6 ways to cope with only a prime lens

Stuck with only a prime lens to work with in your kit bag. Don’t see it as a limitation; take it as an opportunity to explore your creativity! Matt Golowczynski explains how…

Zoom lenses may offer the convenience of a variety of focal lengths in one neat package but there are many reasons to go for a prime lens.

If you’re never used one before you’re in for a treat; these are often sharper than zooms and a lot of them are smaller and lighter too, while their typically wide maximum aperture will allow you to take different types of images to those captured by a standard kit lens.

Nevertheless, there may be times where you find yourself uninspired or limited by having only one focal length to work with. Fear not – here are six ways to cope with only a prime lens.

SEE MORE: Best budget prime lenses – 8 top options tested and rated

1. Know your effective focal length

Using a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera will give you an effective focal length of 50mm but this changes if you use it on a camera with a smaller sensor.

On a Nikon D5500, for example, the effective focal length will be around 75mm, and on a Canon EOS 760D will be closer to 80mm, as the smaller sensors inside each effectively crop away the peripheries of the lens to bring you closer to the subject.

Why is this important? It impacts on the kinds of shutter speeds you can safely use if you’re to get sharp images.

While the size at which you view your images will also have some bearing on how sharp an image appears, as a general rule you should try to stick to 1/50sec and above for a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera and around 1/80sec and above when using such as lens on a camera with an APS-C-sized sensor.

The exception to this rule is when your camera or lens contains some form of image stabilisation, as this will safely allow you to use slower shutter speeds.

SEE MORE: Angle of view – how to choose the best focal length to frame your image

2. Find a new perspective

If you’ve had your eye on a particular prime lens for some time, you may have already thought about the types of images you would capture with it.

That is, after all, the main motivation for buying a new lens, to capture images you wouldn’t otherwise be able to.

But here’s an idea: once you’ve captured what you were planning, why not forget about it and find a fresh perspective?

Instead of focusing into the distance with your telephoto lens, why not find a vantage point and shoot the city from up high?

And that wide-angle lens you’ve been using may be great for landscapes, but it would also work brilliantly to capture a stunning interior or decorative ceiling.

Maybe you settled on a macro lens for close-up images but haven’t thought to use it for a portrait yet? Think outside the box and try to come up with something different.

SEE MORE: Camera angles – 5 ways to add impact with unusual perspectives

Setting a wide aperture reduces the depth of field, helping to separate the subject from the background

3. Make use of that wide aperture

One of the main benefits of prime lenses is that they tend to offer a wide maximum aperture relative to their focal length – so make sure you get the most out of it.

Instead of increasing your camera’s sensitivity, for example, try using a wider aperture to let in more light.

Doing so will mean you stand to introduce less noise into your images, which will save you time post processing your images later on.

Wide apertures are also great for achieving shallow depth of field, and getting up close to your subjects and making sure the background is way off in the distance will also help to maximize this effect.

Seek out subjects that would suit being isolated in this way and positing yourself so that you can achieve optimum background blur.

SEE MORE: Free aperture cheat sheet – when to small and when to go wide

4. Find your sweet spot

No lens is perfect and zoom lenses in particularly perform differently as focal length and aperture changes.

As prime lenses are optimised for only one focal length you’re likely to find better images quality overall, but, as with any lens, performance is likely to be better at a specific range of apertures.

If you capture the same scene at various apertures and look at the results close up, you’ll be able to see where sharpness is best and where vignetting – a darkening of the corners and edges of the frame – is at its lowest.

Make sure that your camera is securely positioned on a tripod and keep your focusing the same throughout.

If your lens has a maximum aperture of f/1.8 or f/2, the best performance may be around the f/5.6-11 range.

Once you get to the smallest apertures, you’ll find an effect known as diffraction softening images a little, so it’s useful to know which of the smaller aperture to use as a last resort.

SEE MORE: How to find your lens’ sweet spot

5. Break out of your comfort zone by challenging yourself

Once you’ve got used to the limitations of a single focal length, think about setting yourself a challenge inspire creativity. By restricting yourself in some way, It’s likely you’ll end up taking images you otherwise wouldn’t think to take.

You could, for example, pick a single aperture and commit to only take images on this setting.

A wide aperture will help you to isolate details from their surroundings and backgrounds when they are close to you, although you could mix this up with more distant subjects that would result in images with a greater depth of field at that same aperture.

A narrow aperture, meanwhile, will help you to think more about composition, as it’ll be harder to emphasise specific subjects.

An alternative challenge is choose a colour and spend a set amount of time – say a week, or month – only capturing subjects in that particular colour.

You could also apply this type of challenge in a different way, perhaps sticking to a single theme, material of group of subjects, constantly seeing how you can take a different image of something similar.

When you push yourself in this way, you may surprise yourself by what you end up with!

SEE MORE: 52 photography projects – 1 idea to try every week of the year

6. Zoom with your feet

Just because you can’t instantly zoom back and forth with a prime lens as you can with a zoom, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t get the shot you want. With a prime lens, you simply learn to zoom with your feet!

Physically moving around works well to discipline you and can help you to be more focused on achieving a particular image.

You’ll also develop a better sense of what you can fit into the frame before you raise your camera to your eye, which in turn helps you be more prepared in future.

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