Shooting street with a Zoom…. Part 1
Now this can be a contentious topic amongst street photographers so let’s get amongst it! The age-old debate about zoom vs. prime for street photography, or should I say “non-debate” since the conventional “wisdom” amongst the great and good of street shooters is that you shoot with a prime or nothing. Case closed. Or is it?
Now let’s get the boring stuff out of the way before we start deconstructing the myths around why a zoom or a telephoto lens - and by telephoto I mean anything 100mm and above - gets dismissed. For the purposes of this article I’m going to be talking about “standard” zooms (e.g. 24-70s) and even zooms that shoot up to 450mm which is where things get interesting!
Ok, the boring stuff; this zoom dogma was once based on some real technical limitations of zooms vs primes (inferior image quality for one) but now I challenge any photographer to pixel peep and pick apart an image taken by a quality zoom and when you’ve finished, first I’ll tell you to stop wasting your time and go shoot - and next if you still think there’s a significant lack of quality in the zoom, then pardon my French, but you’re talking shite or if I’m being generous you’re overstating the amount of fucks anyone gives about a few stray pixels in a compelling image.
With that out of the way, let’s get down to brass tacks and admit - as street photographers - that this is just dogma being repeated ad infinitum. If a zoom (like a 24-70mm) is good enough for Martin Parr then there’s a sliver of light coming through the open doorway that leads to the “Cult of Zoom”.
I’ll skip over the often used approach of a novice starting out with a kit zoom to find their ideal focal length, and even skip over the concept of the travel lens and the ubiquity of the 24-70mm lens in a lot of photographers’ kits. The former concept you can read about elsewhere and the latter relates to the fact that any photographer worth his salt should be able to:
A) handle a standard zoom, and
B) be creative enough to use it in a creative way if they want to.
Never mind this bollocks about “missing shots” because you’re flustered messing with your zoom range. Would we say this to a wildlife photographer? That they haven’t got the ability to catch a moment without bottling it when it comes to nut cutting time. I don’t think so, but I hear voices in our community say the same about street photographers.
The reality is: we miss shots for all sorts of reasons - the same mistake just as easily happens with a prime - just for a different reason - we missed because when the moment comes we’re just not close enough. And if a fellow street photographer doesn’t think someone can master and control a zoom like an absolute savant then they’re deluded. Practice always makes perfect, look to the incredible physical feats humans are capable of and then tell me they can’t use a zoom like an extension of their own body.
Suffice to say, this is all pre amble and misdirection - because I have no interest in talking about myths, dogma, gatekeeping, or any of that bullshit when it comes to the standard zoom. I don’t see that as worth discussing when we’re talking about such a small zoom range. What really gets my juices flowing are big time zooms or big time telephotos . And that’s exactly what we’re diving into in Part 2.
We’ll be talking about the Good: versatility, creative flexibility.
The Bad: slow lenses, the risk of too many focal lengths diluting the consistency of a body of work, and the perceived lack of connection with a subject in a photo taken with a long lens.
And the Ugly: horrendous back and neck pain from handling a giant camera lens, sticking out like a sore thumb strutting around with your phallic-like optics, being conspicuous on the street, and - my favourite of all - shooting street photography with fear in our hearts.
Here’s a few photos taken with my Fuji 18-55mm Kit Lens. They were all taken when I was either in a different town and wanted to have some options for the kinds of shots I wanted or times when in my home city I was constrained by time and again wanted some options and the zoom was used to provide me that. These were shot at a variety of focal lengths.
