In the need of lenses?

[Felix K.]

I'm an amateur reading here with great interest and curiosity. Now that the new prime lenses are out (with the first people ordering eagerly - nice!) you can still read, that they would like to have an additional 18mm oder even 14mm lens.
Question to all you professional CPs:
Is that because they/you think:

- "without it, I will have to make compromises
[because
a) I can't get the framing like I want it to be or
b) I will have use a slower lens (resulting in critical low light situations)],

or because you think:

- "MY PRECIOUS!!!" :yikes:

Explain to an amateur pretty please!

 

[Matt Uhry]

Most DP's consider an 18mm to be wide end of a prime lens set. I've gone out on 100's of shoots with an 18mm as my widest lens and survived. On most shoots I would feel like I did not have enough wide options if a 25mm was the widest I carried.

As far as having an 85mm but not a 100mm you can usually move in closer ( or zoom a little in post ) ! If you need to go wider and don't have it you are screwed, you have to cut a hole in the wall or floor, and people get mad if you do it.

Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com

 

[Charles Angus]

Because of a)., primarily. But lens choice is about more than framing - an 18mm has a different perception of space than a 25mm with the same subject framing. The wider the lens, the more background you get (for the same subject framing).

 

[Felix K.]

@Matt: Thanks for the information and the great photograph! Man, whoever had to clean up afterwards, I don't envy him

 

[Florian Stadler]

I find myself shooting many scenes with 3 lenses: wide, medium, tight. Usually 18 32 50 or 25 40 100 or 14 25 40 lend themselves to the scene and shooting environment.

Other times, entire projects beg to be shot with a single lens, like a 25, 27 or 32