Re: Thinking out loud: thoughts on cropping, zooms & primes
There’s a certain risk of over-thinking this question. ;-)
I wrote something quite long and deleted it. (Though savvy readers can find it if they are bored.)
I understand how easy it is to become overly focused on these sorts of questions, especially as a new photographer. A lot of the popular writing about photography (and far, far too much of the influencer stuff on the subject) implies that it is all about having the right gear. Gear is important, but it isn’t what photography is about. Great photographers make great work using just about any kind of gear you can imagine, using any and all brands, using primes and zooms, and working in a huge range of ways. In the end, it barely matters. what we care about is the vision of those photographers, something that is almost independent from the gear issues.
So, as hard as it is to resist the pressure to make photography all about the “right” gear and techniques, try to resist and then to focus as much effort of learning to “see” and developing that skill.
So, a few critical suggestions:
1. Spend more time looking at photographs than obsessing about gear. Get books, go to exhibits, follow a lot of good photographers (as differentiated from gear influencers) online.
2. Get some camera and make a lot of photographs. Don’t even bother debating things like whether you need a 100MP camera or not — you don’t at this stage, and you may never.
Photography is not about gear. It is about seeing. The latter skill is the one to focus on.
There’s no shame in cropping if it makes for a better final photograph. Almost every photographer does it, and historically photographers have done this throughout the history of the medium.
Sometimes a zoom is the best choice, for various reasons, including the fact that it can give you greater compositional control and maintain the full original image quality since you’ll avoid/minimize cropping in post. Sometimes a prime is a better choice, usually for functional reasons: you need a very large aperture, you need to go “small and light,” you plan to work quickly (e.g. street photography).
Some photographers and writers about photography try to turn these things into moral/ethical questions or tests of photographic manhood (or womanhood), where if you don’t do it their way (or the hard, awkward way) you aren’t a “real photographer.” For the most part, you can just ignore them.
Modern lenses of all types (primes, zooms, TS, macro, etc) are capable of producing excellent results. Pick them for their functional value for the photography you are doing and you’ll be fine.
Aug 19, 2025 at 09:30 AM
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