Our Two Favorite Lenses and Shooting Wide Open

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Welcome to another Reader FAQ!

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On with today’s question…

If you only could use one lens for an entire wedding which would you choose? And do you guys shoot wide open? The light is always so awesome in your pictures!!

That’s easy – the Canon 50mm f/1.2 L.

I can tell you from looking into Lightroom and filtering based on metadata that we use this lens the most on a consistent basis.

 

However, if we could use TWO lenses, it would be the 50 mm f/1.2 L AND the Canon 135mm f/2.0 L.

 

That’s what I call a dynamic duo. The reason I love the 50mm so much is that it’s the perfect focal length on a full frame sensor and is actually very close to how our eye perceives the world.

Additionally, it’s incredibly crisp and sharp all the way through the range.

Erin and I are firm believers that people look best in natural light, so we spend a majority of the time shooting “wide open” which means using the lowest (biggest) aperture possible.

 

Not only does shooting wide open allow us to shoot in conditions that would ordinarily require a flash, but also shooting wide open separates the subject from the background (making the background extra blurry).

 

An important thing to note about shooting wide open is that you MUST be very very careful with your focusing due to the shallow depth of field that is created.

This causes us to have to over-shoot our subjects to ensure that we get the perfect focus.

To be specific, I shoot the 135 at f/2.0 all day and the 50 at f/ 1.8 (you have be very careful with the focus if you’re going to open up all the way to f/1.2, even though its beautiful).

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Cheers,

Jeff

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We teach photographers to build life-giving businesses that they absolutely love.

About Us

We're Jeff & Erin

We’re Jeff and Erin Youngren – and it’s our mission to help you thrive not just as a wedding photographer, but as a business owner. It’s time to set aside the stress and comparison of a hustle mindset, and build a life-giving business instead.

We met in college, got married, and started corporate jobs before we discovered (and fell in love with) wedding photography. But like many creative entrepreneurs, we were booking anything we could, strapped to our laptops and living dangerously close to burnout.

So we dug in and learned how to build a thriving business that supports our dream life – instead of a joyless business that runs a stressed-out life.

Today, we photograph only 10 Dreamie weddings per year, but we also run two other wedding brands plus a commercial studio in San Diego, CA. And we do it by only working the hours that fit into our life. The other hours? We spend those living a joyful life raising our two beautiful sons, James and Samuel.

hugs,

Jeff and Erin

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