lens envy

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the virtues of buying a lens separately from an SLR camera body in my Canon Digital Rebel XT Buying Guide. I've been noticing that my recommendations for good starter lenses are rather small compared to the lenses I see people carrying to events. First at the Cherry Blossom Festival and most recently this past Sunday at the Digital Days workshop, I'm seeing people, many of them, with monstrous zoom lenses.

It seems like everyone has a case of lens envy. People are walking around with lenses that cost well over $1000, protrude 6-12 inches out from the camera body, and weigh 5-10 pounds, but for what?! I truly think this is a case where consumers are feel that bigger or heftier is better. It may be the case some of the time, but it's obvious that a fair number of the consumers who own this equipment haven't a clue about how to use it, let alone why they even have it.

In general, most consumers, including myself at one point, feel that more zoom is always better, that way one can take pictures of faraway things. This is sort of a lazy mentality though. Instead of walking around, taking a few steps to get a little closer, and maybe finding a more interesting shot along the way, people are opting to stand in one spot and just use the zoom to bring the scene closer to them.

Although massive zoom lenses are useful in certain situations, mainly sports, wildlife, and high-end fashion photography, super telephoto zoom lenses have some drawbacks though. Technically, many of the telephoto zoom lenses tend to have small maximum apertures and slow shutter speeds. Minor camera shake (even by pressing the shutter release button) will cause the picture to blur if lighting conditions are less than noon sun bright. Some of the newer telephoto zooms correct for camera shake by building image stabilization into the lens (and paying more for it). Image stabilization dampens motion introduced by the photographer, but what about motion introduced by the subject? If the subject moves even just a bit, the picture will still blur. Maybe not a problem in a studio, but it's a major problem in the real world. The wind blows, animals and people move.

I think even more important than the technical reasons, telephoto zoom lenses put significant distance between the photographer and the subject. I noticed this during the workshop when we had a practice session with still lifes and models. Everyone was standing 5-10 feet back from the still life and 10-20 feet back from the model. Then there was me and my sis, blocking their view by crouching or standing within arms reach of the model because neither of us had zoom lenses on our cameras. In my philosophy, part of photography is understanding the subject: observing, relating, finding that element that is interesting that everyone else has overlooked. You just can't do that when you're standing ten feet back.

Save yourself some money, resist lens envy.

Now, just for kicks, a photo taken with my short lens from the workshop… This is the first and probably last time I'll be doing studio-type photography—it really wasn't my element. I was experimenting with aperture settings on my camera and the only interesting thing about this photo is the motion blur on the model flutist's fingers on her left hand.