Walk into any camera shop … ooops, sorry … I was forgetting … there are now more of those in history books than there are in high streets. You used to trip over them all over the place, and you’d buy all sorts of photographic stuff from people who knew about photography. Car salesmen … same thing. They used to know about cars. Now they know about the options pack, the colours, the prices and where the demo car is.
Anyway, back to the point. You’d go into a shop to buy a camera and with it you’d buy loads of lenses. Then came zoom lenses which were a good idea in one way but a problem because they were slower and optically inferior. They’re better now, but there’s still nowt better than a good fixed focal length. So what’s the point of all these lenses then?
Well, the salesman told you that the wide angle lens was for “getting the whole building in” when you’re on your hols. And the telephoto is for “getting something a long way off nearer to you if you can’t get nearer to it.” That was the general idea anyway. And there’s an element of truth in it, if you’re a nature photographer or you like photographing the batsman from the other side of the Oval. The truth of course is that the kind of equipment you need for doing those things costs far more money than nearly everybody is willing to pay, and all the salesman really wanted to do was jack up his sale. Funny how he never knew what the standard lens was for.
So what’s the point of all these lenses. There is a point of course. It’s one of the first things a photographer thinks about when he’s visualising his final print, way before he opens his camera bag and sets up his tripod. Which lens? And the reason? Perspective. That’s it … in the vast majority of cases. Perspective.
You see, using a long focal length lens solely in an attempt to fill the frame with something miles away is either the territory of the specialist or of the man who can’t be bothered. The reason a non-wildlife photographer would use one, apart from knocking the background out of focus, is rather different. He’s interested in perspective compression. Foreshortening or bringing distant objects behind the key subject nearer to it, is what he wants to achieve. He may also wish to do the opposite by extending his perspective with a shorter focal length. The photographer must move the camera to the correct position in relation to the key subject within the image, and give proper consideration to his compression/extension requirement.
Simply zooming in and out, you’re just thinking about the key subject within the image. However, getting yourself in the right position and creating the perspective you want means you’re thinking about the whole picture.
By the way, the salesman kept very quiet about the vast possibilities of the standard lens. Perhaps he didn’t know, or perhaps it really was always about his commission.