Why there is no Canon 50mm *IS* lens?

Question

Canon's 50mm prime lenses are all non-IS (Image Stabilization) for some reason. Considering the popularity of these range primes, shouldn't Canon be interested in shipping a new, optically improved IS version?

Answer

There are two main reason why there's little chance we're going to see 50mm IS lens in the near future:

• 50mm lenses tend to be very simple and therefore cheap. Complicating its design with an image stabilizer group would push the price significantly higher, while the added benefit of IS wouldn't be that high at 50mm focal length.

• If you want an expensive and light-hungry 50mm, there's already the huge lump of glass that is EF 50mm f/1.2L. There's not much point in having IS in such fast (and relatively wide) lenses.

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Is a 50mm f/1.8 or 50mm f/1.4 a good lens for portraits in low light?

Question

I only have one lens right now. It's the Canon 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS kit lens. I think this lens is great when the lighting conditions are right but in low light I usually have to result to flash.

For instance I was taking pictures of people in front if a christmas tree, without flash the tree looked great but since the tree was the light source (and behind the people), the peoples faces were too dark. I had to use flash, which made the tree look not near as good, but you could see the peoples faces better.

I am wondering how I can take better low light pictures like this, especially portraits with the subject in focus and the background blurred with nice bokeh.

I think this means I need a lower aperture. I was looking at these two:

• 50mm f/1.4
• 50mm f/1.8

I would rather buy the cheaper 1.8, but only if it's going to give me something much better than what my current lens can do.

Should I fork over the money and get the more expensive one, or am I looking at completely the wrong lenses for what I want?

Answer

I personally have the 1.8 and my friend the 1.4. Obviously the 1.4 is much better build quality and fairly betetr optically, but the 1.8 is a bargain and still a good lens as long as you don't plan on throwning it around. Also more easily replaced if it breaks. Both give pleasing pictures and both will be better in low light than your current lens... but..

..in your example you give these lenses would not improve the picture in the way you want. The christmas tree would still be the source of light and the people would still be underexposed in front of it. The lenses would both make the ability for faster shutter speeds or lower ISO's, but the lighting ratio in your picture would still be the same.

To get the picture you are after you would still need some illumination on your subjects to expose them better with the tree. As it is dark a reflector wouldn't be much use, so it's more likely you will need to use some flash, but don't put it on auto. Use your camera (I'd prefer in manual) to expose for the tree, and then use the flash as fill light, probably dialing in some flash exposure compensation of -1 or -2 stops so that the light is mostly only lighting their faces and not affecting the already lit background so much.

It'll likely take some tinkering to get the right ratio of lighting that you want, but using a faster lens is only going to mean more bokeh (which will be nice for the tree potentially) and the ability to shoot faster, it won't magically bring your subjects out of the low light whilst leaving the background as it was.

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Why do people recommend 50mm or other prime lenses as starting lenses for learning photography?

Question

I've seen quite a few people recommend the 50mm prime lenses, in particular the sub-$100 50mm/f1.8, as a starting lens for photographers (especially because they're likely to be using cameras with cropped sensors). From my experiences with the 18-55 mm kit lens (on a Canon EOS 550D), it seems that 50mm is not really very suited for indoor flashless group photographs where the wide aperture would be helpful. It is probably a good lens for portraits of one or two persons, and some low light photographs.

So, what are the advantages it offers over the kit zoom lenses (apart from the wider aperture), under what scenarios is it more useful, and why would you recommend it as a starting lens?

Answer

What people have generally suggested is to start with a normal lens. On a full-frame 35mm camera, that role was generally filled by the 50mm lens. On a modern crop-frame DSLR, it would be closer to 30mm (for Canon APS-C 1.6x sensors) or 35mm (Nikon, Pentax, Sony) or 25mm (Olympus and Panasonic).

The 50mm is usually suggested these days as the first good supplement to the kit lens. It doesn't really matter whose 50mm lens you're looking at, the design for the f/1.8 (or f/1.7) version has been around forever. They're all sharp to very sharp, lightweight and (most of all) cheap. And as you pointed out, they'll function well as a shortish version of the traditional medium telephoto portrait lens. But as nice as the "nifty fifty" is, it's not a normal lens on a crop-sensor camera.

A normal prime lens is very versatile. You can step back a couple of feet and get a fairly wide image field. Step forward and you can fill the frame with a single subject of interest. Neither picture will be quite what you'd get using a wide angle lens or a short telephoto, but you can get a reasonably good picture either way. The field of view subjectively matches what you tend to think you're seeing in real life, so there are no major surprises or unintentional special effects.

Working with a prime lens, though, helps you to become a better photographer. It forces you to change your point of view to find the best image rather than just standing in the easiest spot and turning a ring. You might get acceptable results using a zoom exclusively, but it's unlikely you'll get a spectacular result until you've forced yourself to take the rocky road for a while. You may decide to stick with primes (I have always had zooms, and shot an average of ten rolls of film a day -- or the equivalent -- for a couple of decades, and I bet I took fewer than two hundred shots with a zoom lens in all that time) but even if you use a zoom lens most of the time, you'll never use it in quite the same way after working exclusively with prime lenses long enough to change your habits.

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What's the advantage of buying a fixed 50mm f/1.8 lens when my camera has an 18-55mm zoom lens?

Question

I've got a Nikon D3100 with an 18-55mm zoom lens. I'm keen to experiment with some other lenses and a friend of mine recently reccommended I purchase a fixed 50mm f/1.8 lens as he said it's good for portrait photography and capturing really sharp images. He also said that as it isn't a zoom lens it will sharpen my composition skills.

My question is - I currently have an 18-55mm zoom lens, so by purchasing a 50mm fixed lens, won't I be purchasing a spec of lens already covered by my 18-55mm lens? What are the main differences between these two lenses?

Finally - can anybody vouch for the Nikon fixed 50mm f/1.8 lens as being a good lens to go for?

Answer

At 50mm on your 18-55, the max aperture is f/5.6. On the 50mm f/1.8, the max aperture is - obviously - f/1.8. It is perhaps not immediately obvious, but f/1.8 lets in 10-12 times more light than f/5.6. That is the difference between shooting at 1/10 second shutter speed (which is absolutely a no-go for moving subjects) and shooting at 1/100 (which is a usable shutter speed for moving subjects). Big difference indoors at night, for example. It lets you shoot without flash, or with the flash used as mere fill flash instead of it being the main light-source.

Note that Nikon has two variants of the 50/1.8, one with a built-in autofocus motor and an older one without. Do get the new one.

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