Ideal Lens for House Party: 50mm or 18-170mm ??

[Ryan1524]

For an indoor house party (NYE), which would you prefer to snap onto the camera? a decently fast normal like a 50mm (or 35mm for 1.5x crop factor), or a zoom lens (18-70mm) for flexibility?

My 35mm is much faster and sharper than the zoom. Which would you carry for a small gathering?

 

[cpcarrot]

Sigma 30mm 1.4 would be my lens of choice. Great for that sort of thing as you don't need to use flash and the focal length is pretty much spot on (on a cropped body) for most of the group type shots you would be looking to take. While a zoom is more flexible in terms of focal lengths at lot of the time your likely to need to use flash and that in my mind is more intrusive and therfore you get less of those "spontanious" shots.

 

[firestarter]

Go with the prime lens.

Shooting without flash, with open aperture and shallow depth of field can give some beautiful pictures. If you use the zoom you'd have to use insane high-iso settings or resort to a flash.

 

[fxstb2002]

Most of the house parties I have been to are pretty dark. I would op for the faster lens. I have the Sigma 30/1.4 as well. It stays on my camera a lot.

 

[ThunderRobot]

Sigma 30mm 1.4 would be my lens of choice. Great for that sort of thing as you don't need to use flash and the focal length is pretty much spot on (on a cropped body) for most of the group type shots you would be looking to take. While a zoom is more flexible in terms of focal lengths at lot of the time your likely to need to use flash and that in my mind is more intrusive and therfore you get less of those "spontanious" shots.

Picked up this lens this morning for exactly that purpose. Can't wait to try it 'in anger' so to speak.

 

[Ryan1524]

Thanks guys. I'm gonna go with my 35mm. I'm gonna keep the SB-600 on there just to bounce it off the ceiling every now and then.