"Limitations" boost photographic creativity – here's why I ditched RAWs and zooms, and embraced JPEGs and prime lenses

You may have noticed that there is some debate among photographers between the JPEG and RAW formats. Actually JPEG vs RAW isn't much of a debate since, on the face of it, RAW files offer so much more flexibility than JPEGs for editing later on, and few practical disadvantages.

But here’s the thing. With flexibility comes choice and with choice comes decisions – and for photographers, decisions are not always easy to arrive at.

When you shoot RAW you can do almost anything with your photos, but how does that help you? If you can’t decide on a pictorial style when you go out for a shoot, what makes you think it will be any easier to decide later?

Are you actually delaying a difficult decision? That’s procrastination. Or are you holding on to countless images that might prove useful one day when you can work out what to do with them? That sounds like hoarding.

Choice is fine, but you also need decisions. And sometimes the less choice you have, the more creative the outcome.

This is why people buy monochrome cameras like the Leica Q3 Monochrom or Pentax K3 Mark III Monochrome, two of the best cameras for black and white photography. It's not just because of any technical advantages but because they represent a firm creative decision.

This idea is not new. The great Leonardo da Vinci firmly believed that it was constraint that drove creativity, not freedom. He also struggled during his life with procrastination and unfinished projects. Hmm… sounds familiar *strokes chin*.

So the point I wanted to make about JPEGs is that once you choose a picture style in the camera – black-and-white, vivid, vintage, whatever – you’re largely committed.

It’s harder (sometimes impossible) to go back. You can’t easily (if at all) change it later. You have to go out and shoot with that style in mind, basing your composition, your subjects, your angles, your whole photographic approach on that particular style.

Sounds like hard work, right, and also very limiting? But surely it’s better to shoot with a specific plan than it is to shoot generic images that could perhaps, maybe, at some point in the future be turned into any number of different things you haven’t yet decided on?

I promise you, if you go out and shoot JPEGs you’ll work extra hard at the camera settings and the composition to make those images work. Worried about losing the extended dynamic range of RAW files? Then get the exposure right, and accept that you can’t always have shadow and highlight detail at the same time.

The world will keep turning, and your pictures might just look that little bit fresher and more natural.

Heck, if it worries you that much (shooting JPEG-only makes me nervous, too), shoot JPEG and RAW at the same time – but swap it around so that the JPEGs are your planned end point and the RAW files are just there for backup.

This isn’t just a bit of creative psychology. If you work hard to get your JPEGs right, your RAW files are going to be much better to work with, too.

Pick up a prime and ditch the zoom

Here’s another choice vs decisions dilemma for photographers. Zoom lenses give you far more flexibility than prime lenses. Flexibility over where you need to stand, how big the subject is in the frame, how to manage the perspective relationships between near and far objects, and so on. The advantages are obvious.

What’s less obvious is the extra decision-making (or decision fatigue). Focal length is just one more variable in the picture-taking process. As a photographer you have finite time, attention and patience. Do you really want to devote so much of it to the camera and lens settings?

Zoom lenses give you choice, but they also bring more decisions when quite possibly you have more than enough to make already. Have you heard of decision paralysis (aka analysis paralysis or choice paralysis)? Look it up. It's a real thing.

When you shoot with a prime lens, things are simpler. You’re close enough or you aren’t, the composition works or it doesn’t. There are fewer variables. Your mindset shifts from calculations to instinct.

Sure, you’ll miss some shots that you could have got if you had a zoom, but photographs are rarely sacred relics that can never be replaced. You can always go out and take more.

If all you ever use is zooms, shooting with a prime lens will feel like wearing a straitjacket. But do it anyway. Stick with it. Keep shooting. Eventually you stop noticing the constraints of a fixed focal length and start noticing that photography is suddenly a lot simpler. If you try and try and try and still hate prime lenses, then you can always go back to zooms.

Just allow for the possibility that constraints can sometimes be better than choices. Sometimes it’s better to make some decisions right at the start, whether its RAW files vs JPEGs or primes vs zooms, and commit properly to what you set out to do. It really can make a difference.

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For more creativity-boosting exercises, this is why your ‘smart’ camera is actually making you a worse photographer. If you're still not sold on prime lenses, I used to think prime lenses were pretentious – now I finally know why they are so popular. Hand here's why I’m starting to choose JPEG over RAW.