My most important lens

Author's Rating:

Pros: Huge light-gathering capabilities, much better build quality than the 50/1.8, crystal-clear images when stopped down.

Cons: Fuzzy in bright light when shooting wide open.

The Bottom Line: 
An excellent value for such a solid performer. Your photos will instantly get better.

Author's Review
We purchased a Digital Rebel back in early 2004 to try and stave off our desires to get back into a darkroom and spend lots of money on film and chemicals. It did the trick for the most part, but I couldn't help missing my old 50/1.8 lens that I used back in school.

The obvious choice was Canon's 50/1.8, but I noticed that the Mark III version of that lens is made of plastic, and that the metal Mark II version was over 200 dollars, at which point it becomes a lot more appealing to spend a few more dollars and get the 1.4 version. I have never been happier with a lens.

The 50/1.4 takes excellent photos across the entire range of F-stops. It is fuzzy in brightly-lit conditions if you use it at f1.4, but really you shouldn't be doing that unless you WANT a fuzzy, ethereal image. I happen to enjoy these images, especially after a rain. It's almost like the "soft focus" effect of the SF portrait lenses. But technically, it is a limitation of the lens' ability to resolve a "correct" image.

When stopped down to f1.8 or f2.2, all traces of this effect disappear, and you're left with a very sharp image and if you're doing portrait work, you still get good background blur. If you want to take night-time photos in a living room setting, the f1.4 is invaluable. I LOVE taking photos at night with no tripod and no flash. That's not to say that the camera can take in as much light as a human eye, but generally speaking, you'll be the only person at the family reunion who isn't waiting for a flash to strobe. You'll never see a red eye. No flash-blasted faces. None of that mess...

The color saturation from the lens is rich and full. It is maybe a little cooler than my 70-200 L-series lens, but it looks so natural I wouldn't consider it a fault...probably the 70-200 is overly vibrant (which I also like sometimes).

The lens will focus more quickly in regular lighting conditions than any of my other lenses except for the 70-200. It hunts for a focus point a little bit when lighting is low, but I've heard that this is a camera issue more than a lens issue. It is apparently near-instant on a 30D or better camera body.

At 300 dollars, lots of people who can afford this lens might be thinking that they should buy a plastic or 3rd party zoom lens for the same money, maybe believing that having a single FoV of 50mm would be limiting. Don't get me wrong, you have limitations with a 50mm prime lens, but there is a reason that it is the most common and popular lens size in the world. On a digital crop camera, you're not really getting 50mm, so maybe the 35mm lens would be more true to this feel and versatility, but I've found that in my own personal photographic adventures, the 50/1.4 spends the most time on my camera of any of my lenses.

Most people who use zoom lenses (myself included) don't use the middle range of their zoom unless it has a very dramatic (10x or more) range from tight to wide. When I look through the metadata on my 15K+ photo library, I notice that almost all of my photos are at the maximum and minimum zoom limits for any given lens...in other words, for most people, a zoom lens is just a combination of two prime lenses without the optical quality and size benefits of a prime. I use my 70-200 as if it were a 70mm lens or a 200mm lens, but rarely anything in between.

Shooting with a prime is more challenging because it makes you consider your options. This is a good thing for a photographer because you won't be taking as many snapshots as you would be if it were easy to fill the frame with exactly what your subject is. You have to be creative. What usually happens is that if you use a prime lens all the time, when you do pick up a big tele or wide zoom, you treat it more like a prime lens, and you end up with better photographs.

The Canon 50/1.4 is a fine lens and one that should be given a place in any photographer's bag of tricks.