Canon 50mm f/1.8 II noob photo enthusiast test

Don't you find it ironic that when once you start thinking about something, it starts showing up everywhere?

I've been thinking about picking up my first secondary lens for my camera. I was looking around for prime lenses and was choosing between picking up a Canon 50mm f/1.8 for an amazing $125 from D-D Photographics or the more solidly built Canon 50mm f/1.4 for $439 from the same place. DDP is like MSY but for cameras.

Anyway, one of the guys at work happened to bring in his Canon 50mm f/1.8 the other day (oh the irony!). He was nice enough to let me borrow it for a couple of days to see how much I like it. Up until then the only thing I knew about it was what I read from a cool review I read up on in The Digital Picture.



As pointed out on TDP, the lens is plastic and really toy-like, but hey at $125 you can't really expect any more can you? Functionality-wise, the first impression I got from this lens was not about the picture quality nor the usability, it was how unaccustomed I was to prime lenses!

At an f-stop of 1.8 I found myself deleting a lot of photos at first. I have a habit of coming up close to my subjects when I shoot them, and by doing so, the depth of field would be too strong. For instance I'd take a portrait, focusing on someone's nose only to have their ear out of focus.

That's more of a user thing anyway, as for the lens itself, good grief the autofocus on this lens is loud! Loud enough to be concerned that something might be broken! Also, it's really slow and seems to get confused quite easily, not being able to fins what it's trying to focus on.

Despite these things though, when I was able to get myself together and set up a shot well enough, image would come out sharp and brilliant. It is a great portrait photography lens on my full frame. TDP makes note of the funky bokeh on this lens, I found that in same cases, bokeh came out round, and in other cases, it came out pear shaped. Check out this picture of my friend's dad for example.



For a $125, the results are impressive. My other option of lens is the Canon 50mm f/1.4 which is highly recommended by both TDP and by George at DDP. The f is only 0.4 stops brighter, however the construction is a lot more sturdy. But with this comes the $439 price tag. Decisions, decisions.

A photo of my dad while renovating the laundry. One of my first shots with this lens and one of the ones I'm happier with.