{"id":44,"date":"2012-06-26T20:42:30","date_gmt":"2012-06-26T19:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/?p=44"},"modified":"2012-07-05T13:32:37","modified_gmt":"2012-07-05T12:32:37","slug":"the-fast-fifty-dillema","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/?p=44","title":{"rendered":"The Fast-Fifty dillema"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of people own the 50mm f\/1.8 lens. It is dirt-cheap, delivers good quality for its price (optically). Build quality… Well it has the nickname “plastic fantastic” for a reason. I hear a lot of people wanting to upgrade to a 50mm f\/1.4, but very often for the wrong reason. In this blog post I’ll describe the why and how to this.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n



\n“I need a faster 50mm”<\/strong><\/p>\n

I hear this all the time. People have a Canon EF 50mm f\/1.8, and are looking to upgrade to a 50mm f\/1.4 all for the wrong reasons. Do not be fooled by wide a faster 50mm lens just because it is faster; people mostly shoot portraits using a 50mm lens on a cropped camera (beware: for a full frame camera, use at least 85mm!).<\/p>\n

<\/TD><\/TD><\/TD><\/TD><\/TR><\/TABLE>
\n
Cheap to expensive: Canon 50mm f\/1.8, Canon 50mm f\/1.4, Sigma 50mm f\/1.4, Canon 50mm f\/1.2 L<\/em><\/center>
\n

\nFor portraits consider this situation on a cropped body:
\n

\n
Distance [m]<\/center><\/strong><\/TH>
Aperture<\/center><\/strong><\/TH>
Depth Of Field [cm]<\/center><\/strong><\/TH>
1,5<\/center><\/TD>
f\/1.2<\/center><\/TD>
2<\/center><\/TD><\/TR>
1,5<\/center><\/TD>
f\/1.4<\/center><\/TD>
2<\/center><\/TD><\/TR>
1,5<\/center><\/TD>
f\/1.8<\/center><\/TD>
3<\/center><\/TD><\/TR>
1,5<\/center><\/TD>
f\/2.2<\/center><\/TD>
3<\/center><\/TD><\/TR>
1,5<\/center><\/TD>
f\/2.5<\/center><\/TD>
4<\/center><\/TD><\/TR>
1,5<\/center><\/TD>
f\/2.8<\/center><\/TD>
4<\/center><\/TD><\/TR>
2,0<\/center><\/TD>
f\/1.2<\/center><\/TD>
7<\/center><\/TD><\/TR>
2,0<\/center><\/TD>
f\/1.4<\/center><\/TD>
8<\/center><\/TD><\/TR>
2,0<\/center><\/TD>
f\/1.8<\/center><\/TD>
11<\/center><\/TD><\/TR>
2,0<\/center><\/TD>
f\/2.2<\/center><\/TD>
13<\/center><\/TD><\/TR>
2,0<\/center><\/TD>
f\/2.5<\/center><\/TD>
15<\/center><\/TD><\/TR>
2,0<\/center><\/TD>
f\/2.8<\/center><\/TD>
17<\/center><\/TD><\/TR><\/TABLE><\/p>\n

Table 1: Depth of Field (DOF) in centimeters for a 50mm lens on a cropped body<\/center><\/em>
\n

\nAs you can see, shooting a 50mm at portrait distance at f\/1.4 will give you a DOF so shallow, it is almost unusable (one eye sharp, other one not and tip of nose also out of focus before you know it). For a decent portrait you’d need a DOF around 10-15cm, which would put you at the 2 meter distance, 50mm at a setting of f\/2.5 or f\/2.8.<\/p>\n

As you can see, a lens faster than f\/1.8 is hardly worthwhile in this respect, unless you want to shoot at a really shallow DOF.
\n

\nShooting “wide open”<\/strong><\/p>\n

A lot of people tend to shoot their 50mm f\/1.8 wide open. For a shallow DOF, of just because there is so little light. This is all good, but remember the DOF you get. <\/p>\n

There is another problem with shooting some 50mm lenses wide open: Optical quality is often hardly acceptable when shooting the lens wide open. This goes especially for the Canon 50mm f\/1.8 and Canon 50mm f\/1.4 lenses. If you really want some optical performance, you need to stop these lenses down to at least f\/2.0 or f\/2.2.<\/p>\n

If you require a 50mm lens that performs well wide open, you could consider the Canon 50mm f\/1.2 L (which is around 1300 euros so not really cheap), or the Sigma 50mm f\/1.4. The Sigma produces pretty good results, even when shot at f\/1.4 .
\n

\nSo why WOULD you upgrade your dear Canon 50mm f\/1.8 ?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Of course there are many valid reasons to upgrade your Canon 50mm f1.8 lens:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Build quality. The “plastic fantastic” has poor build quality (forgiven though for its price!);<\/li>\n
  2. AF-motor. The 50mm f\/1.8 features an old micromotor AF drive. Noisy, slow, often inaccurate;<\/li>\n
  3. Focusing manually is a pain, given the very obscure focus ring on the lens. No full-time manual focusing too;<\/li>\n
  4. Front or back focus. My copy of the 50mm f\/1.8 has severe front focus. Luckily my 7D can adjust for this, but if you have a camera that cannot it might be a reason to upgrade the lens;<\/li>\n
  5. Bokeh. This is one of the prime reasons to upgrade (for me). The 50mm f\/1.8 has just 5 aperture blades, and bokeh is not the greatest;<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    <\/em><\/p>\n

    Do not get met wrong; the 50mm f\/1.8 is a GREAT lens. I hear people say “everyone should have one in their kit”<\/em>. Still you can gain a lot by upgrading to another 50mm. Just make sure you upgrade for the right reasons!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    A lot of people own the 50mm f\/1.8 lens. It is dirt-cheap, delivers good quality for its price (optically). Build quality… Well it has the nickname “plastic fantastic” for a reason. I hear a lot of people wanting to upgrade to a 50mm f\/1.4, but very often for the wrong reason. In this blog post […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[55,47,52,51,50,49,48,79,59,78,80,83,82,81,57,54,53,56,60,58],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photobasics","tag-bokeh","tag-canon-50mm","tag-canon-50mm-f1-2","tag-canon-50mm-f1-4","tag-canon-50mm-f1-8","tag-depth-of-field","tag-dof","tag-fast-fifty","tag-faster-lens","tag-fifty","tag-fifty-mm","tag-nifty-50","tag-nifty-fifty","tag-plastic-fantastic","tag-portraits-blurred","tag-shallow-dof","tag-sigma-50mm-f1-4","tag-upgrade-50mm","tag-upgrade-50mm-f1-8","tag-wide-open"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":60,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":724,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions\/724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.xhd.nl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}