Canon EF 50mm f 1 8 II Camera Lens

Canon EF 50mm f 1 8 II Camera Lens

This is the lightest EF lens of all at a mere 4.6 oz. (130g). Compact and high-performance, standard lens. Its Gaussian optics provide sharp delineation from near to far focusing distances. The color balance is excellent for a standard lens.

User Ratings and Reviews

4 Stars You get what you pay for
You get what you pay for and you don’t pay much for this lens, however, what you get for the price is surprising. If you can get past the cheap build quality you’ll be pleased to find that this lens takes excellent quality photos. Shooting wide open (at f/1.8) gives you a wonderful blurred background and it’s easy to achieve your depth of field goals with this little beauty. That said, I do find the auto focus to be a bit temperamental at times and do sometimes miss a shot having to refocus the lens. This wouldn’t have been enough to deter me from the purchase though. For just under a hundred bucks it really is worth any little quirks and it lets you try out the feel of a prime lens without having to fork out the nearly five hundred dollars for the 50mm 1.4.

Overall, very pleased and I think this lens is a steal.

2 Stars Awesome for 2 months, now blurry
I have hardly used this lens and abused it in no way. After 2 months it’s no good to me because I can’t get a sharp picture out of it. The AF is way off. If I manually focus I can come close, but no cigar. All my other lenses are awesome so I know its not the cameras fault.

5 Stars 50mm Lens Surprisingly Great in the Right Situations
I received this lens “stock” when I bought my Canon Rebel xTi (400D) off of a dude on Craigslist. He included a flare guard and a UV filter. At first I had no idea what i was doing with the thing. my initial reaction to a nonzoom lens was THIS IS STUPID WHY DO THEY MAKE SUCH THINGS. I hated that I had to move super far away from my subject matter and that I could get wider shots. As I got used to it, I found out the secret awesome to a no-zoom lens.

-INTENSE depth of field: details get nailed with correct focus

I am very into getting a super focus on my subject, and this lens allows for a huge difference between the subject and everything else. Finding the correct way to focus took a few weeks, but once I figured it out I felt like all my photographs were some sort of brilliant breakthrough. It’s invigorating to have the huge amount of detail from a lower end DSLR. My school had 5Ds for rental, and I feared I would take ages to own that type of hardware after graduating. The quality of shooting is extremely satisfying, as long as you know what you are shooting for. Until you can afford a macro lens, go with this guy.

-capturing live music events can happen

As a band photographer and concert goer, I have played with different types of cameras and (if applicable) lens. The lowlight situations were a biatch when I didn’t have a large flash and didn’t want to distract the performers. This lens rocks at freezing singers in their tracks. Once you find your perch you’re good for the rest of the night. You have to be a little closer than you think you need to be.

I would not use this lens when shooting people in close quarters. you have to get quite a distance away if you want to have anything show up around your subject. It’s a handy lens to have while sightseeing, especially for monuments. If you’re in a museum that allows photography, I would not use it because of needing to be far from the subject — you’d be pretty interrupting to the other museum-goers. The auto-focus can be pretty janky at times which can be a bummer when you want a quick snapshot. Be prepared to do all manual focusing; it creates the best shots with this lens.

This lens is good for a beginner photographer in the land of DSLR because it makes you learn how to use your camera rather than letting you get away with pretending you know what you’re doing.

5 Stars Yipee!
I really struggled with buying this lens for a long time. How could something this inexpensive be any better than the kit quality lenses I already own. Looking at all the sample images and comments finally pushed me over the edge and I am glad they did.

This little gem has been giving me clearer pictures than I have been able to achieve for the most part since getting my XSi camera early December 2009. I am even able to do some very nice quazi macro work until I get a real macro lens, and the bokeh is really beautiful. Taking portrait shots of people, well I just can’t say enough good things about that.

This is going to keep me entertained until I can afford to buy more expensive glass, but hey, I live in California, and work for the state. Can you say ‘furlough’?

Go for it!

