Canon 50mm Prime f18 Lens

If you are feeling like making your first foray into the world of lenses by upgrading from your kit lens that came with your camera the Canon 50mm f1.8 is in our opinion by far the best option available to you. We see too many people go out and make their first upgrade lens a cheap telephoto lens, extending their focal range beyond the 55mm that comes with the kit lens.

Below we’ll discuss why we believe everyone should buy this lens as their first upgrade, or even instead of the kit lens when they buy their first dslr. We’ll also explain why this little lens has the ability to turn you from a happy snapping amateur into a serious semi pro level photographer.

Canon 50mm EF II f1.8 Lens

Before the advent of digital cameras the most popular lens out there amongst photographers was the 50mm. Recently 50mm prime lenses have been making a bit of a come back for a number of reasons that we’ll set out below.

One of the main advantages of prime lenses is their simplicity. Because there is a fixed focal length (there is no zoom, you have to use your feet instead of twisting the barrel to zoom in) the construction tends to be extremely simple.

The simple construction allows the manufacturers to keep the costs very low (this is the only sub $100 lens in Canon’s range). In addition this simplicity means that manufacturers can afford to put better quality optics in them that allow them to take pin sharp photos, far better than most zoom lenses.

Build Quality of the 50mm f1.8

This is perhaps the biggest stumbling block of this lens. It feels incredibly cheap (even the mount is plastic) and you will often hear the word “toy” when people are discussing the build quality of this lens. In fact the only things that aren’t plastic in this lens are the glass optics! All this means that the lens weighs in at under 150 grams, making it incredibly light but at the same time it seems a bit fragile.

Usually we would pour scorn on a lens that feels this cheap however all of this is offset by both the cost and image quality of this lens. With this lens Canon has focussed only on cost and image quality (and exceeded at both) so the rest really doesn’t matter. What this lens lacks in build quality it more than makes up for elsewhere…

Why is the 50mm f1.8 lens so good?

50mm prime lenses are often referred to as quick lenses. This is because they tend to have large apertures ranging, anything from 1.8 to 1 meaning that they let a lot of light in to the camera. This allows the photographer to take pictures in low light conditions with a much quicker shutter speed than other lenses. As a result 50mm lenses such as this are great for candid indoor shots in poor light conditions or more formal low light portraits . No longer will you be reliant on using the on board flash while taking pictures indoors.

In addition the large apertures on these lenses allow you to take photos with a very shallow depth of field, meaning you can have really blurred backgrounds that make your subject stand out as you can see on the shot below. Ideal for taking great portraits.

The f1.8 aperture allows you to blur the backrounds

The only downside is that when the lens is not wide open at f1.8 the bokeh (or blur) is not completely round due to this only having 5 aperture petals compared to the 8 found in most other canon lenses. This is barely noticeable unless you are shooting at night time and purposely after that round bokeh effect which in reality very few of us will ever try and do.

Simplicity is Best

This lens has poor build quality, only 5 aperture petals, no distance window markings, a noisy and sometimes slow auto focus motor, a hard to handle focus ring mounted on the end of the lens. In other words this lens doesn’t have a lot of things, however the one thing it does have is incredibly good optics.

What you DO get with the 50mm f1.8 lens is good quality sharpness and plenty of it. Considering this is about a third the cost of Canon’s next cheapest cost (excluding the kit lens) the sharpness of it’s images is incredible. What you are paying for is the optics and pretty much nothing else.

Learn to Zoom with your Feet

One thing to bear in mind is that many of the cheaper digital slr cameras on the market have a cropped sensor. This means that with a 50mm lens on a digital slr you get about x1.6 the focal length. This means a 50mm lens will actually be a 80mm lens on your slr.

What this means is that when you look through the view finder you’ll be quite zoomed in and as it is a prime lens you will not be able to zoom out! To see what it looks like simply set you kit lens to about 50mm and take a quick look.

You may find that in tight spaces you are too close to the action to achieve the composition you want so will need to retreat with your feet. On the flip side the extra focal length means that for candid portraits you do not need to stick your lens in peoples faces to get a great shot, increasing you chances of some great natural looking portraits.

The 50mm f1.8 Will Improve Your Photography

Above we mentioned that the lack of zoom may be perceived as a disavantage to this lens. However users of this lens (and other prime lenses) often report that having no zoom helps them to improve their photography. By not having the option to zoom you will be forced to think about composing your shots better rather than simply twisting the zoom to fit your subject into the frame. Advocates of prime lenses often say that zoom lenses make you a lazy photographer. To some extent we agree with this. Having no zoom may take a bit of getting used to if you have been brought up on zooms but we think that in the long run this will make you a better photographer.

Summary

Whether you are looking to upgrade your kit lens or are seeking an alternative the 50mm prime lens really is a great option. It’ll give you incredibly aharp images even in poor light conditions. You really will be impressed by the photographs that this lens produces.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this lens is that you can pick this lens up for under $100. This is pretty amazing as the f1.2 version costs over $1,000!

Put simply if you want to take better pictures and you have $100 to spend then this is easily the best thing to spend it on. Every photographer should have this lens in their bag.

Check out the latest prices of the Canon 50mm f1.8.

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Tagged as: Lens, Review