom. i can tell you that as everybody that shoots weddings and other stuff. the only prime i consider to use is a 35mm or a 50mm inside the church if there's too low light, otherwise there are too much different situations in too little time for a prime; a zoom is a must. i also work as a sport photographer, making skating races. for such kind of events, where the subject progressively comes nearer and then far again, a zoom is very appropriate. For other kind of sports i prefer a prime: when i shoot motorcycle races i go with my 200mm, decide where to point it and wait for the racer; if in some pictures i cut the subject, who cares, i'll make the next lap (i can say that because i do it as a hobby, if i was payed for it i'd need to have more possibility of shooting the same subject in the same moment, so maybe i'd carry with me a zoom).
Optically, excepted some very good (and very expansive) zooms, primes are unreachable in my opinion, very light to carry almost everywhere, excepted long telephotos, much more resistant because of the luck of movements inside the body. They are also more appropriate for low light conditions because of their f-stop aperture, always bigger than zoom lenses.

[Designer]

Lorenzo, thank you for the reply. Yes, the question was ambiguous. I should have asked a more specific question regarding the optical quality. For instance; since I am already aware that most zoom lenses are more restrictive as to maximim f-stop, the question might have been:

"How much distortion must I accept if I choose to use a zoom, as opposed to a prime lens?"

(also) "Is the difference noticible to most people?"

By phrasing my questions thus, we could have avoided much confusion.

I am grateful for all the responders and their valuable insight on this thread.

[Designer]

Found this on Wikipedia:

"In photography, distortion is particularly associated with zoom lenses, particularly large-range zooms, but may also be found in prime lenses, and depends on focal distance – for example, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 exhibits barrel distortion at extremely short focal distances. Barrel distortion may be found in wide-angle lenses, and is often seen at the wide-angle end of zoom lenses, while telephoto distortion is often seen in older or low-end telephoto lenses. Mustache distortion is observed particularly on the wide end of some zooms, with certain retrofocus lenses, and more recently on large-range zooms such as the Nikon 18–200 mm."

Well, bummer! This is the super zoom that I was thinking about. I still don't know if the distortion is significant, or if it can be noticed, or if PSE can remove it to the point of not being a noticible problem.

[Momo]

Found this on Wikipedia:

"In photography, distortion is particularly associated with zoom lenses, particularly large-range zooms, but may also be found in prime lenses, and depends on focal distance – for example, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 exhibits barrel distortion at extremely short focal distances. Barrel distortion may be found in wide-angle lenses, and is often seen at the wide-angle end of zoom lenses, while telephoto distortion is often seen in older or low-end telephoto lenses. Mustache distortion is observed particularly on the wide end of some zooms, with certain retrofocus lenses, and more recently on large-range zooms such as the Nikon 18–200 mm."

Well, bummer! This is the super zoom that I was thinking about. I still don't know if the distortion is significant, or if it can be noticed, or if PSE can remove it to the point of not being a noticible problem.

...and none of this matters if you use lens correction in either ACR or Lightroom.

[Designer]

Thanks, Momo. What is ACR?

[rosenberg]

Adobe Camera Raw

[FrankMi]

Adobe Camera Raw

A feature of Adobe Photoshop and also available in Adobe Lightroom.

[lorenzobix]

...and none of this matters if you use lens correction in either ACR or Lightroom.

i totally agree. if you use to post-process your images with CR or Ps, and if your question is only about distortion, there's nothing you can't correct by software.

[dr hal]

I find myself using a prime lens for low light photography and when I am travelling and going from indoors to outdoors back and forth. My favorite prime is a lumix 20mm 1.7 lens on my micro 4/3rds camera. In order to have such a fast prime, it would be very large and very expensive. When I started my photography hobby in 1957, we all had nothing but primes and the standard lens was a 50mm. We learned to zoom with our feet or to make use of different angles. We also only had Kodachrome with an ASA of 10. Sometimes because we had to compromise and think out the situations, we actually took better photographs.

Hal

[Glenn NK]

I've been away for two weeks - using my 24-105 for practically everything between Los Angeles and Hawaii. I used the 100 mm macro for a few shots in a botanical garden at Hilo, HI, and the TSE24 once for a special effect on the ship interior.

For all practical purposes, I could have left the primes at home. What I really needed was a 70-200 with a 2X extender for the marine life.

My granddaughter used the EFS 17-55 on the 30D body. She's nine and makes good use of the zoom - it's how I'm teaching her about framing the subject. This would be no fun with primes as I'd never be able to keep up to her.

My personal take is that there is a tool for each application that is usually better than other tools, although the difference may not be significant (this cuts both ways so to speak) and more and more often find that for convenience, the multipurpose tool (zoom) is becoming the choice.

