What are the best lenses for weddings?

Alright, so getting into the first, I guess “technical” question, Lisa Mark asks what [our favourite lenses are] – I guess as a collective group.

Dave: I’ll go first. Lisa’s a good friend of both of ours, [and] it’s a question that we get asked a lot, and it’s a great question because we’re on a limited budget for what gear we can get, and so for me, versatility comes first – getting a good couple of solid zooms is what I’d suggest first. So even the 24 to 70 if you want something really general, but for me the 7200 sort of range is gold. You can get a beautiful [Boca - ?] at any of those ranges and it’s a sharp lens and for me, that’s the best solution.

How about you?

Taylor: I guess I prefer Primes whenever I’m being creative. I started out with a 50 mm 1.8. which is the cheapest and at least for Nikon, [it’s] probably the best lens that you can purchase; I hear the Canon one is not so favourable – 51.8?

Right now I’m going to say the 85 1.8 is my favourite lens. It really does cycle from week-to-week – I just picked up a 135 F2 and it is fantastic at everything that I wanted it to be, and there is no background at F2 – you just kind of hit the subject and the background just kind of melts into buttery goodness of greens and concretes and whatnot. There’s also this silly de-focus control that I guess helps make it even smoother – I don’t exactly know what that is, it sounds kind of silly, but I don’t know. It’s an amazingly sharp lens, and I think that’s going to be my go-to in the near future.

Dave: Very cool. It’s the sort of lens you can do an entire engagement session or shoot a kid or a family session – you can do everything with a Prime like that.

Taylor: Whenever I’m shooting bands, I typically will only bring a 35 and an 85 and that’s all I’ll use.

Dave: Because you need the speed in that situation.

Taylor: And then you can go absolutely anywhere.

Dave: I think that’s a good point. If speed is of the utmost importance, then a Prime is going to give you an extra two stops.

Taylor: And they’re cheaper, too, if you’re kind of getting into the industry. That’s why I picked up the 35 and the 85 originally was because 1400 bucks or whatever for the 17 to 55 for Nikon was – at the time – it was just too much for my budget, so I just started collecting Primes and it kind of grew from there.

Dave: And having some good primes will save you a lot of money on your bodies, too, because you’re getting shutter speeds that your eye’s so sensitive it may not be so good on a cheaper body, right? But you can get pretty sweet amounts of light into that anyway.

Taylor: And it’s always good to really start with good solid glass and just build your collection from there. I get the question a lot, ‘do you upgrade your lenses first or do you upgrade your camera body?’ And most of the time, I’m always behind just getting better glass because if you purchase a new camera, you can still use that glass on that camera. You can take great pictures on like, a Rebel XT if you have a great lens and 100% proper lighting conditions – nothing after dark unless you’ve got some off-camera flash going – but yeah, those are my thoughts on it.

Dave: What are your feelings, listeners, on best lenses and what are your favourites? Just mention us on Twitter at @potluckphoto and let us know what you’re favourite lenses are – we’re interested to hear that.

Taylor: Alright, onto the next question then.