“Prime lenses are a one-trick pony. I’d rather spend that money on a more versatile zoom.” I hear this a lot from people just getting into SLR photography.

Yes, I’ll grant you they are a one-trick animal when compared to their multi-length brethren. But oh, what a damn good trick they do.

First, the bad news: they are limited when compared to a zoom lens. They can also make you miss that perfect moment if you can’t physically move forward or back to frame the shot correctly before it’s gone. They are ill-suited for dynamically moving subjects. And, they require a greater amount of lens changing to get the correct focal length on your camera for a particular shot (which can introduce more dust and moisture into your camera).

With all that out of the way, let’s dive into why they are my go-to lenses more often than not.

Foremost of the prime lenses’ highlights is the wider apertures available in comparison to zooms. F-stops of 1.8 are commonplace territory for prime lenses, with 1.2 featured on several (albeit at a premium price). For fans of bokeh, a prime lens is the best way to really get a significantly blurred background without shattering your bank account.

Speaking of bank accounts, we come to the second great feature of primes: their value. Prime lenses have less moving parts, so the cost is less for the lens. The corollary is that, if you spend as much money as you would on a comparable zoom, you are getting better glass due to the ratio of cost on parts. Also, Canon and Nikon both have a wonderful 50mm prime for approximately $125 new.

The third feature of primes is the quality of the image. As the major camera manufacturers have been making prime lenses for much longer than zooms, the technology curve is much lower as they’ve come farther and closer to optical perfection (especially with the 50mm focal length).

Another, more abstract, benefit to using a prime is that it’s more of a cerebral approach to photography. Several novices with a zoom lens attached (especially a fairly cheap 75-300mm lens) plant their feet as if rooted to the earth and shoot/zoom/shoot/zoom without ever moving. A prime makes you become more active, moving around to frame a shot. This movement inherently also makes the shooter look around the scene, and opens the doors to finding different angles and approaches to the subject.

So, if you’ve never dipped your toes into the prime waters pick up a moderately priced “nifty fifty” and see the world through a totally different vantage point. You’ll also be able to do your own Project 50 – a series of fifty consecutive days of creating days creating one image each with a 50mm lens. Doing that often leads to the grand-daddy of photo projects — the Project 365!