What's the Difference between 35mm, 50mm and 85mm Prime Lenses?

Today we will look at the 35mm, 50mm and 85mm prime lenses, each rendering your subject quite differently. Popular with portrait photographers, all three lenses offer natural looks without creating too much distortion. Prime lenses often have large apertures, ranging from f/1.2 to f/2.8, which means you can shoot on a lower ISO in low-light conditions and reduce noise. But which fixed focal length lens should you choose? This article will help you decide which prime lens to add to your kit. Read on to learn more about understanding focal length, distance and perspective.

What is a prime lens?

A prime lens operates at a fixed focal length and requires the user to move to recompose a shot. Prime lenses are usually sharper than zoom lenses and have a wider aperture, which helps maximize the bokeh of the image. They are smaller, lighter and faster, which makes them perfect for low-light conditions. Generally, a shorter focal length, such as 35mm, will have a wider angle compared to a longer focal length, such as an 85mm.

The street prime: 35mm

The 35mm lens is a classic storytelling lens. The background will appear to be pushed further back when using this lens. While it’s mostly used in street photography and films, it’s versatile and wide enough to be used in either narrow streets or for landscapes. It’s the widest of these three prime lenses, but not so wide that you start to get weird distortion bending your straight edges. This makes it perfect as an all-around lens as it allows you to include plenty of surrounding scenes in your frame and place your subject within its environment.

The standard prime: 50mm

The 50mm is a classic lens. You can find a 50mm focal length for every camera brand. It’s often called a standard lens because it portrays subjects similarly to how the human eye sees the world. There’s hardly any distortion, and 50mm primes usually come in pretty large apertures of f/1.8, f/1.4 and even f/1.2. So, it’s great for isolating the background or in low-light conditions. While the 50mm isn’t as wide as the 35mm, it can provide razor-sharp images. You can shoot a little bit of everything with this lens.

The portrait prime: 85mm

The 85mm lens is the longest lens of the three. As it’s more ‘zoomed in’, the background appears to be pulled closer, larger and more blurred. It is often used as a portrait lens as it flattens the perspectives of objects, resulting in more flattering images of people. It is a telephoto focal length, backgrounds become much less relevant as the depth of field isn’t naturally much shallower. This lens is also great for close-ups as it easily allows you to shift the focus of the image on the object in focus and completely blur out the background.

Choose your prime

These focus lengths have all very different characteristics, and there are no rules about which lens you should use in any given situation. They each have their advantages and disadvantages, so it’s a good idea to use them for different purposes. Photography is about communicating the idea or the visual story of an image with the equipment at your disposal. If a certain lens helps you convey a feeling or emotion, it’s never the ‘wrong’ choice.

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