How Many Lenses Do I Need?

The answer is one.

Of course almost nobody shoots with just one lens – well maybe the Leica film crowd with their super sharp 35mm lenses – but you really only need one lens.

So which lenses should this one lens be?

Generally speaking you can use your kit lens (that’s the small inexpensive zoom that may have come with your new digital camera). Sure it’s slow (in that the aperture won’t open up enough for some available light shots like in a dark bar) and it’s a variable aperture zoom (in that the widest aperture changes depending on where it’s zoomed to. This can be an issue when it comes to consistency of white balance, exposure and depth of field) but it works and some great photography has resulted from using kit lenses.

Next up is the “Nifty 50”. This is the inexpensive f/1.8 or so plastic 50mm lens (or equivalent depending on your sensor size) that most closely matches how our eye sees a scene in front of us. Not really a telephoto nor a wide angle the 50mm keeps the image cropped tight. It can create a nice depth of field with the subject in the foreground sharp and background nicely out of focus. Everyone should have a 50mm or its equivalent.

But what do the Leica people and a lot of other street photographers use? Often it’s a 35mm f/2 which is slightly wider than normal lens. Small and often super sharp (and expensive) a 35 mm lens opens up the perspective to include more of the street vibe in the viewfinder. While not a great portrait lens it is a great lens for shooting people in their environments and is a little more difficult to use than the 50mm which crops out a lot of the peripheral action along the edges of the frame.

Well if a 35mm is good for street photography how about a wider 28mm or even a 24mm? These are great street lenses but they have a couple of issues. The first is they can be a little too wide and capture a lot of action you might not have either seen or wanted in your image. You’ll get more garbage cans and other unwanted junk in the background that you missed when composing the image with a wider lens. The wider you go the more difficult it is to keep vertical lines straight. With wider lenses you’ll see telephone or hydro poles at the edge of the frame bowing in a little. Same for straight edges when it comes to buildings. Also and especially with the wider 24mm heads at the edge of the frame maybe distorted to egg shape which is not a good look.

So what about small telephotos like 85 mm or 90mm or 105s? Telephotos can create really lovely portraits whether on the street or in the studio. Often coming with apertures from f/1.8 to f/2.8 or so they are fast enough to shoot into the twilight when street shooting and wide open their shallow depth of field can create lovely soft out of focus backgrounds.

Telephoto lenses are also bigger lenses and can be too obvious and intrusive. They also cut out a lot of what makes street photography so much fun and that’s the action on the street. Not saying there’s anything wrong with using a longer telephoto but the can limit what you’re seeing and shooting.

So it comes down to this: In the old days a lot of master photographers shot with one lens on a large format film and they did alright LOL. So with our kit lens or nifty 50 or our bag of lenses we have so much equipment available to us that often it’s a great idea to have one simple camera that you understand inside out and one simple slightly wide lens for your street photography.