Need some help choosing my first prime lens

[iGore3]

Hello everyone,

 

I have been shooting awhile now with my X-T10. I am ready to purchase my first prime and I am trying to decide between the 35mm F2 or 23mm F2. Which focal length do you think works best?

 

A little background about my shooting. I want to venture into shooting more portraits, live music, and real estate. Currently I shoot some portraits, landscapes, street and some real estate. I pretty much shoot whatever I can and I don't see that changing anytime soon. The only lens I have is the XC 16-50 and my iPhone.

 

Thanks in advanced!

[Warwick]

The 35mm f2 is a great lens - small, light and sharp. By all accounts the 23mm f2 is just as good. I have the 35, but if I had to choose just one to be my main prime lens it would be the 23. If you're shooting indoors or if you're interacting with the people you're photographing, you want to be close - but with the 35mm, close means you end up taking head and shoulders shots. With the 23mm you get more background and context in your images, which makes for more of a photojournalistic feel. It's no accident that the X100 series cameras' fixed lens is also a 23mm

 

 

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[dalto]

You have quite a few uses there.  For street, landscapes and real estate I would much rather have the 23mm.  For portraits the the 35mm.

 

That being said, it is all personal preference.

 

Depending on what kind of real estate pictures you are taking 23mm may not even be wide enough.

 

For street photography the debate of 23mm vs 35mm(35mm/50mm equiv) has been going on forever and it really comes down to what your vision for street photography is.

[Sluw]

If you're more into real estate and landscape I'd choose the 23mm, sharp and nice angle for that kind of shooting. If you're more into portraits I'd choose the 35mm f/1.4 which has amazing rendering and bokeh for people.

[Tikcus]

shooting live music on a stage with poor lighting I normally use the 35 F/1.4, personally I prefer to shoot at F/1.4 and ISO of 1600, than @ F/2.0 and an ISO of 3200 (assuming Shutter speed is at the minimum level required to prevent motion blur)

But I have shot with the 60 F/2.4.

 

It all depends on where you shoot, and how you like your final photos to look.

There are plenty of examples of live music that I have shot on flickr

[iGore3]

Thank you everyone for your responses so far.   I appreciate it.   I know I am kind of all over the place,  I just like to shoot whatever I get a chance to shoot.  Just trying to learn.

 

I guess it is hard because I am also trying to decide if it is worth investing in a lens with where my experience is.

[frankinfuji]

I'm with Sluw and Tikcus on this one.  Your X-T10 is not water resistant, so the key advantage of the 35mm f2 is not needed, so the wider aperture of the 35 f1.4 will give you a tighter depth of field for portraits and allow higher shutter speeds for low light, compared to the f2.

 

The 35 f1.4 is available at some good discounts now, so although it's list price is higher than the f2, it is often the same price.  You can also get them second hand.

 

You already have the wider field of view covered with your kit lens, so the real estate shooting is covered - and you don't need the shallow DOF or wider aperture for real estate shots - so the 23mm adds less extra capability.

[Tom H.]

Both will do an excellent job, I shoot travel and portraits on the 35mm, it's the more versatile lens if you want to shoot portraits as well. For anything else except portraits, 23mm would be my choice. For environmental portraits, 23mm was never wide enough for me. I ended up using the 16mm for those.

[bhu]

There are so many lenses to choose from. I imagine you already have the 18-55, though, and maybe another zoom, if this is going to be your first prime. The kit zoom is very capable and compact so consider what you find most attractive in the prime lens offerings.

 

Stronger boke and lower light shooting

Compact size (pancakes, then 35 f2)

Wide angle

Macro

 

Because you are considering the 23 f2 and 35 f2, that suggests you are interested in something smaller than the kit zoom. I apologize for tossing in another option but, if you are interested in the smallest, least obtrusive lens, think about the 27, too. If you have a store with lenses nearby, pop in with your camera and see if you can try a few options to see how well they fit your need. Barring that, search the internet for pictures of your X-T10 with those lenses attached. Without a clear "need", it is difficult to decide on what to buy so try to distill what it is about the 23 f2 and 35 f2 that you like and that the kit zoom does not provide.

 

You will be losing image stabilization when you take off the zoom lens so define what you hope to gain in return.

[frod]

Typically you would use a prime to get a wider aperture at your preferred focal length. You can use software to see what your most commonly used focal lengths are.

 

For Lightroom for example, you need to activate the filter bar (/), select Metadata and change one of the columns to show Focal-Length. You'll get to see all the focal-lengths used and the number of photos taken at each focal-length.

 

Or there's a plugin: http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/data-plot