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Every serious photographer should own these 2 lenses

Every serious photographer should own these 2 lenses

It's easy to make an argument for Sigma lenses in general: They're cheap compared to lenses from better known manufacturers, yet boast similar or better quality.

My biggest recommendation is simply to seek out two specific focal lengths: 85mm and 35mm.

Carry one lens of each with you on a shoot, and you can feel confident you'll have the gear you need.

I learned to do this from my friend Christian Wilson, a wedding and art photographer based in Chicago. He makes his living chasing brides and grooms, taking photos that have to look good the first time — that ring is only going on that finger once.

Wilson dual-wields two Nikon D750 cameras (the best DSLR on offer, if you can afford it), one that sports a Sigma 35mm lens and the other with an equivalent Nikon 85mm. He rarely, if ever, switches to any other lens.

I've shot a few weddings with Christian in the last year, and followed his setup on my aging Nikon D800 and D700 cameras. Once you've shot this way, any other gear arrangement feels like a poor substitute.

There's really only two things you want your lenses to do when you're shooting documentary style: capture a scene in context, and cover distance to shoot a particular detail.

A 35mm lens is pretty wide — about as wide as a full-frame lens can get before you'll start to notice fish-eye-like distortion. Even in a tight space, it can capture a big scene.

But it's not so wide that it loses intimacy.

I used to shoot on a 24mm lens, which can be great for big, dramatic action shots, like the one below.

The 24mm lens is at the far wide end of what you'll typically find in a photojournalist's arsenal. The curving lines and cartoonish shapes it captures gives the image a sense of high drama.

These types of lenses aren't very intimate, though. And with so much of the surrounding scene captured in every distorted shot, the result can be a little removed and inhuman.

Spend time with a 35mm, however, and you'll find that it fits into a kind of Goldilocks zone.

You can get big wide shots like wedding chapel images, but there's also room for quieter, simpler compositions that emphasize a simple touch or expression.

If you find yourself shooting a lot of group portraits, the 35mm is perfect in that situation as well.

So the 35mm is often the best lens to capture whatever's right in front of you.

But sometimes you want to snap something across a room, or compose an image the crops out everything but a set of hands or the expression on someone's face. That's where your 85mm comes in.

It's not as long as the 80-200mm workhorses you'll see some photographers carrying, or the 135mm primes some prefer for portraits. Those are good lenses, but unless you shoot sports, there usually isn't a reason that you'd be standing far enough from your subject to need them.

And very long lenses tend to compress images more than is ideal, flattening people's faces and erasing the depth from their compositions.

The 85mm images are close enough to what you'd see with a human eye to yield a photograph that looks natural.

The 85mm is in another kind of Goldilocks zone: It's wide enough to shoot a nice portrait without cutting out the surrounding scene.

It's also long enough to snag a key detail from across a room.

Of course, you might not be a photographer who shoots weddings, travel, news, or even your family.

I also spend a lot of time in the studio, screwing around with light and shadow, or making headshots. I find the 85mm is an ideal primary lens for my needs there, too.

The lens shapes subjects' faces flatteringly, in a way that's close to how they'd appear to a human eye. At the same time, it's wide enough to be versatile and work in a cramped space.

Every photographer has different needs, and as you develop your personal style you'll likely find looks offered by other particular lenses that suit you. But in general, most photographers have similar basic needs that can be satisfied by a couple of workhorse lenses, no matter whether they're shooting weddings (like I mostly do), kids running around the house, or a beautiful hike across a far-away landscape.

The 85mm and 35mm are perfect for all of those situations, and right now the best quality and value at those focal lengths comes from Sigma.