The Beauty of The Canon 50mm 1.8 II

So, to finish up with the Canon 7D Review, I'd like to link to a review that is 100x better than the one I gave, and one that puts my thoughts at ease about the 7D. Scott Bourne wrote a review on the 7D as both a still and video camera. Here is a link to his review.

Moving on to the 50mm 1.8...

Although this information is most useful for all of those just getting into DSLR photography, pretty much anybody that doesn't already have this lens or its equivalent should also benefit.

Canon's 50mm f/1.8 has been on my camera for over a year. Put simply, this lens is a trooper. At $100.00 (I got mine cheaper on Amazon), it can't be beat. For chicken feed (as far as lenses are concerned) you get a fast, sharp prime lens with beautiful bokeh. This is by far the least expensive lens in my bag, and its the one I use most often. But, however, the lens is $100.00 for a reason.

The build quality is quite poor. The barrel is made of plastic. The autofocus, when it works, sounds like it has sand in its grooves. The AF quit entirely before its first year of use. While it may be meticulous to focus manually at wide open, the 50 1.8 is still incredibly useful, and is my main portrait lens. Here are some samples taken with my nifty fifty.







These were all taken on Canon APS-C (cropped sensor) cameras. On cropped sensors, the effective focal length of a 50mm lens is equivalent to that of an 80mm lens on a 35mm camera.

Put simply, this is probably the smartest buy anyone can possibly have. Even with a broken AF, my 50 1.8 has so many more hours on my camera than my other lenses that its not even close. Its just straight up fun to use. This really goes to show that you don't have to spend hundreds and hundreds of dollars to get beautiful images. Sure, its not the end all be all of lenses by any, and I mean ANY, stretch of the imagination, but it is one of the cheapest and most practical pieces of gear that I own. I think I would be lost without it.