For years, there’s been a piece of advice that gets repeated endlessly in photography circles.
Throw away your kit lens. Shoot with primes. Zoom with your feet. If you want to get better, restrict yourself.
I believed that advice for a long time. I still do, to an extent. I enjoy shooting with prime lenses and I still reach for fixed‑lens cameras regularly. But after spending more time recently shooting with a zoom lens in real‑world situations, especially while travelling and hiking, I started to notice something uncomfortable.
Prime lenses can sometimes make us lazy.
Not always. Not for everyone. But often enough that it’s worth talking about.
The Comfort of the Bokeh Crutch
Fast prime lenses make it very easy to make a photograph look good on the surface.
Open the aperture to f/1.4 or f/2 and suddenly the background melts away. Distracting elements disappear. Busy scenes become calm. Even fairly uninteresting subjects can start to look cinematic.
That shallow depth of field can be beautiful. But it can also become a shortcut.
When the background is blurred into nothing, composition matters less. You don’t have to work as hard to manage what’s behind your subject because most of it simply isn’t visible anymore. The photo looks polished, but it isn’t always saying much.
Contrast that with shooting at f/4 on a basic zoom lens.
You can’t hide anything. The background stays present. Messy edges, awkward shapes, poor light, all of it remains in the frame. And that forces you to slow down and actually compose.
You have to move. Change your angle. Wait for the background to clean up. Decide what belongs in the frame and what doesn’t.
A zoom lens doesn’t let you hide behind blur.
The Problem With “Zoom With Your Feet”
Another phrase that gets repeated constantly is “just zoom with your feet.”
It sounds clever, but it’s misleading.
Moving your feet changes perspective. Zooming a lens changes framing. They are not the same thing.
If you take a portrait at 18mm and stand close, faces distort and backgrounds stretch away. If you take that same portrait at 55mm and step back, the subject looks more natural and the background compresses.
You cannot recreate that second image simply by walking closer with a wide lens. The physics are different.
This matters because when we treat focal length choice as something that can always be solved by movement, we stop thinking critically about how lenses actually shape a scene.
Zoom lenses don’t just change how much fits in the frame. They change how subjects relate to their surroundings.
Real Life Doesn’t Always Suit One Focal Length
This became most obvious to me while travelling and hiking.
When you’re walking all day, dealing with weather, uneven ground, mud, wind, and changing light, constantly swapping lenses isn’t always practical or enjoyable. And when you lock yourself into a single prime, something subtle happens.
You stop seeing certain photographs.
Distant details get ignored. Tight compositions get dismissed. Scenes that don’t fit your chosen focal length get written off with a quiet excuse.
“I don’t have the lens for that.”
That’s an easy out.
A zoom lens removes that excuse. You can go wide. You can go tight. You can react to what’s in front of you instead of pre‑deciding what kind of photos you’re allowed to take that day.
That flexibility doesn’t make the decisions for you. It just keeps more doors open.
This Isn’t Anti‑Prime
I still enjoy shooting with prime lenses. Fixed focal lengths can be incredibly rewarding. They can help you learn, slow you down, and develop a consistent way of seeing.
But they aren’t automatically superior. And they certainly aren’t the only path to becoming a better photographer.
A basic kit zoom, used thoughtfully, can force you to think harder about composition, background, and perspective than a fast prime ever will.
The lens isn’t the thing holding most people back.
Habits are.
If you enjoy shooting primes, keep shooting primes. If you love a fixed‑lens camera, there’s no reason to stop.
But don’t let internet advice convince you that your kit lens is a limitation you need to escape.
In many situations, it might be doing the opposite. It might be quietly pushing you to see more, think more, and work harder for your photos.
And that’s rarely a bad thing.
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