how do I choose my lens.

Q :
Hey Luki
I admire your work. Its rad man. total respect. Id love to assist for you in Sydney for free if your ever around.I got a 2 meter octobox n elinchrom 600s which is fun to use..

I often study images to work out the lighting set up ext. I saw that shot where ur on the step ladder with either a beauty dish next to you or box on a crane shooting down.

Just tryin to work out your lens. Is it an 85mm or 105macro? anyway what lens do you use for the majority of your DSLR work. As I am discovering every shoot how focal length and distance from subject ( 3 meters ) is so very important.

after a bit of experimentation, I still like my 35mm except prefer my 80-200 2.8.

Any advice. would be greatly appreciated. on anything that I am doing or that you could suggest would help from what you see. I dont ask for advice from many people at all, unless they are absolutely excellent at what they do. So this is complimentary.


thanks mate
anon


A:
dear Anon,
that will be great. thank you for your offers.
I will try to answer your question with my bad english.
actually I don't have favorite equipment so far. I always choose them base on what I need to create. because every lens have slightly different character.
there are many kind of lens :

A. wide angle
less than 21 mm : extreme wide angle
21-35 mm : wide angle
I will pick wide angle lens if I need to produce images with this specific style:
- give psychological of movement, the dynamic feel
- big space because of distortion
- drama
- great dimension, because have a great deep of field
- feeling of intimate with the model
so for example I never use this lenses for beauty editorial pictures, because will distort the model face.
Marino Parisotto Vay like use this kind of lens for create his fashion pictures :

look, my car is so wide and my legs are amazingly long!
we feel like the model is so close with us.

B. normal
35-70 mm : normal
this lens, give us the normal fell for the images we produce. thats why usually I taking picture with 70 mm for casting, catalogue or even editorial that give us images as we see in real life.
example of picture with normal lens by Tim Walker :

with normal lens, the result will look the same with when we see them with our eyes.

C. telephoto
70-135 mm : medium telephoto
more than 135 mm : telephoto
the images telephoto lens produce is the opposite the wide angle.
- no distortion
- reduce deep of field, the plate of image will look flatten, object will closed each other
- the feeling of spy on model
for example, one of photographer love to use this lens is Stefano Galuzzi :

spy on this angry couple.

I hope that will be useful.
regards,
luki for lukimages