6 Reasons Why You Absolutely Need a Prime Lens

What exactly is a prime lens?

Most hobbyist photographers typically use a zoom lens, which lets you adjust the focal length within a certain range. In other words, you can zoom in on your subjects.

You probably bought your first camera bundled with a kit lens. These often have a focal length of 18–55 mm or 18–105 mm. That’s perfectly fine. With a kit lens you can zoom in and out between different focal lengths to frame your subject.

You can’t do that with a prime lens. If you have a 35 mm prime lens, you can only shoot at a focal length of 35 mm. Zooming simply isn’t an option.

We use a 35 mm and a 50 mm prime lens, for example.

If you’re wondering why on earth you’d want to limit yourself like that, we’ve got some really good reasons for you right here.

Advantages of a prime lens

Here are our six reasons for using a prime lens. There are more benefits, of course, but these are definitely the most important ones.

A prime lens makes you shoot more intentionally and helps you take better photos

With a zoom lens, everything is so easy. You stand somewhere and simply zoom in on your subject. With a prime lens, however, you have to use your legs to get the framing you want.

You have to walk toward your subject, maybe even cross the street or find a new perspective. This forces you to think much more carefully about your composition.

Sounds exhausting? It isn’t. We genuinely needed almost no time to adjust and quickly noticed the positive effects.

You think much more about your subject and stop firing the shutter so quickly without a second thought. The result: better photos!

With a zoom lens, it’s easy to take way too many shots of the same subject — zoom in a little here, back out a bit there — and in the end you’re sitting at your laptop picking the best one out of 50. Sound familiar?

With a prime lens, the decision-making shifts to the moment of shooting.

Not only does this make your photos noticeably better, it’s also more fun — and that’s what it’s all about, right? This is also one reason why prime lenses are seriously great for beginners.

The learning curve is steep in the best way, and especially if you don’t have much experience yet with composition, we can wholeheartedly recommend picking up a prime lens.

A prime lens is small and lightweight

A zoom lens is usually much heavier than a prime lens. An average zoom lens weighs around 500 to 600 grams. A prime lens often weighs only half as much and is of course much smaller too.

Especially when traveling, we sometimes hold the camera in our hands for hours at a time. It makes a world of difference whether you have a 600-gram lens or a 300-gram lens mounted on your camera.

When we’re out on photo walks in cities, we often bring only the prime lens these days. It makes exploring any city so much more relaxed.

A prime lens has incredible light-gathering power

Prime lenses are often extremely fast. That’s because they almost always have a very large aperture opening.

They let more light reach the sensor, which means you can still get great shots in poor lighting conditions without using a tripod or cranking up the ISO.

Most prime lenses have a maximum aperture between f/1.4 and f/2.8. You won’t find that kind of speed in a zoom lens, at least not in the lower price range.

For comparison: most kit zoom lenses have a maximum aperture of f/3.5. That is, quite literally, a night-and-day difference.

A prime lens lets you take stunning portrait photos

The larger the aperture opening, the shallower the depth of field. So the wide aperture of prime lenses has a second really interesting side effect.

With a wide-open aperture you can keep your subject in the foreground sharp while the background goes soft. This blur is called bokeh, by the way.

This is especially great for portrait photos. Here you can see two portraits of us taken with a prime lens.

A prime lens is affordable

Before the outcry starts: of course not all prime lenses are cheap.

As with any other type of lens, you can spend a small fortune on a prime lens if you want. But the entry-level models are genuinely affordable and more than decent in terms of quality.

You can pick up a beginner prime lens for as little as just over 100 euros. You’ll find a few examples at the end of this post.

You follow in the footsteps of Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson is probably one of the most famous photographers in the world.

He was a co-founder of Magnum agency, a pioneer of street photography, and always exclusively equipped with a 50 mm prime lens — or so the legend goes.

A reader pointed out to us that Cartier-Bresson did in fact use other lenses as well.

But the 50 mm lens was certainly his absolute favorite. If this great photographer got by with a prime lens, you can too, right?

Which prime lens should you buy? A quick guide!

Ready to get yourself a prime lens? Great!

Typical focal lengths

There are of course countless focal lengths to choose from. But the following three are particularly popular:

• 35 mm – The all-rounder: This is the “reportage focal length.” It roughly corresponds to the human field of view and is perfect for city trips, street photography, and landscapes where you still want some context in the frame. If you’re only bringing one prime lens, this is usually the one.
• 50 mm – The jack of all trades: The “normal lens.” It’s ideal for street details, travel portraits, or food shots at a restaurant.
• 85 mm – The portrait specialist: This focal length is perfect for isolating people or details from their background. The background melts into a beautiful bokeh, which instantly gives your portraits a professional look. When traveling, it’s great for capturing faces without getting uncomfortably close to people with your camera.

Important: The crop factor (APS-C vs. full frame)

Before you decide on a focal length, you need to know what kind of camera you have. The values listed above always refer to full frame.

If you have a camera with a smaller sensor (APS-C, as found in most Fujifilm cameras or many entry-level Sony and Nikon cameras), you need to factor in the so-called crop factor (usually 1.5x). That means:

• A 23 mm lens on APS-C looks like 35 mm.
• A 35 mm lens on APS-C looks like approx. 50 mm.
• A 56 mm lens on APS-C looks like approx. 85 mm.

In short: When we talk about 35 mm or 50 mm in our guides, we mean the look of the image. When buying, pay attention to whether the lens is calculated for your sensor type so you end up with the framing you expect.

Our prime lens recommendations

We’ve picked out our favorite lenses for the most common camera models. Just check out the article with our lens tips for your specific camera — you’ll find concrete prime lens recommendations there too.