Trivia (LXXXIII) - Pro Advice

"For over a year I’ve shot almost exclusively with the 20MM F/1.7. And while I thoroughly enjoy nearly every minute with it, I often long for a slightly wider field of view. So, understandably, I my attention piqued when Panasonic announced their 14MM F/2.5 prime.

The day the lens went on sale, I ran over to Bic Camera in Tokyo. I slapped it on my GF1 and was shocked — so much space! This shock is the joy of shooting with primes. By using a prime, you train both your brain and your eyes to think in their space. A zoom lens allows you to shift the lens-space to your brain-space. But with primes you’re stuck in their world. You become intimate with life within their frame until composition becomes second nature. And so to throw an extra 12MM (20MM - 14MM X 2) of field of vision onto the camera carries quite a shock. 

With a single gesture — changing lenses — your visual lung capacity increases. The sky explodes over subjects and you have to forcibly reframe the world because your brain is stuck in 20MM mode. Your mind's eye shifts — an internal aperture expanding to welcome the new space. And you start to wonder — how the hell did I live in such a small box before?" 

[...] 

"SHOOT WITH A SINGLE LENS FOR A YEAR, stick a new one on and *poof* — the world becomes fresh. This is but one of the magics of photography."

Craig Mod (http://craigmod.com/journal/14mm/)