5 Stars Great portrait lens
This lens has a decent build quality, sufficient if you plan to hold it in your camera bag. The huge advantages over the zoom lens are:

1) The weight – it weights nothing, very light, especially for entry level DSLRs

2) The price – near one hundred bucks price tag makes it a great deal

3) The low light performance and shallow depth of field – no zoom has 1.8f aperture. You can blur the background much better than with zooms and shoot nice portraits. I compared it, for example with kit lens, which is not even mile close. It still can take pictures without flash when my $1000+ zoom can’t.

Some cons, although nothing critical:

1) The sharpness at f/1.8 is not that great for portraits, but improves significantly at f/2.

2) The lack of image stabilizer makes it difficult to shoot at slow shutter speeds without tripod.

3) The manual focus ring is too narrow, though perfectly usable

4) The lens is 50mm, which is perfect for portraits and people shooting when on full film size sensor, but on cropped sensor, like most of the DSLRs have today, it’s 1.6×50=80mm. With this focus length, it’s difficult to shoot full body portraits inside, there must be enough distance to the object. Outside it is less critical, but still noticeable. When I use the zoom lens, I often set it to about 35mm for full body portrait.

Overall it’s a good buy and great value for money. I recommend it, but not as a single lens.

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Canon EF 50mm f1 4 USM Standard and Medium Telephoto Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

Canon EF 50mm f1 4 USM Standard and Medium Telephoto Lens for Canon SLR Cameras

Standard lens featuring superb quality and portability. Two high-refraction lens elements and new Gaussian optics eliminate astigmatism and suppress astigmatic difference. Crisp images with little flare are obtained even at the maximum aperture.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars very happy
I saved money getting from here, and it came pretty quickly. I am taking a photography course, and love this new lens. It is now the only lens I keep on my camera, it is perfect for portrait shots. My kids look amazing and people have been commenting on how good my photos are lately. Their face are so clear and the background can get very blurry and beautiful, it looks like a professional took these shots. I definitely recommend this lens and this website to anyone.

4 Stars A good quality prime lens with just one objection
The EF 50mm f/1.4 USM is a reasonably well-built lens and offers commendable optical quality. The focusing is quick and quiet in spite of the low cost micro-USM motor. The bokeh quality is excellent, and the full-time manual focusing feature becomes very handy when the camera picks the wrong focus target at a shallow depth of field. Many users regard this lens as slightly soft when the aperture is wide open, but for low-light settings, sometimes the only choice is slightly soft or entirely unusable, and being able to stop clear out to 1.4 is then beneficial. The use of a 58mm filter ring ensures access to a wide range of quality filters at reasonable prices.

In most respects the EF 50mm f/1.4 USM is worth the upgrade from the EF 50mm f/1.8 II, which begs the question of why Canon designed the front element to travel outside of the lens barrel during focusing. That sort of cost-saving measure is expected on a $100 basic lens like the EF 50mm f/1.8 II, but not on a higher-end prime costing over $300. Fortunately, the moving front element does not rotate on either of these lenses, so position-sensitive filters such as circular polarizers and partial-gradient ND filters will not be disrupted by focusing operations. However, other popular mid-grade Canon primes have no external movement, including the EF 20mm f/2.8 USM, EF 28mm f/1.8 USM, and EF 85mm f/1.8 USM.

A first-time dSLR user would be better served with the 50mm f/1.8 II, and higher-end buyers would be better served with the 50mm f/1.2L, if for no other reason than to delete the external travel on the lens barrel. For everyone else, the EF 50mm f/1.4 USM is an essential part of any well-rounded camera kit.

5 Stars Great lens, especially for the price
I really enjoy using this lens. It is becoming my new go-to lens for everything except distance shots. Great depth of field thanks to the 8 blade bokeh. Definitely recommend this over its cheaper brother. Works amazing in low light and takes super vibrant picture on 1.4. I cannot comment on the durability because I have not had the lens for long. It seems to be sturdier than my tamron lenses.

