You're personally excited about wide-angle lenses and you seem to be convinced that everyone else will feel the same way about them, for candids of friends and family, and I just don't think that's true. You say that longer lenses create "emotional distance" but this is, to be honest, one of the most horeshit photography opinions I've heard. The lens doesn't create emotional
anything, it just changes what you get in the frame.
I like the way the photos in the article look. They're not your style.
I’ve spent time with a lot of other hobby photographers and there’s always a few people with preferences like yours, but it’s never been a majority, and most photographers I’ve met have the humility to recognize that their own personal choices aren’t automatically the right choices for others.
> Who cares. If you fail to capture a memorable moment because you were busy looking into the viewfinder focusing and framing, you fail, period. Very hard to do with a wide lens.
Framing is not a problem that goes away if you use wide-angle lens. You can shoot wide and crop later, but all you're doing is changing when you're making the framing decisions, and the crop-later approach has the disadvantage that when you crop, it's too late to reframe. Framing is not easier with wide-angle lenses versus normal lenses. It's easier to get something in-frame, but harder to keep something out.
There's no "default" lens which is right for everyone or every circumstance.
I'm also not sure why it would take me longer to frame or focus with a 50mm lens. For candids, I almost always use an autofocus camera these days. It focuses at the touch of a button.
> Wow. A prime of 90mm poses way too many constraints to work with.
I've been using a 90mm equivalent for a long, long time. It's my go-to lens for when a friend who's a makeup artist or costume designer wants a good picture of their work, or when somebody wants a simple portrait, and I think it's easy to work with.
Maybe I just got used to working within those constraints. And maybe... just maybe... you got used to working with the constraints of a 35mm lens, and you've forgotten what it felt like when you were first dealing with those constraints.
I've done a lot of personal with 35mm, 50mm, and 90mm equivalent primes. There's a reason why people who get a set of three prime lenses most often get three lenses in this range or something similar--like 28mm, 45mm, 110mm.
It's easy to fall in love with the look of a wide-angle lens and then get disillusioned with it. You find that you're including too much stuff in-frame that you don't want, or you find that you're shooting too close to people and they look distorted. That's why I recommend that people spend some time with a wide-angle lens before deciding if they want to purchase a camera with a fixed wide-angle lens, like the Ricoh GR III. The Ricoh GR III is like $900 and forces you to use a 28mm perspective or crop in post--not everyone is going to like that.