You will often hear proponents of prime lenses tell fans of zoom lenses to simply "zoom with their feet." However, zooming with your feet will not produce the same image as zooming with your lens, and understanding the difference will give you lots of creative capabilities for taking more powerful images. This helpful video will show you the difference and the impact it will have on your photos.
Coming to you from Mark Wallace with Adorama TV, this great video shows the difference between zooming with your feet by getting closer with a shorter focal length and zooming with a lens by using a longer focal length. This difference is often leveraged by photographers to create telephoto compression (or in the opposite direction to exaggerate perspective). For example, a landscape photographer might use a 200mm lens to bring a mountain range closer together and create the illusion of them almost piling on top of each other. On the other hand, a wide angle lens might be used up close to exaggerate the relative distance between two objects. It is an important creative concept that has a significant impact on your images, so be sure to give the video above a watch for the full rundown from Wallace!
