The two images of the candle rings at Notre Dame cathedral are taken with my Sony 50mm prime at f2.8. The image of Rhian is taken at a less wider aperture of around f5.6 if I remember correctly.
A prime lens tends to be cheap these days thanks to the manufacturer having a fixed barrel length rather than a zoom one and are usually of a higher quality. Nikon and Cannon start their prices at £100, the Sony is a bit more expensive but this is due to supply numbers.
In the days of film SLR’s some of you will remember that there was no kit lens in the box and the camera would usually come with a fixed length wide prime instead. 50mm was the standard as it is widely believed that this is the closet angle to what the human eye sees. This focal length is still common but with ther conversion factor on todays non full-sized sensors it would be truer to use a 35mm prime to display what the eye sees.
A prime lens removes some of the laziness that technology has give us. As the photographer cannot zoom in to correctly frame a shot they are forced to move into the correct position in order to get the shot they want. This encourages a photographer to “see” the image before pressing the shutter button and can creat opportunities that would otherwise have been missed.
The wide aperture is great for defocused backgrounds on portraits with a messy background or for a special effect.
I will post more on primes later, but in short if you do not already own a prime lens you are probably missing out on a great lens and one that will force you to become a better photographer. And at todays prices you have no reason not to try, you wont be disappointed!
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