Originally posted by wildman Unless I completely misunderstand, your logic escapes me.
Aren't you really just talking about a lack of discipline on the part of the photographer?
If you are using a zoom and you want to "zoom with your feet" then keep your hands off the zoom ring and do so.
Know the difference between a crop and a change of perspective and use your gear appropriately.
If you don't it has nothing to do with the gear and everything to do with the photographer.
In any case it has nothing to do with any inherent limitation of zooms and, in fact, with a zoom you can easily have it both ways unlike a prime.
Exactly, it has everything to do with the photographer and nothing with the gear as such. And also a bit with what circumstances allow.
I do believe that most people start as "lazy photographers". Partly because of the ease of a zoom. This is the reason why most photography schools I know of (including the one where I took my photography degree) request first year students to use a standard prime for all assignments. My teacher verified focal length in the EXIF and refused to even review images with too short or too long a focal length, let alone accept them. A full year of not having zoom flexibility ingrains a compositional approach that removes most people's seemingly innate reflex to zoom first. Though there are always students for whom this approach doesn't work at all...
Once that hurdle is taken by a learning photographer it comes down to discipline and what circumstances allow indeed. However, I observed many (if not most) fellow students revert to substandard compositions when they were allowed to use their zoom again from the second year on. Which is what I meant by zooms make lazy photographers: these students stopped moving once they felt they didn't "have to" anymore. Of course, that's because they never really understood why they got better results by moving around. The students that kept their hands off the zoom ring when framing and only used it when subsequently cropping, ended up being the ones that made it through the four years and got the degree. Most others dropped out before the end of the second year, frustrated with their inability to grow in their photography.
However, had these dropouts used a limited zoom such as the DA20-40 instead of their then fashionable 18-200 style zooms, perhaps this "limitation" might have given them the extra time for the required realization. As such these particular "new" zooms with limited range make a difference that is not necessarily IQ related.
It's not the gear's fault of course, nor is this observation in any way related to a (non existing I agree) limitation of zooms. That was in no way what I wanted to imply.
Wim