Tag: speed

Prime Time [Encore Publication]: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens.  Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached.  Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses.  That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses.  While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead.  In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background.  Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject.  But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot.  Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses.  First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming.  While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage.  Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms.  This is a blessing especially to travel photographers.  Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality.  That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths.  And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms.  This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions.  This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography.  A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background.  The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image.  This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.


This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background.  It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect.  Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed.  Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images.  And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions.  Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background.  Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses.  My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses.  For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime.  Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses.  I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two.  Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions.  If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera.  I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.  This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens.  This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being.  I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days.  But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length.  It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes.  I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why?  Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear?  Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

 

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A couple of years ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several hundred photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Prime Time [Encore Publication]: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens.  Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached.  Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses.  That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses.  While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead.  In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background.  Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject.  But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot.  Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses.  First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming.  While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage.  Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms.  This is a blessing especially to travel photographers.  Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality.  That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths.  And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms.  This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions.  This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography.  A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background.  The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image.  This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.


This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background.  It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect.  Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed.  Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images.  And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions.  Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background.  Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses.  My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses.  For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime.  Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses.  I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two.  Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions.  If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera.  I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.  This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens.  This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being.  I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days.  But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length.  It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes.  I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why?  Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear?  Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

 

Prime Time [Encore Publication]: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens.  Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached.  Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses.  That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses.  While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead.  In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background.  Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject.  But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot.  Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses.  First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming.  While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage.  Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms.  This is a blessing especially to travel photographers.  Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality.  That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths.  And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms.  This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions.  This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography.  A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background.  The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image.  This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.


This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background.  It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect.  Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed.  Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images.  And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions.  Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background.  Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses.  My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses.  For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime.  Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses.  I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two.  Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions.  If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera.  I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.  This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens.  This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being.  I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days.  But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length.  It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes.  I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why?  Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear?  Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

 

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A couple of years ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several hundred photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Prime Time [Encore Publication]: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens.  Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached.  Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses.  That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses.  While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead.  In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background.  Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject.  But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot.  Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses.  First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming.  While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage.  Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms.  This is a blessing especially to travel photographers.  Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality.  That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths.  And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms.  This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions.  This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography.  A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background.  The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image.  This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.


This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background.  It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect.  Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed.  Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images.  And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions.  Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background.  Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses.  My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses.  For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime.  Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses.  I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two.  Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions.  If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera.  I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.  This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens.  This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being.  I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days.  But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length.  It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes.  I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why?  Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear?  Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

 

Prime Time [Encore Publication]: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens.  Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached.  Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses.  That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses.  While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead.  In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background.  Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject.  But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot.  Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses.  First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming.  While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage.  Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms.  This is a blessing especially to travel photographers.  Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality.  That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths.  And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms.  This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions.  This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography.  A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background.  The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image.  This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.


This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background.  It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect.  Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed.  Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images.  And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions.  Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background.  Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses.  My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses.  For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime.  Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses.  I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two.  Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions.  If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera.  I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.  This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens.  This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being.  I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days.  But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length.  It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes.  I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why?  Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear?  Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

 

Prime Time [Encore Publication]: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens.  Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached.  Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses.  That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses.  While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead.  In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background.  Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject.  But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot.  Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses.  First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming.  While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage.  Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms.  This is a blessing especially to travel photographers.  Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality.  That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths.  And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms.  This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions.  This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography.  A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background.  The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image.  This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.


This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background.  It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect.  Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed.  Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images.  And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions.  Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background.  Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses.  My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses.  For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime.  Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses.  I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two.  Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions.  If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera.  I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.  This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens.  This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being.  I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days.  But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length.  It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes.  I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why?  Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear?  Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

 

Prime Time [Encore Publication]: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens.  Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached.  Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses.  That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses.  While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead.  In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background.  Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject.  But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot.  Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses.  First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming.  While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage.  Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms.  This is a blessing especially to travel photographers.  Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality.  That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths.  And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms.  This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions.  This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography.  A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background.  The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image.  This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.


