50mm Prime Arrives


My 50mm prime lens arrived today. It a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4.

A prime lens is one with a fixed focal length (unlike a telephoto which can zoom). This means a lot less glass which means it's faster (i.e. lets more light in) and the images are clearer.

My camera feels very different with the new lens attached because of the shift in centre of gravity. I also find myself constantly going to zoom while looking through the viewfinder which is a habit that will be good to get out of. Even when using my telephoto, I should decide on a focal length first and then move to get the right composition for that focal length. Having a prime will at least get me used to what 50mm looks like (or rather 80mm given the 1.6 multiplier on my Canon 10D—did I mention I want a 5D :-)

Being able to go to f/1.4 is amazing. To put things into perspective, I took pictures of the same subject, one with the new lens and one with my existing lens, a 28-135mm telephoto.

It was indoors without much light. The maximum aperture I could get on my telephoto at 50mm was f/4.5 and I had to use a shutter speed of 1/8s.

With my 50mm f/1.4 at f/1.4, I could take (roughly) the same picture with a shutter speed of 1/180s.

f/1.4 should let 10-times more light in than f/4.5. The more than 20x shutter speed increase is likely in part due to being a prime lens but the exposure was a little darker so it's hard to be sure.

Of course, with f/1.4, the depth-of-field is lovely and shallow.

The bokeh is very pleasing as well, but I need to test it more at smaller apertures. (Bokeh is the quality of the blur)

I'm certainly happy with it so far as a second lens.

The original post was in the category: photography but I'm still in the process of migrating categories over.

The original post had 2 comments I'm in the process of migrating over.