My View on Gear

When I started my photography journey I didn't know anything. I thought it was important to have every focal length covered, so I bought lenses to cover every focal length from 10mm all the way through 400mm. After lugging all these lenses around with me for a year or so, I found that some lenses never leave my bag meaning they don't make it to the end of my camera! On top of this, my back also started to yell at me for lugging around so much equipment.

I also found out that while zoom lenses are handy for composing a shot, they also can detract from my photography. Zooms convenience leads me to be a little less creative. Primes, since they have a fixed perspective, force you to think outside the box. They also tend to be lighter, sharper, faster, and smaller.

In lightroom, there is this feature where you can see what your most often used focal lengths are. For me this was a huge eye opener. While I have all this zoom range available to me, I found myself composing most of my shots at or around 35mm or 85mm. If I could go back a couple years I would have told me the newbie photographer to just buy a couple prime lenses. Less back pain, less money spend = more fun :)