50mm would arguably be the first lens you would love and long to have in your asset bag. Making people wonder what makes this lens such a special one to have on your camera. Answering this would be really tough since 50mm lens has an astounding image quality, stunning contrast, and a beautiful bokeh when shot wide open, which our kit lens will really find hard to match with.
Adding more to that, 50mm would definitely be an incredible lens to start, here in this post we have listed out some key points, for why should someone buy this lens. Make sure to glance at these wonderful photographs too.
#1 Focal Length
Almost close to the perception of the human eye, this 50mm covers the perspective that a human eye would be capable of seeing. On a crop body, this acts as a 90mm equivalent which is an added advantage for portrait works. A wonderful walkaround lens, which you would not want to replace much. What you have framed is apt and optimum for a portrait shot, a street shot and what more. This focal length fixes most of the queries about composition and wants you to experiment more with the magic number 50. Most importantly, this infact increases your knowledge towards composition and framing, since you move around while shooting a scene rather than zooming in or out.
#2 Intelligence Factor
What makes a lens intelligent, how would you call one as better and clever than the other. I would measure this by making it shoot in low light, 50mm allows practically 30 times more light to fall on your sensor when compared with the kit lens. This makes it an incredible weapon while shooting in adverse low light conditions. Without even having to boost your ISO and making your picture grainy this would solve almost all valid problems you must have faced more commonly.
#3 Portraits
They call it a portrait lens especially because 50mm is a wonderful tool for headshots. The depth of field is relevant to the importance of the character, with great clarity and super contrast, we can never think ahead of shooting a portrait with 50mm. At times, this would make the photographer wonder about processing the picture, since most often the SOOC picture boasts so much on the richness of this lens.
#4 Bokeh
The most primary aspect one would buy a prime lens would be for its beautiful shallow depth of field plus an admirable bokeh to top that. This is just magnificent and for any first-time shooter he/she would just go in awe for the exquisite backgrounds it shows you time to time. Not much chromatic aberrations and excellent optics make this a hands-down winner and priceless addition to your photography asset.
#5 Top 50mm Lenses
Here we have listed out some of the grand iconic 50mm lenses from various brands. Go ahead and enjoy the sublime beauty of 50mm with your magical photography.
- Canon EF 50mm f/1.8
- Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM
- Nikon 50mm f/1.8
- Nikon AF-S 50mm f/1.4
- Canon EF 50mm f/1.2 L USM
- Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX
- Pentax DA 50mm f1.8
- SMC Pentax FA 50mm f/1.4
- Sony 50mm f/1.8
- Zeiss ZE Planar T* 50mm F/1.4
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4 comments
Thanks a lot for this article
Thanks for sharing this information. I own a vintage Minolta 58mm, f1.4 from way back when. It’s not 50mm but close enough. I intend to keep this lens and use it with the new Sony full frame A7 just announced. When I need a bit of ‘reach’ it will work just fine as an 87.5mm portrait lens with my Sony NEX-6 as a crop body.
You should have mentioned that 50mm is the focal length of the normal lens for full frame. Other film/sensor sizes have different focal lengths for their normal lenses. I hope no one owning an APS-C camera is buying a 50mm because of this article :-).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normal_lens
I wish I had more money to spend! Zooms are usually my preferred lenses, but wish I had some more primes. I do have a 35, but only that. A 50 mm would probably round out my gear.