This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background.  It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect.  Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed.  Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images.  And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions.  Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background.  Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses.  My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses.  For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime.  Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses.  I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two.  Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions.  If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera.  I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.  This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens.  This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being.  I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days.  But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length.  It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes.  I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why?  Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear?  Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

 

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A few months ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several dozen photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A few months ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several dozen photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Prime Time [Encore Publication]: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens.  Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached.  Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses.  That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses.  While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead.  In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background.  Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject.  But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot.  Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses.  First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming.  While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage.  Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms.  This is a blessing especially to travel photographers.  Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality.  That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths.  And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms.  This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions.  This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography.  A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background.  The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image.  This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.


This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background.  It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect.  Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed.  Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images.  And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions.  Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background.  Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses.  My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses.  For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime.  Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses.  I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two.  Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions.  If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera.  I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.  This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens.  This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being.  I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days.  But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length.  It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes.  I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why?  Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear?  Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

 

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A few months ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several dozen photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Prime Time [Encore Publication]: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens.  Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached.  Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses.  That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses.  While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead.  In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background.  Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject.  But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot.  Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses.  First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming.  While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage.  Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms.  This is a blessing especially to travel photographers.  Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality.  That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths.  And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms.  This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions.  This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography.  A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background.  The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image.  This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.


This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background.  It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect.  Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed.  Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images.  And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions.  Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background.  Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses.  My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses.  For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime.  Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses.  I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two.  Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions.  If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera.  I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.  This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens.  This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being.  I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days.  But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length.  It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes.  I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why?  Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear?  Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

 

Prime Time [Encore Publication]: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens.  Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached.  Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses.  That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses.  While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead.  In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background.  Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject.  But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot.  Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses.  First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming.  While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage.  Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms.  This is a blessing especially to travel photographers.  Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality.  That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths.  And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms.  This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions.  This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography.  A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background.  The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image.  This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.


This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background.  It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect.  Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed.  Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images.  And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions.  Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background.  Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses.  My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses.  For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime.  Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses.  I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two.  Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions.  If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera.  I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.  This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens.  This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being.  I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days.  But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length.  It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes.  I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why?  Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear?  Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

 

Prime Time: Why a prime lens is often better than a zoom

Most photographers make most of their images using a zoom lens.  Aside from smartphone cameras, which typically feature a fixed focal-length lens, nearly every camera today comes with a zoom lens attached.  Most point-and-shoot and compact cameras do not have interchangeable lenses, so the zoom lens that comes with the camera is the only choice, while most mirrorless and DSLR cameras have interchangeable lenses.  That means these more advanced cameras offer the choice of using a broad range of different lenses, including both zoom and prime (fixed focal-length) lenses.  While many photographers own one or several prime lenses, from my observation the vast majority shoot nearly all of their images using one of their zoom lenses instead.  In today’s post, I make the case for using prime lenses in many, or even most, shooting situations.

This portrait of a Delhi girl outside India’s largest mosque is lovely and effective, but because I didn’t have time to change lenses and was forced to use my slower walkaround zoom lens, the depth-of-field is quite deep, making for a somewhat distracting background.  Buy this photo

Zoom lenses have one clear advantage over prime lenses: they offer a range of focal lengths, which helps the photographer compose the image without having to walk closer to or farther away from the subject.  But even here I would argue that in most cases it aids creativity to “zoom with the feet,” or walk around to compose the best shot.  Even when this isn’t possible, a high-resolution digital image can easily be cropped in post-processing to achieve the composition the photographer had in mind.

But prime lenses have many advantages over zoom lenses.  First, they are nearly always sharper and generally higher quality than zooms, because they don’t require extra internal glass elements to enable the zooming.  While zoom lenses have improved in optical quality over recent years, it remains the case that prime lenses offer a quality advantage.  Second, prime lenses are typically smaller and lighter than zooms.  This is a blessing especially to travel photographers.  Third, primes are less expensive than zooms of similar optical and build quality.  That means you can buy two or three different prime lenses for the price of one zoom lens covering a similar range of focal lengths.  And fourth, primes are usually faster (i.e., offer a wider maximum aperture size) than zooms.  This last point is a big advantage for many types of shooting, because a wide aperture (small F-number) lets in more light, allowing use of faster shutter speeds and lower ISO settings in low-light conditions.  This is a real boon for nighttime and astro-photography.  A wide aperture also results in shallow depth-of-field, which emphasizes the main subject by softening the focus of the background.  The best lenses offer a pleasing “bokeh”, or pleasant blurring of the out-of-focus elements of the image.  This effect makes for extremely effective portraits as well as wildlife images, but is also useful for other types of photography.


