| The Three Lens Wedding |
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| Written by Paul Gero | |||||||
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This past weekend's wedding of Natalie and George took place at her parent's lovely and historic home in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The weather early in the day was a bit warm, but by late afternoon and the nighttime reception, it could not have been more perfect. Because of the intimate nature of the wedding, I decided to take a photographic approach that I have been leaning to more and more in my wedding work - that is the practice of restricting my use to 3 primary lenses: 35mm f1.4L, 50mm 1.2L, and 85mm f1.2L II all Canon lenses. The main cameras were a Canon 5d m2, a Canon 5d, and a Canon 1v for a small selection of film images. Why limit yourself to three lenses? I find that the use of these lenses imposes a discipline in seeing and also keeps me from getting too wide as might be the case when using anything beyond 35mm on a zoom or even a wide prime. When I used those wider zooms, I found it was really easy to just turn the zoom ring rather than move - the primes force you to physically move. I simply see the world in these focal lengths, so when I come upon a scene, I am instinctively parsing the space for those three lenses even before I photograph. Knowing three focal lengths so well just makes you a faster, more intuitive photographer. And, for a moment-based photographer, that is important. The beauty of these lenses is that because they are prime lenses, there is less distortion that one finds on the zoom lenses, even the very fine L series zooms. With wide angles you have to be especially careful of people on the edges of the frame. I want to minimize any of that distortion of the body whenever possible, so I try to go no wider than 35mm. The 24-70 zooms by both Nikon and Canon are fine optics and often the go-to lens for the wedding industry but for me those lenses are heavy, and compared to the fast apertures of the L series primes, they are relatively slow. Please Log In or Sign Up for a FREE Silver Account to access the rest of this article or others on ProPhotoResource.com | |||||||
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