stoppingdown

Our friend Roger Cicala over at LensRentals recently decided to take on a few optical "platitudes" that he's always hearing, and see if the data can back them up. So, are "all lenses the same at f/8"? And is it true that you "don’t need primes because I shoot everything stopped down"? Let's find out.

When you drop hundreds or thousands of dollars on a new piece of fast glass, it’s natural to want to shoot it wide-open until the focusing ring falls off. But, the idea that for all portraits you want to be wide open and for all landscapes you want to be stopped down isn’t true. Here to explain in the above video is photographer Matt Granger.

You probably know that stopping down (i.e. increasing your f-stop number) can increase …