Your Daily Josh

when you have the best Nikon fully mechanical film camera and this happens to you…it blows. I can not utilize it’s 1/4000 shutter speed loll. This is my Nikon FM2n…

photo

$My fast 50. Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM [Canon EF Mount][i also have a Helios 44m-4 58mm f/2, and a Asahi Pentax 55mm f/1.8 and i previously owned a Canon 50mm f/1.8 II]Up until around the late 1980s, there weren’t very many good zoom lenses being sold on the market. In the good old days when 35mm film photography was popular, when you bought a new SLR kit, you’d receive a prime lens (usually a 50mm) along with it. In the present day, when you buy a DSLR kit, the DSLR usually comes with a short zoom lens (18-55mm). It appears that new designs for fast (large aperture) 50mms are becoming ever increasingly rare. This can be attributed to a couple of factors. The first being the invention and implementation of Auto-Focus systems on DSLRs. Back in the 35mm film photography day, if you bought a zoom lens, you would have to first zoom in to your subject to frame it and then manually focus to get your subject in-focus. If you used a prime lens (no zoom), you would use your feet to frame your shot and all you would have to control on the lens is the focusing. Good Auto-Focus motors built into camera lenses eliminate the need to manually focus and all the photographer needs to do is to control zoom and framing.The second factor is that new DSLRs can handle higher ISO speeds better. When you are setting ISO, you’re setting the DSLR’s sensor’s sensitivity to light. If your shutter speed is a tad slow (and you don’t want to use flash), you will want to bump up your ISO speed on your camera to reduce camera shake. Usually when you do this though, you’ll start to notice some grain (sometimes green grain) on your photos. Zoom lenses usually have smaller aperture (larger f/number) than prime lenses and so less light would be hitting the sensor. Newer cameras are able to produce pictures with less grainy artifacts on photos shot with higher ISO speeds than before.So with these two things in mind the question now is. ”Why do I need to invest in a fast 50mm.” Well most people who buy DSLRs today buy ones with a 1.3x, 1.5x, or 1.6x crop sensors. Meaning you would need to multiply the focal lengths by that crop factor (my 50mm on my canon 50d with a crop factor of 1.6 makes this an 80mm lens). A fast 50mm lens on a crop sensor camera becomes a short tele lens perfect for portraiture (the classic portraiture focal lengths are from 80mm-135mm). For all of you photographers that bought a full frame camera (equivlant sensor to 35mm film exposures from the old days), a 50mm lens will get you a frame relative to what a human eye sees. Since 50mms are prime lenses, they use less pieces of glass and because of this, light doesn’t diffract as much and so producing sharper images. At last, a fast 50 has a large aperture providing for those super smooth and soft bokeh (out of focus) effects and shallow depth of field.If you can’t afford a moderately priced fast 50mm, all of the well known lens manufacturers except Tamron and Tokina produce a cheapo 50mm 1.8 version for around $100-150 dollars. A fast 50mm lens should be the first lens you should buy after toying around with your kit lens.$

My fast 50. Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM [Canon EF Mount]
[i also have a Helios 44m-4 58mm f/2, and a Asahi Pentax 55mm f/1.8 and i previously owned a Canon 50mm f/1.8 II]

Up until around the late 1980s, there weren’t very many good zoom lenses being sold on the market. In the good old days when 35mm film photography was popular, when you bought a new SLR kit, you’d receive a prime lens (usually a 50mm) along with it. In the present day, when you buy a DSLR kit, the DSLR usually comes with a short zoom lens (18-55mm).

It appears that new designs for fast (large aperture) 50mms are becoming ever increasingly rare. This can be attributed to a couple of factors. The first being the invention and implementation of Auto-Focus systems on DSLRs. Back in the 35mm film photography day, if you bought a zoom lens, you would have to first zoom in to your subject to frame it and then manually focus to get your subject in-focus. If you used a prime lens (no zoom), you would use your feet to frame your shot and all you would have to control on the lens is the focusing. Good Auto-Focus motors built into camera lenses eliminate the need to manually focus and all the photographer needs to do is to control zoom and framing.

The second factor is that new DSLRs can handle higher ISO speeds better. When you are setting ISO, you’re setting the DSLR’s sensor’s sensitivity to light. If your shutter speed is a tad slow (and you don’t want to use flash), you will want to bump up your ISO speed on your camera to reduce camera shake. Usually when you do this though, you’ll start to notice some grain (sometimes green grain) on your photos. Zoom lenses usually have smaller aperture (larger f/number) than prime lenses and so less light would be hitting the sensor. Newer cameras are able to produce pictures with less grainy artifacts on photos shot with higher ISO speeds than before.

So with these two things in mind the question now is. ”Why do I need to invest in a fast 50mm.” Well most people who buy DSLRs today buy ones with a 1.3x, 1.5x, or 1.6x crop sensors. Meaning you would need to multiply the focal lengths by that crop factor (my 50mm on my canon 50d with a crop factor of 1.6 makes this an 80mm lens). A fast 50mm lens on a crop sensor camera becomes a short tele lens perfect for portraiture (the classic portraiture focal lengths are from 80mm-135mm). For all of you photographers that bought a full frame camera (equivlant sensor to 35mm film exposures from the old days), a 50mm lens will get you a frame relative to what a human eye sees. Since 50mms are prime lenses, they use less pieces of glass and because of this, light doesn’t diffract as much and so producing sharper images. At last, a fast 50 has a large aperture providing for those super smooth and soft bokeh (out of focus) effects and shallow depth of field.

If you can’t afford a moderately priced fast 50mm, all of the well known lens manufacturers except Tamron and Tokina produce a cheapo 50mm 1.8 version for around $100-150 dollars. A fast 50mm lens should be the first lens you should buy after toying around with your kit lens.

Your Daily Josh

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