This portrait, made with my current favorite lens, an 85mm f/1.8 portrait lens, offers very sharp focus on the subject’s face and pleasing bokeh, or soft blurring of the out-of-focus background.  It would not have been possible to make this portrait using a zoom lens because the maximum aperture would be too small to achieve the soft background effect.  Buy this photo

I shoot a lot of performing arts events (dance, music, theater), which typically take place indoors where the light is very dim and frequently feature fast-moving action requiring a fast shutter speed.  Using a prime lens allows me to shoot at an action-freezing shutter speed without having to use extremely high ISO settings that introduce noise into the images.  And again, the pleasantly blurred backgrounds help set off the very sharp main subject for a striking overall effect.

I captured this image of a samba dancer at a dress rehearsal under very low-light conditions.  Using my 85mm f/1.8 prime portrait lens, I was able to freeze the motion using a fast shutter speed, keep the ISO at a reasonable level to avoid noise, and render a nice soft background.  Buy this photo

I would estimate that most enthusiast and professional photographers shoot about 80% of their images using zoom lenses.  My own usage pattern is the opposite, that is, I shoot about 80% of my images using prime lenses.  For some purposes, a zoom lens is still required, but it’s surprising how often we can achieve better results using a prime.  Prime lenses are smaller, lighter, less expensive, higher quality, and faster than zoom lenses.  I encourage you to dig out your prime lenses if you have a few, or borrow, rent, or buy one or two (remember, they are much less expensive than comparable zoom lenses) and try shooting with them exclusively, or at least much of the time, for a week or two.  Compare your images made with the primes vs. the ones made with zooms and come to your own conclusions.  If you’re like me, you’ll find that a prime lens is the right tool for most photographic jobs.

Here are my three favorite prime lenses, a “normal” lens, a medium telephoto or “portrait” lens, and a wide-angle lens:

If you pack only one prime lens, it most likely will be a “normal” lens, that is one with a focal length of about 50mm for a full-frame camera or about 35mm for a crop-sensor camera.  I carry the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens.  This is the one I use in very low-light situations or to get a really shallow depth-of-field.

I think my current favorite lens of all (including primes and zooms) is my Nikon 85mm f/1.8G lens.  This is a classic portrait lens and provides a flattering perspective and great image quality when your subject is a human being.  I use it for nearly all of my portrait work these days.  But this lens also shines for nature and action photography where you don’t need a really long focal length.  It renders really lovely “bokeh”, or the soft quality of the out-of-focus parts of the image.

A wide-angle prime lens can be useful for landscapes, architecture and interiors, and astro-photography, among other purposes.  I like the Nikon 24mm f/1.8.

What are your preferences regarding use of prime vs. zoom lenses, and why?  Please share your experiences in the comments box.

Want to read other posts about gear?  Find them all here: Posts on Gear.

 

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG [Encore Publication]: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

A few months ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that since then, I have executed several dozen photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

Followup–To JPEG or Not to JPEG: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

Two weeks ago, I published the following post in which I explained why I was transitioning away from shooting RAW+JPEG to shooting only in RAW format.  Just a quick follow-up to share that over the last two weeks, I have executed more than a dozen photo shoots in RAW mode only, and I also have gone back to nearly all my archives of older shoots and deleted all the JPEG files where the same image was also stored in RAW format.  What are the results so far?  I’ve recovered about 20% of my hard disk drive’s space, so everything now runs faster on my PC and I’m not always struggling to free up enough space for each day’s new shots.  Furthermore, my shoots are going more smoothly because I don’t need to wait for the camera’s buffer to clear as it attempts to write both RAW and JPEG versions of each image to the memory card, and because I don’t need to change memory cards nearly as often.  And I’m happy to report that thus far I have had absolutely no issues as a result of making this major change to my workflow.  If you’re still shooting RAW+JPEG, now may be a good time to examine whether the extra burden is worthwhile in your own workflow.  The original article from two weeks ago follows.

=======ORIGINAL POST FROM FEB. 4, 2017=======

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.

