Is there such a thing as a cheap thrill? Can you get amazing stuff for a pittance of money? Is the budget minded EF 50mm f/1.8 lens any good? Lets find out!
What defines a good lens is not only image quality – something which many of today’s lenses can put up a decent fight in. The way in which a lens presents itself to its user is also very important. If the lens doesn’t give a good first impression to the photographer, his pictures will naturally be worse than what he is capable of. As a photographer myself, I can attest to this. My first lens was the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens. It was decent in terms of image quality with enough good qualities to compose and shoot a really great photograph, but, it never felt right. Yeah sure, I did learn how a DSLR works by experimenting with that lens and understanding its shortcomings (slow f-stop, etc) and also learnt my first hard lesson with it when I found fungus growing in it. But, I was never satisfied with it. I constantly found myself irritated by the kit lens instead of going out and shooting a great photograph. That was when I pulled the trigger and bought myself the Nifty Fifty.
The fifty 1.8 never ever fails to impress when you are shooting. Its simple yet thoughtful design gives it an air of perfectness around it when you shoot with it.
It just feels… right.
The way that the nifty fifty is shaped, its timeless cylindrical barrel adorned with nothing but the essentials. Everything about the nifty fifty is loveable. And all that without breaking the bank, burning a hole in your pocket, disintegrating greens.
And the brilliance doesn’t stop there. When you mount it on your DSLR and take your first photo with it, you will be amazed at how tack sharp and clear everything is! Shooting at f/2.8 gives a level of image quality that even a EF 24-105mm f/4L can’t replicate while shooting at f/4! Its L glass on the cheap. And when you stop it down to f/1.8, the razor thin depth of field will blow away anyone that is switching from a bog standard kit lens. Yeah fine, the bokeh isn’t all the spectacular – its quite blocky in places BUT, it is still a quantum leap over the kit lenses*.
Depth of field goodness!
The ability to stop down the aperture to f/1.8 gives the photographer access to shoot in places with low light, giving a much wider variety of shots that the photographer can take.
Great stuff about the nifty fifty:
- Great optics! Everything just feels and looks so sharp and crystal clear.
- Stops down to f/1.8 – low light monster
- Depth of field at f/1.8-2.8 is awesome with huge out of focus areas
- Seriously great value!
Only real negative points I can think of about the nifty fifty would be:
- Cheapish build quality
- A bit soft wide open at f/1.8
- Auto focusing can be wonky at times, especially in low light (maybe thats due to my 500D’s not brilliant AF system)
- No manual focus override (Full Time Manual Focusing)
- Bokeh balls (Out of Focus light sources) are not that smooth due to 5 point aperture blade
Anyway if you have at least half a brain, its pretty obvious that most of the bad points about the nifty fifty is just nitpicking. The good stuff about the nifty fifty outweigh any of its shortcomings tenfold.
If you are coming from a kit lens* and in the market to explore into new avenues of photography, by all means get this sweet little 50mm lens! If you need a spare lens to bring with you to an overseas trip, the fifty will also do you well. For ~$130, the EF 50mm f/1.8 is really a great lens. Its sharp, it works well in low light, its cheap. Its brilliant!
* by kit lens, we mean the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, not the 5D mark 2 and 3 kit lens which is the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM
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