The first SLR I owned came with three lenses. Gosh I was pleased. There was a 35mm, 50mm and a 135mm lens. The years passed along with that camera, and I eventually got a job as a photographer, documenting events for Southern California’s school system.
My employer set me up with Miranda SLR, a 50mm and a 200mm lens. Equipment that I quickly found lacking in the fast-moving events I was expected to document. Sure, sometimes I photographed students sitting down, but more often than not, those grade schoolers were bouncing around coastal rocks searching tide pools, excitedly running on board whale-watching boats, dashing through large city parks and sometimes even racing upstairs in some downtown Los Angeles high-rise.
Changing lenses on the go was a hassle and awkward in a crowded space.
Then a company named Vivitar started advertising their 70-210mm zoom lens. I can remember talking with other working photographers about the magazine advertisements that showed a page of postage stamps with perfectly sharp in-line perforations.
I’ll shorten this by saying that it wasn’t long before I owned one, and wow, could I work a crowded street, schoolyard, sight-seeing-boat or any other people-filled event. The fact that it wasn’t a wide angle mattered not, I shot tight. I got faces, hands, feet, children talking up close, and was able to capture those quick ever-changing expressions.
I was sold on the versatility of that first multifocal length lens. I shot thousands of slides and prints for that employer until I decided to wander up the Pacific coast to settle in British Columbia, Canada.
Digital had yet to be invented or even thought of by those of us earning our living with cameras, in those days the bigger the negative the better. I remember feeling bad for those unfortunate brides and grooms that chose some amateur friend to record their wedding with the family 35mm.
Serious photographers used medium format cameras and there were very few zoom lenses for medium format. So I was stuck changing lenses again. Lenses that like the big cameras they fit took up space and made photographing an event burdensome.
Finally, after many painful years of carrying big formats, Kodak began offering a 35mm professional film called “Portra” that finally maintained a true to life colour, was great for enlargements and with that technological advancement I was back to using 35mm and zoom lenses again.
My favourite choice at that time was a 35-105mm multi-focal length lens. That flexibility gave me an edge on those quickly changing events.
Zoom lenses allow me to choose the crop I want and give me versatility and speed in any situation. Having many focal lengths all in one keeps me from missing those once in a lifetime shots.
Present day zoom lenses have become sharper, quicker and lighter than those I used with my film cameras. And for those, like me, that are already planning next summer’s vacation. All we need is one lens that can capture and change the world’s perspective at a multitude of focal lengths and is so much easier to carry around than several lenses with fixed focal lengths.
Stay safe and be creative. These are my thoughts for this week. Contact me at www.enmanscamera.com or emcam@telus.net.
