Prime lenses
For other examples:
Alkan Hassan p. 21
Sebastião Salgado p. 45
Muzi Quawson p. 95
Shikhei Goh p. 98
Youngjun Koo’s website (koo.im) featuring his distinctively clean, fresh portraits of nattily dressed fashionistas on the street has become a Mecca among fashion blogs.
Koo uses a prime lens – one fixed at a specific focal length with no zoom capability. You might think that sounds limiting but primes carry real advantages.
Prime lenses offer wider maximum apertures, giving a much shallower depth of field.
Here, the shallow depth of field causes the subjects to really come forward against a soft background. Our attention is drawn to the people and their clothes instead of the urban busyness surrounding them. And what’s the other payoff of wider apertures? You’ve got it: faster shutter speeds. That’s always handy, especially in low light.
All this and the fact that they’re often cheaper, optically superior and lighter than their zooming counterparts make prime lenses altogether great. So if you want to get the ‘Koo look’ use a prime lens. One with a fairly standard focal length will fit like a glove.
Dew on Me
Shikhei Goh
2012