Glenn

[Designer]

Thanks, Glenn for the reply. After all the helpful suggestions and valuable insight posted here, it has occured to me that aside from asking the wrong question, I also have "jumped the shark" concerning the basic premise, that being; Why would I purchase a DSLR to take advantage of one of its most obvious capabilities, that of interchangable lenses, and then try to do everything with only one?

The answer is, of course, that I do intend to use only one lens forever, even one that covers from 18mm to 200mm or longer. In several of my posts, I pointed out that it primarily during some travel experience, that I find it frustrating to have to change lenses several times per hour, and all that goes with that.

If I did most of my photography in my own backyard, or out of the back of my car, changing lenses would not only be much easier and safer, but there would be little interruption to the creative flow, as whatever subject I had a few minutes ago would still be available now.

I am learning much about not only lenses, but of the world of photography as well. Yesterday, I visited a well-known shop's website to see what was available and at what price. There are several mouth-watering lenses out there that would work beautifully, but that doesn't mean that I would never purchase some other specialized type of lens at some point in the future.

Now it comes down to the issue of money, which is nearly everyone's "issue". If we could all afford whatever we wanted, there would be no need to make compromises, and no hard choices. But that's life.

[Manfred M]

Let me disagree with some of the other writers here. There is no question, all things being equal that a modern prime will outperform a modern zoom lens, from a quality standpoint. I write this as a design engineer; and while I do not design optics, I understand the tradeoffs that are made in any design to achieve the desired results.

First of all, let’s define a “modern” lens, as many of the current prime designs are not modern. Lens manufacturers have put a lot of time and effort into zoom lenses over the past few decades and with the relatively mediocre sensor technology, improvements in fixed focal length lenses were not a primary goal at most of the major lens makers. In my view a modern prime lens incorporates three optical features found in the modern zooms:

1. Low dispersion glass;

2. Aspherical elements; and

3. Advanced anti-reflective coatings.

In the past few years, lenses, especially zoom lenses, have become the limiting factor as sensor size / quality have improved. If you look at any major feature film and television production; HD means more and more of these works are being shot using primes. Lenses by Zeiss, Cooke, Red and Leica dominate this market niche. If you look at the sensors used by the pro cameras, the 2k format is more or less the size of an APS-C sensor and the 4k is around the size of a full-frame sensor. I certainly see photographers starting to demand the same quality for their DSLRs. If you look at some of the pro lenses that Canon and Nikon have announced lately, there are pro-level primes amongst them.

A prime lens is designed to a fixed focal length and fixed maximum f-stop. If you eliminate the variables of zoom and give the lens designers precision moulded aspherical elements, modern ultra low dispersion glass and advanced anti-reflective coatings, you can fast, produce sharp, distortion free, compact designs. For a zoom lens design to come close to performance of a fixed lens, the designer has to add a lot of additional (expensive) glass elements to reduce distortion. This means more expense, more light loss as light has to go through more air / glass and glass / glass interfaces, where there is light loss. I look at my pro-level lenses, and they all weigh in at around 1 kg / 2.2 lbs. If you look carefully, especially in architectural shots, distortion and other aberrations are evident. Your pro-level zooms generally stay under 3x zoom factors to keep the distortion within acceptable limits.

Let’s also understand that camera manufacturers “cheat” a little. Any image that we see, even when produced from RAW files have gone through the image processor on the camera. Here problems that cannot be corrected optically are fixed in software. With the 5D Mark III, Canon has implemented lens profiles to fix lateral colour fringing problems; Nikon has done this for a number of years. Panasonic is using a similar “cheat” to correct other forms of distortion on their camera lenses. I don’t care if you call it interpolation, you are still seeing an image that is NOT what the sensor recorded and you are replacing true data that was recorded with one provided by an algorithm that is built into your camera. Less “correction” is required for a prime, as the lens designer can fix these issues optically.

That being said; I shoot both zooms and primes. I will sometimes head out with just a prime on my camera when I go shooting. You can’t be a lazy photographer when you are shooting a prime and you have to walk around and move in and out when composing. I find shooting this way sharpens my skills and makes me a less lazy photographer, even when shooting with zooms.

[Designer]

Manfred, thanks for the reply. Seems that you've done your research.

Speaking of "moving around", I once took a photographic seminar with a professional architectural photographer, and at one point, he led the class to a particular point to photograph a building, and the entire class simply shot from there. All but me. I stepped to the left about 15 feet, and got a much better picture. The instructor asked me where I had taken that photo (of which we could all tell he was envious), and I said; "just over there". The lesson being; we can all learn by stepping ouside the box.