Little and large

Little and large

Heading off for a few nights way from home, I decided to pack both my widest (14mm) and longest (500mm) lenses. And, as a technical exercise, I decided to take them out today and shoehorn them into my shooting, somewhere.

I needn't have worried. Five minutes from the start, I asked my sister to turn round and park next to a gate, because there was a ready-made landscape waiting for me. Sunshine, dewdrops, fluffy clouds, and a bit of the Lake District.

The pictures were easy – the hard part is going to be transferring them to an external hard drive and then editing on a laptop...

And neither lens is necessary for landscapes. An 85mm works fine for me, and add in a 24mm and there's not much I don't feel able to tackle, so your 18-55 will be fine... Honest.

There are two ways to use lenses. One is to look at a subject, and decide what lens to shoot it with – and then hope you have access to it Alternatively, you may find that your vision develops to suit what you use – I'm pretty sure that happened to me with the 85mm around 30 years ago.

Or maybe not... Alongside this, I have a suspicion that if you use a zoom all the time, you don't develop this built-in viewfinder – that seems as good a way as any to describe it. There are those who argue for a more-or-less 50mm lens, because it has the same field of view as the human eye. Or a fisheye, for the same reason – you can see more or less 180°, in fact. I think of the 85mm as covering the field to which you can pay close attention at any one time.

Don't worry about this – but do consider developing the ability to see for a lens, as well as through it!