It keeps coming up, this debate. In forums, in comment sections, sometimes just in conversation with other photographers: prime versus zoom. If you want to learn the truth about yourself, grab a prime lens, the saying goes. Eberhard Grossgasteiger said something similar in the interview. With a prime lens you actually learn to photograph, because you have to move, find your distance, work with what you've got. There's something to that. Still, I could never really commit to one side. And the longer I shoot, the clearer it becomes why: the most interesting images I've made almost always happened when I used a lens for something it wasn't meant for, or simply tried something and saw what happened – regardless of what it was "supposed" to do.
It all started for me with the 18-55mm kit lens, like it probably does for most people. Not particularly fast, not especially impressive, but exactly right for starting out. Back when I had no idea what an aperture actually did, it didn't matter one bit that the lens was neither one thing nor the other. It let me get to know my camera in the first place, and it served me well. I don't use it anymore today, but without that unassuming little thing, everything else probably wouldn't have properly started either.
My First Prime, for Entirely Different Reasons
My first prime lens, by the way, came much earlier than you'd expect, and for reasons that had little to do with the whole philosophy behind primes. The Canon 50mm was simply cheap, and noticeably faster than anything I owned at the time. I had no idea back then that a prime lens supposedly forces you to shoot more deliberately. I just wanted to capture more light and stop fighting dim interiors. Only much later did it dawn on me how well this lens actually delivers on everything the prime-lens crowd preaches. To this day I'd say: the price-to-performance ratio on this one is unbeatable, and I carry it with me almost always. When in doubt, that's what goes on.
Next came a used 17-40mm from Canon. The purchase, if I'm honest, wasn't owed to any particularly thought-through reasoning. I just wanted something from the L-series because it looked more professional. I've regretted that purchase somewhat in hindsight. I still use the lens for lack of a better wide-angle alternative, but I preferred the 24-105mm from the start. I bought that one used too, and it's been in constant use for pretty much everything ever since. Even if it's not the fastest of the bunch.
Big, Heavy, Still Loved
For heavier portrait use, a 70-200mm f2.8 joined the collection at some point, for the first time not from Canon but from Tamron – deliberately chosen with a wide aperture, because by then I understood better what advantages a larger opening actually brings. At some point it went missing. A new 70-200mm wasn't in the budget right away, so I needed an alternative: the Canon RF 85mm f2. Meant as a stopgap for portraits, it's won me over since.
For wildlife, a 75-300mm came fairly early on, though I had far too little experience at the time to really put it to good use. Later, for a second, more serious attempt at wildlife photography, a 150-600mm joined the lineup, again from Tamron. 300mm felt too limited by then, so I went straight for the monster. It's unwieldy and heavy, and unfortunately gets used too rarely. But when it does, it's not just for wildlife – it keeps popping up in completely different situations too.
Like a sunrise in the mountains, shot with the telephoto instead of a wide-angle. The result was far more striking than a shorter focal length would probably have produced – the sun looked enormous, almost menacing, nothing like the usual postcard sunrise. That wasn't planned; it just happened because the lens was mounted and I tried it out to see what would happen. Some genuinely good, interesting portraits have come out of the 150-600mm too – images that look nothing like what a classic portrait lens would have produced.
A Bad Buy, and an Experiment That Worked
Not every purchase has paid off. A Walimex fisheye was something I absolutely had to have, without really thinking the whole thing through. It's still sitting around somewhere, mostly forgotten. After two outings it was clear: not for me. A bit more research beforehand might have told me that it's a very specialised piece of glass for very specific purposes.
On the other hand, there are things that were never intended to work a certain way and end up working brilliantly anyway. For macro shots, I use an old Canon FD 50mm, mounted backwards on the camera with a reversal ring. That lens was never built for macro, and technically has nothing to do with my current camera system beyond the brand – and yet it keeps producing images that surprise me.
No Right, No Wrong
I think in photography we spend far too much time worrying about what we might need, or whether we've got the right tool with us. But in practice it keeps proving true: there's no such thing as wrong. You can shoot street photography at 200mm, even if everyone tells you it's unsuitable. You can shoot landscapes with a 50mm, even though better options clearly exist. You can mount a lens backwards and see things it was never designed to show.
Looking back, I rarely bought lenses because I had clearly identified a problem that needed solving. More often, I bought them because I thought they might improve my photography somehow. In hindsight, those were rarely the moments that improved my images the most.
The biggest leaps usually came from spending more time taking pictures, revisiting places, or simply becoming more familiar with the equipment I already had. New gear occasionally opened new possibilities. More often, it just gave me another thing to think about.
These days I pay conscious attention to wide apertures, and that costs noticeably more than it used to, back when I simply didn't care. The advice you hear so often, to just buy one good lens for your purpose, doesn't really work for me anyway. Because I don't have one purpose. I have constantly new ones.
I look at all of this far more relaxed these days. I'll almost certainly buy more lenses, simply because trying things out is fun in itself, regardless of whether a perfect image comes out of it in the end. And I'll keep using the lenses I already own for purposes they were never intended for.
The prime-lens crowd has a point about movement, light, and deliberate seeing. But in the end, for me, it's not either-or. It's simply: try it, see what happens, and let yourself be surprised by whatever image comes out of it.
