Hi I'm Doug McKinlay, and you're watching AdoramaTV. Wow, there is a crazy amount of
lenses out there. Different sizes, focal lengths, different costs. But how do you know which
one is for you? And more importantly how do you know which one is going to
help you improve your photography? Thats exactly what we're going to do today.
We're going to use one lens, in this case came in 50mm 1.4, the 'Nifty Fifty'.
AdoramaTV presents 'Stay Focused' with Doug McKinlay.
Most consumer DSLR cameras today come with a package lens.
It usually zooms from 18-55 mm or 24-105mm.
There's nothing wrong with these lenses but personally I think
that your photography can improve by leaps and bounds if you practice
photographic exercises using one fixed or prime lens. In this case, a 50mm 1.4.
Now, the 50mm is often called a normal lens because it has more or less the same field of view of a
human eye. Just be clear, though, I'm talking about the lens mounted on a full frame body like this
Canon 5D Mark III. For crop sensor cameras, the normal lens is close to 35 mm.
Be that as it may they're great little lenses. And for the 1.8 model, it can be had for about £75,
just over a hundred bucks. The 1.4 model is a little more but with the extra flexibility
and the aperture, it's worth the money and it's still not going to
break the bank but don't let the price fool you, they're well built and optically
very sound. Now the exercise of using one lens and one camera body is something I
still do today. Maybe not on an assignment but
definitely when I'm at home, shooting stock or personal work.
Now the reason why I do this, is it helps to really focus my mind on the images,
rather than relying on a lot of technology to get the picture. So what we
are going to do today is break the exercise down into two segments. First off
is a bit of street reportage followed by some cityscapes.
We don't want to just show off the versatility of a 50mm lens but we want to hide all
those things you need to think about in order to get good pictures. We want to focus
our minds and not rely on a big bag of tricks.
So street reportage. This part of the exercise is designed to tell a story.
To coax compelling pictures out of every day life, like we've just done at the English market.
Now, I keep going on about using the 'Nifty Fifty', which is fantastic but other lenses will
work too, a 24mm or 35mm, for instance. The point is, it should be a prime lens, nothing longer
than 50. We need to think about our compositions and these lenses help.
There should be nothing in the composition that shouldn't be there. No extraneous
material, no thinking that 'Oh, I''ll crop that out later on the computer'. That just doesn't
work for these exercises. And as for zooms, your only zoom are your legs.
Another great thing about the 50mm lens, even the 1.8 version, it's a great available
light lens. It has a big aperture, perfect for street photography. Another setting we're
going to employ on our camera body is to turn the motor up to single-shot. You want to
concentrate on the images as exercise is all about taking our time. What we want to
capture is what Cartier-Bresson used to say, 'The Decisive Moment.'
Landscapes and cityscapes are all about point of view and in that
regard, a little research goes a long way. I've always found that by returning to
places often and at different times of day or year, I get better pictures, just
because I know it better and because we're using a 50mm, research can be vital.
We need to find points of view that will enhance images taken with this lens.
So what we're going to do here is demonstrate a way to steady your camera without using a tripod.
Now across the water is a nice cityscape that I want to try and get. Now, because I don't have the
tripod, I've also got this really sturdy railing here.
My camera is not going to move at all. Now I'm going to set up,
and get my composition right, and what I see is that the front of the
camera's a little bit too low so I want to tilt it back a little bit so what I'm
going to use is a £1 English coin, and I'm going to slide it underneath the tripod mount that's
already fixed to the bottom of my camera, have another look. Now that's raising the front of the camera up
enough to get my framing and my composition correct. I've got it set on a two
second timer so I don't have to touch the camera once I've touched the button.
I've got a pretty slow shutter speed, about 1/15th of a second, because I'm going to try to blur the cars out
across the street there a little bit. Once I'm happy with the composition I just to depress the
shutter button, get my hands off the camera, being carful not to
drop the camera. And let the camera do the work.
So that's it from me. I'm Doug McKinlay for AdoramaTV.
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