A zoom lens is never wide or long enough

May 9, 2011 @ 11:12AM

A zoom lens is never wide or long enough

Turns out, 67% of the time, I photograph fully zoomed.

By Haje Jan Kamps

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I was taking photos at Angkor Wat in Cambodia yesterday with my Olympus E-P1, and noticed something about my pattern of taking photos: Most of the time, I'm taking pictures either fully zoomed in, or fully zoomed out. It was annoying me, because I figured that showed a weakness in the lens: Basically, it was never wide - or long - enough for the photos I really wanted to take.

Then I continued thinking, and I was wondering - isn't that true whenever I take photos with a zoom lens? So I thought up a little test - by going through my Lightroom library and doing a spot of statistical analysis.

Compact cameras: 81% fully zoomed in or out

When I analysed my images, I realised that my compact camera images, especially, were prone to shooting at full zoom. 75% of my photos are shot fully zoomed out - which makes sense, and is probably a conscious choice: All my compact cameras have variable aperture lenses, so they are brighter when it's at full wide angle. I didn't realise quite how often I shoot at fully wide, however, and a full three-quarters of my images were a surprise to me.

I guess a corollary of the above explains how only a measly 6% of my compact camera images are taken at full zoom.

SLR images: 62% fully zoomed in or out

The difference for SLR images was slightly less than that for my compact images. 44% of the photos are taken fully zoomed out, 18% are shot at full zoom, and a more reasonable 38% are taken somewhere in between.

Of course, I make no secret of my love for prime lenses - and a huge amount of the images in my library are taken with primes. I decided to exclude them from the statistical data, but if they were included, obviously the results would have been skewed significantly towards 'at the end of the zoom range'.

But what does it mean?

The idea I had is that whenever I shoot at one of the extremes of my zoom lens, it means that I brought the wrong lens. If I was shooting with a 28-135mm lens, and 'perfect' exposure was at 44mm, I would shoot at 44mm, right? Similarly, if I shoot at 30mm or 130mm, I'm still inside the zoom range, so I chose to shoot at that particular focal lengths. When I end up taking pictures at the extremes of the zoom lens, it probably means that I didn't choose the focal length: it was made for me, by the focal length limitations of the lens.

I have no idea if I'm a typical photographer or not, so I don't know if my finding is universally applicable, or if it's just a quirk in my photo style, but none the less...

It dawned on me then, that I'm often more frustrated when I use a zoom lens than when I'm shooting with a prime. Perhaps the main difference is that when I'm taking photos with a prime lens, I've grown used to the limitation - it takes the challenge of zooming out of the equation, and if the 'perfect' focal lengths is outside the very limited 'range' of my prime, I am happy with the fact that I made this choice. Whereas when I'm taking photos with a zoom lens, the limitations are my own dumb fault, for picking the wrong zoom range.

Just goes to show, I suppose, that sometimes you can feel more free with greater limitations than with greater freedom...

Methodology

In my library of more than 15,000 photos, a lot of them were taken with my Canon Powershot S95 in an underwater housing. Because the underwater housing doesn't have any zoom settings, they were per definition taken at fully zoomed out, so that discounted nearly 1,000 photos from this data. In addition, a lot of my photos are taken with prime lenses - 50mm or 100mm primes, mostly - so I took them out as well (although some might argue that a prime lens is per definition 'fully zoomed out', and could be counted). I then wrote a little script that checks whether each photo is taken within 1mm of the extremes of the zoom range of each lens. (so, for a 70-200mm lens, it checked for photos taken at wider than 71mm and narrower than 199mm).

The resulting data, I dumped into a spreadsheet for analysis. The sample size is 4,913 images, taken with 10 different zoom lenses. 71% of the images were taken with SLR cameras, and the remaining images were taken with a series of different compact cameras.

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Comments

Phil

1 year ago

I guess I disagree with the conclusion. I like primes too, but when I shoot with my zoom (lets use my Tamron 28-75 as an example) I think of it as 3 lenses in one. A 28mm a 50mm and a 75mm. Just because I was at 75mm doesnt mean I "wanted" a longer lens. I rarely want to shoot wider than 28mm especially when shooting people, but sometimes I just crank it to the stops and then move myself into position to capture a "wide angle" shot. If the lens went wider I wouldnt use it on people very often. Zooming to the max or min is just an easy way of being sure what my focal length is without taking my eye away from the viewfinder.

I rarely go anywhere without my full compliment of lenses, and rarely shoot subjects that cant wait for me to change my lens, so its not very often that I find myself thinking "I wish I had my other lens". In fact I often bring two bodies so I can switch quickly in fast moving situations. I think shooting at the extremes of your zoom is simply a natural result.

Likewise I often shoot that tamron at F2.8 even though its sharper at F4. does that mean I wish i had a larger aperture? Not really, it would be even softer and have an even shallower depth of field probably causing me to miss the focus more often. 2.8 is easier to set - you just crank the little thumb wheel over a few times. I shoot at 2.8 on my 50mm prime more often than 1.4 because its so much sharper at 2.8 and I still like the bokeh.

So I'm just saying, being at max or min of a setting doesnt necessarily mean I'm wishing I had "more".

rtbox

1 year ago

I feel the same way, I almost exclusively use primes now. It is about the faster aperture for me, but even more about the limitation, I like to take the more hands on approach of composing with my feet.

Even using my s95 as a backup I find myself almost exclusively shooting at 28mm (that zoom lever is just too damn slow maybe?)

My favourite combination is having an 85mm on my main body and the 28mm on my s95.

Rob Burke

1 year ago

After reading this, I had to check my stats as well. How did you export the statistics to Excel?

I found the chart I needed by creating a Custom Filter in Lightroom (I am using full zoom a little less than your 67%, but still, more than I expected)

gdmilabo

1 year ago

Interesting discussion. I don't think you are alone on this I also have the tendency of using both ends of a zoom when using one. After reading (and proving) that the ends in a zoom lens are not really the best focal lengths that the lens can perform best, I proceeded to identify my lens' sweet spot (in terms of focal length). Now I try to stay within a certain range of that sweet spot sometimes treating the zoom as if it was prime and using the extreme focal lengths as a ready flexibility when really needed.

The trouble with zooms is that it makes us a bit lazy at times. Since you like using prime lenses too I don't think I need to elaborate on this.

Since I also use a point-and-shoot, I have to admit I rarely using the telephoto end of its zoom for the reason that it is difficult to hold a small camera steady at long focal lengths despite the built-in image stabilizer.

Giuseppe M.

1 year ago

Hi!
Here are my results.
I use mainly two zoom lenses, a 18-50 and a 70-300
18-50, total photos 5708, shot between 18 and 20 mm 1961 (34%), shot between 45 and 50 mm 1153 (20%). I can argue that half of my shots are taken using the extremes of the focal length and half using the range in between, but also strengthen my idea that I really need and desire a wider angle lens!
70-300, total photos 3176, shot between 70 and 75mm 730 (23%) (since I use mainly the 18-50, I am keen not to change the lens ad get closer to the object using the 50 mm, I guess), shot between 260-300 980 (31%).
We have almost the same result here: half of my shots are taken using the extremes of the focal length and half using the range in between.

Regards

gmg