I f you’re out shooting for the day, carrying a tripod around can be a pain. And if you’re trying to shoot discretely in an urban context, handheld photography is the order of the day. All of the prime lenses in our test have fast aperture ratings that enable quick shutter speeds in most conditions, without the need to bump up ISO sensitivities too far.
Even so, you might well need to use a medium or narrow aperture to gain extra depth of field, when you want to keep near and far areas of a scene rendered sharply. Image stabilization can make all the difference between getting the shot and missing it, especially if you want to keep shooting when the sun’s gone down and the night lights come on.