4 Stars Good lens, but if on a budget get the 1.8
I recently upgrade from the Canon 50mm 1.8II while it has its obvious upgrade (1.4, USM, better builds etc.) I dont find the pictures that much different besides flare resistance. overall its a good lens and a good value

Like I said if you’re on a budget get the 1.8, or if you have the cash or are planning on keeping this lens for 2-3 years just get the 1.4.

1 Star Skip the headache and the heartache and go for a better lens
I love all my canon gear. I have a 50mm 1.8 and upgraded to this as I have progressed in my photography. Unfortunately, I have had the same sort of trouble the other reviews have stated. At this point I only have had trouble with the focus under f2.2. Every shot lost in two photo shoots and I had not realized until after researching on the internet as to why.

No trouble with the AF failing as of yet, but I’m pretty disgusted that I have to redo two shoots – wasting both my time and the models time. Shame on you Canon!

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Nikon 35mm f 1 8G AF S DX Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras

Nikon 35mm f 1 8G AF S DX Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras

Fast, lightweight f/1.8 prime DX-format Nikkor lens perfect for low-light conditions, travel, environmental portrait and general photography.

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars So So
I like the idea of it, but a prime lens is far too limiting this day in age, especially when there’s plenty of zoom lenses that have almost as good quality and satisfy 90% of the needs.

This is a good lens for a very specific purpose – wanting a lot of isolation between the subject and the background/foreground.

I don’t recommend getting it for low light shooting because the thing doesn’t have VR – unless you have a tripod. Its low light performance wasn’t as good as I expected.

Mine might be defective but it always seems to focus a few inches away from where I centered on. I don’t know why, and i don’t care because i’m returning it.

Pros

Great image colors and sharpness

Great isolation

Cons

no Vibration Reduction

wide open aperture washes out some colors

5 Stars Great little prime lens!
After getting back into (D)SLR photography and buying a D70 from a friend, I wanted to get a prime lens that I could use in low light situations w/o flash. This neat little 1.8 35mm does the trick; it’s fast, sharp and crisp, with brilliant color rendition, quick AF, and no real problems I can see! Even the price is reasonable for a prime lens, IMO.

I also like that it’s small (compared to my 18-55mm kit lens), which makes it easy to carry both on and off the camera whenever I want to do ‘natural-light’ shooting. And being it’s a DX lens the x1.5 ratio when mounted on a Nikon DX DSLR gives you the same approximate field of view of a 50mm film (or full frame) lens, which has been the standard true-eye size focal length for 35mm film cameras for decades! It’s a great lens for for candids and scenery, and because it’s so sharp it can also do excellent portrait work, providing you get close enough (no zoom, remember?) to your subject..!

-Nice work Nikon, and please make some more reasonable Nikkor primes like this for those of us who cannot afford the huge prices on most of your other DX AF prime lenses. An f4 105 or 200mm prime for around $200 would be a lot easier to swallow than those over-$1K prices (which I can’t afford!) for all of the existing Nikkor 2.8 primes, IMO!

5 Stars Great Lens
The lens has been great. The quality of my pictures increased drastically with the 35mm lens. It works well and is easy to use with auto focus. Learning to use it with manual settings takes a little time, but worth every minute.

5 Stars Fast lens for fun around the house.
This light weight 35mm (52mm equiv) fast f/1.8 little prime lens is a kick in the pants lens for low light candid shots around our house. It’s overall brilliant performance in natural lighting conditions makes it unique enough on it’s own merrit for everyone to consider. The price is right at Amazon for a lot of value, and I can’t think of a negative comment to make about this handy little opticalgem.

5 Stars No brainer for dx cameras
I’ve had this lens for almost a month now for my D40 and haven’t used the kit lens since then. For under $200, every Nikon DX camera user should have one. I noticed immediately sharper pictures and much quicker AF compared to the kit lens. I may never use the kit lens again. Better build quality too. Rarely do I need to use flash which is the main reason I purchased this lens.

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