To JPEG or Not to JPEG: For many RAW shooters there is no need to use RAW+JPG

Regular readers of To Travel Hopefully already know that I always shoot in RAW mode, and most likely you do, too.  I’ve written repeatedly about the major advantages of RAW vs. JPEG format.  For a refresher, here’s a good summary post on the topic: Post on RAW Mode.  I concluded this previous post with a recommendation to shoot in RAW+JPEG mode, where the camera writes out the image data in both its native RAW format and in the familiar but problematic JPEG mode.  Here’s the relevant paragraph from that older post:

I recommend shooting in RAW+JPEG all the time, unless you know you will need the slightly faster shooting speed or extra storage space of JPEG alone.  Doing so will give you the best of both worlds: a quick and easy JPEG to share right out of the camera, and the much more detailed data in the RAW file from which to bring out the nuances in color, texture, and exposure later during post-processing.  If you use JPEG alone, you’ll be throwing away image information you may wish you had later.

But right now, I’m in the middle of making a major transition in my workflow.  I’ve stopped shooting in RAW+JPEG mode and am now storing my images only as RAW files.  Moreover, I’m cleaning up my PC’s hard drive by revisiting many of my directories from shoots over the past few years and deleting all of the original JPEG files (obviously, I am keeping the JPEGs that I exported from Lightroom after post-processing the original RAW files).

Why would I do such a thing, you may ask?  There are several major reasons:

  • I don’t end up using the JPEG files: Shooting in RAW+JPEG had become a crutch for me.  I had been using this mode because I was afraid of not having JPEG versions of all my images, in case I decided post-processing the RAW files was too much work or if I wanted to share certain images right out of the camera.  But I’ve been realizing that I never share JPEGs right after shooting.  They just don’t look good enough for most professional work, so I need to post-process the good ones before delivering them to anyone.  You may have clients who need to see some rough JPEGs immediately after the shoot.  I know some wedding photographers who promise this immediate preview to their clients.  But I don’t have this requirement, so the JPEGs were just sitting on my hard drive, unused, forever.  And it’s so easy to export quick-and-dirty JPEG files from Lightroom shortly after the shoot.
  • Duplicate JPEG files slow down shooting: The RAW+JPEG mode tells the camera to write out two different formats for every image you shoot.  This slows down your shooting by bogging down the camera’s processor, and it also fills up the camera’s buffer more quickly, requiring a disruptively long wait to resume shooting.  It also fills up memory cards more quickly.  While JPEG sizes vary from image to image due to compression algorithms, I find they average about 1/3 to 1/2 the size of my camera’s RAW files.  That’s a lot of extra space on the memory card, so I have to stop shooting to change cards more often.
  • Duplicate JPEG files take up a lot of disk space: Even though my main laptop PC has a 1.5 TB hard disk drive, I find it is always filling up, which considerably slows down workflow and requires bothersome housekeeping to clean up.  Storing unneeded JPEG versions of my many tens of thousands of images wastes a lot of disk space.
  • Those JPEGs slow down workflow: Even though Lightroom has a useful option to import only the RAW version into your catalog, and it keeps track of the duplicate JPEG version of the same image, having both files on your hard drive still slows down post-processing and image maintenance tasks.

I know that some photographers really do need to have JPEG files of their images.  They may be delivering images right out of the camera via a wireless connection to a cloud server that supports only JPEG format.  They may not get to post-processing for some time after the shoot and want to remember what the image looked like with the camera’s settings applied (although here one should note that Lightroom and other RAW viewers will access your camera’s settings via the thumbnail image embedded within your image’s RAW file).  They may really love their camera’s black-and-white conversion tool or other in-camera editing tools, which work only with the JPEG format.  There are quite a few situations in which you may truly require a JPEG version of your images.  But I haven’t encountered these situations in my own recent work and don’t expect to in the foreseeable future.

So, that’s the backstory on why I’m moving from shooting RAW+JPEG to RAW only.  I’m even taking the drastic step of going back to recent shoot directories on my PC and deleting the original JPEG versions of the images.  I’ll report back in a few weeks to provide an update on how this works out for me.  In the meantime, if you’re shooting in RAW+JPEG mode, you may also want to think about whether doing so genuinely helps your workflow or simply is wasting your resources.

Do you shoot RAW+JPEG, RAW only, or some different format?  Why?  Please share your experiences here.

Want to read more posts about photographic techniques?  Find them all here: Posts on Techniques.