On Aug 2, 2010, at 12:13 PM, CheekyGeek wrote: > In my humble opinion, a zoom lens is not the equivalent of moving > one's feet. The distance from the subject to the film plane (sensor) > is completely different from the choice of focal length needed to crop > the image. And both of those impact the depth of field at a particular > aperture. The biggest disservice that zoom lenses have done to the > photographer is make him think less about moving his feet (location).
I spent a week or two shooting almost exclusively with my 20/1.8 and that taught me a lot about focal length selection. In short, the shorter the lens, the more prominent the background will be, both in depth of field, and the number of things visible. Zoom lenses, I have found, are invaluable in a situation where your subject is moving around, but you cannot. Photographing in my dojo, there is basically one place that I can stand, where I'm not shooting directly at some windows that'll blow out the background with glare. And apart from that, it would be very disruptive for me to be constantly moving around trying to get the right distance away from the people practicing. Unfortunately, my only reasonably fast zoom, just isn't long enough. What I really need is an f/2.8 28-105 on an aps, so I end up shooting a lot at 50 and cropping. > > This is not to say that cropping after the fact might not improve > things. Cropping is not a sin. Nor is using zoom lenses for that > matter. But I dislike it when people (subconsciously) think that they > can do the same thing by zooming as they can by moving closer to the > object. They are two different things. Exactly. That is a sin of laziness that I have to fight when I'm shooting with a zoom, I just zoom to get the primary subject at the right size, rather than deciding whether I want more background, in which case I'd go wider and get closer, or if I want to isolate the subject, in which case I should go longer and step further back. > > Darren Addy > Kearney, NE > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- Larry Colen [email protected] sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
