What is a prime camera lens?

When Should You Use Prime Lens?

Prime lenses are highly favoured by filmmakers and photographers seeking top-notch optical quality and shallower depths of field in their images and footage. Prime lenses have set focal lengths and wider maximum aperture, allowing more light to enter. This results in sharp photos and videos with beautiful background blurring. Prime lenses also contain fewer optical components, which makes them focus faster. They are smaller and lighter hence making them versatile in various situations.

Thus, photographers or filmmakers often decide when to use prime lenses based on factors such as excellent image quality, shallow depth of field, and impressive low-light performance.

So, what are prime lenses used for? Well, they find their prowess in various domains of photography, such as:

• Portraits: Prime lenses emphasise the subject work better in portraits because of their wider maximum aperture and beautiful background blur. 
• Product photography: Prime lenses capture intricate details and maintain edge-to-edge sharpness, resulting in high-quality images of products.
• Landscape photography: Prime lenses provide sharpness across the entire image and optimal image quality, ensuring breathtaking vistas are captured with clarity and precision.
• Wildlife or sports photography: Prime lenses offer superior image quality, faster-focusing speed, and the ability to capture distant subjects with precision  impressive low light performance and better image quality in low light  , making them ideal for capturing fast-moving action and distant wildlife.

Reason To Use Prime Lens?

Prime lenses come with a lot of advantages, and knowing what they offer to you as a photographer can greatly impact the pictures you capture.

• Compact and Lightweight:

One of the main benefits of opting for a prime lens is its compact and lightweight nature. Although this may not apply to all prime lenses, many are designed to be small, lightweight, and easily portable, making them an excellent choice for situations requiring mobility.

• Better for Background Blur and Dim Lighting Conditions:

Prime lenses have much wider aperture settings at their disposal. As a photographer, this means that you can use prime lenses to achieve a shallower depth of field to better isolate your subject from a blurry background. Additionally, it makes shooting in low light easier by enabling a lower ISO or a quicker shutter speed in dimly lit areas.

• Sharp images:

Prime lenses typically have fewer elements and a fixed focal length, which allows for optimised image quality and reduced aberrations. Additionally, prime lenses often have wider maximum apertures, which contribute to increased sharpness, especially when shooting at larger apertures.

• Cost-efficient:

Prime lenses can be cost-efficient compared to zoom lenses, especially in terms of their optical quality and maximum aperture. In general, prime lenses offer excellent image quality and wider maximum apertures at a more affordable price than high-end zoom lenses with similar specifications.