Photogdog Loc: New Kensington, PA

I have both the Canon 24-70mm f2.8L & 100-400mm f4.5-5.6L IS USM zoom lenses. I use them on my 5D MKII & 7D. The optical quality is ABSOLUTELY excellent with both.

Primes are VERY good but there are times when your feet just don't allow you to walk the distance to your subject.

Crwiwy Loc: Devon UK

The cost factor is certainly true - although there are many on UHH who give the appearance of having unlimited funds and seem quite happy and able to purchase the latest pro body because their old one is over a year old!

Back to zooms though, I have two DVD's of professionals - Karl Taylor and Tim Mantoani - in studio fashion shoots and both appear to be using zoom lens (with large apertures).

mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

It depends which zooms and which primes you are talking about.

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

:thumbup: Thank you for that, I think you just answered the OP's question best!

wj cody Loc: springfield illinois

nope, you are not lazy. it's cheaper for companies to make zoom lenses rather than prime lenses, so the market is awash with every combination of zoom you can think of.

prime lenses are simply better at their given focal length than a zoom lens. i've heard the argument that my new zoom lens tests better than your prime. my response is always to come back to me 2-3 years from now and try to make that claim. the physics of optics and laws of mechanics mitigate against a superior zoom.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

Well, it certainly is NOT cheaper to make a GOOD zoom - and today at this moment - of the available lenses out there, there are zooms that equal primes in their range - but, they are more expensive than a single prime - but cheaper than multiple primes !

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

:thumbup: :thumbup:

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

MUCH cheaper than multiple primes. :thumbup:

It's a trade-off. One or two lenses for the shoot... or 4-5.

And you WILL miss a shot or two or three changing lenses; that's just a fact of life! :lol:

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

Let's see

Looks like you are right on the money!

Just sticking with one manufacturer for comparison:

Sigma 18 – 35 1.8 constant $799

Vs.

20mm 1.8 $629, 28mm 1.8 $449, 35mm 1.4 $899. = $1,977.

I know the 18 – 35 is APS-C and the others are full frame lenses, but to cover the same range with as close to the same max aperture, you have to. It didn't seem fair to use a larger zoom range since the aperture variation would be so great and the number of primes so large.

CHOLLY Loc: THE FLORIDA PANHANDLE!

Yep. :thumbup:

And if you don't really HAVE to have the absolute BEST image quality, you can patch things up in post processing... though doing that for 200 keepers out of say 800 shots WILL be time consuming.

Still, if you are getting paid for it... then it's worth it, and time IS money. ;)

raysass Loc: Brooklin, On, Canada.

So why do you have the 100mm prime?

wj cody Loc: springfield illinois

i grant that some zooms are equal to a specific prime, but not all primes in all ranges. in re: missing photos due to changing lenses, never had that problem - from cycling on the boards in the LA Olympics to the old soviet near east. knew what i was going to get, planned for it and got it.

i think this goes back to the (very old, and am tired of it as you) film vs digital issue. film is limited in that you are using a camera, not a computer with an attached lens. now, please, i'm not being harsh or condescending.

but, most of the image making world is relying on the bits and chips to make up for imperfect human activity. i doubt i've ever taken 10,000 photos in my entire life, and yet users today blandly speak of 200, 800, 1,000 images taken in single situations.

this to me, sad to say, speaks of lack of preparation. again, letting the onboard and desktop computers be the conveyences rather than craft and expertise. the electronic ability to move lenses in and out of focus, determine "perfect exposure", do not good images make. but it does allow users to avoid the addmittedly hard and difficult chore of actually learning. with image making driven by the electronics industry, rather than users, everything begins to look like a drive to the bottom.

i, and most likely you, judging from your photo, have spent a lifetime learning the craft of photography. and yes, i have wandered far afield here. but the images i'm seeing indicate a paucity of expertise and mediocrity i've never before seen. and it concerns me.

one salient concern is the fact that the ubiquitous instruction books have gone from 42 pages m(film) to over 250 pages (digital). one deals with basics, the second with computer programming. something most users are not comfortable with. the manual does not get read. the user puts the camera on automatic and begins firing off the shutter button. and never learns a damn thing.

maybe since aps sensors are so popular, kodak should reintroduce aps film cameras. i mean, what the hell?. why did anyone accept that? why did anyone buy a digital camera before anything came out in full frame?

and of course the answer was, you don't have to know anything and will get perfect exposures wthout negatives and all those paper prints. and that's exactly what we now have. lousy images.

photos taken by amateurs in the 1940's and 1950's were a hell of a lot better, with their unmetered kodak folding bellows cameras than what is being seen now. and the reason for that is simple, they knew what they were doing and did not have to go through 80 rolls of film to document a family event.

even though they were amateurs, the understood the basics of light and composition. one of my teachers used to say that light was 10 percent of photography and if you didn't know how to read that, you had no business with a camera. elitist? i don't think so. he simply cared about making a good photograph.

so, if i've bored you, made you angry or upset, i apologise. but i can not let go the degradation of image making that i'm seeing today. the highly manipulated images lack credibility and one cannot determine what was actually seen and what the image communicates.

anyway, thanks for your patience. i'll now probably be "drummed out of the corps", ah well.

amehta Loc: Boston

It seems that you're talking about primes from the perspective of someone who chooses to shoot with zooms. As someone who chooses to shoot primes, I don't worry about covering the same range. I pick out the focal lengths which work well for me and shoot those. So I have replaced 4 zooms (17-35mm, 28-70mm, 70-200mm, 200-400mm) with 4 primes (14mm, 24mm, 85mm, 300mm). The primes are all expensive, comparable to the zoom they replaced, but also faster by 1-2 stops, except the 14mm, but that's wider than the zoom. There are very few situations when I want to use more than 2 of the primes for a set of shots.

As far as "missing" a shot while changing lenses, that's really not an issue. I'm not trying to capture every moment, and there's nothing so spectacular going on just once that I have to get. If I was a photojournalist, it would be different, and I might go for the 28-300. But I'm not, I'm a hack. Or portraits, wildlife, and landscapes, primes work out just fine for me.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

To keep from carrying the larger/heavier 100-400 ..... although, the 1-4 does make a good macro with a little help.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

I'm afraid you would be in the minority here ........