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Sharpness of 50mm wide open


andrew_ito

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I'm in the market for a good 50mm prime to use on a Canon 10D. From what I've

heard and read, the 50mm 1.4 is reportedly soft when used wide open. Other than

the obvious paper thin DOF, do you recognize the loss of sharpness when shot wide

open? I'm considering primarily the 50mm 1.4 for it's speed and better bokeh. But, I

would also welcome opinions on the 50mm 1.8. At what point does the lens become

"razor" sharp? I want to shoot at fairly large apertures for low light and portrait work.

Thanks for your help.

 

Andy

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Lots of people that I've read complain about softness actually confuse softness with DOF. I have a 50 1.8II and it's very sharp. Even wide open. But the thing is if you focus on somebody's eyeglasses, the eyes won't be in focus so you have to be careful. Also, lots of people use the 1.8 with very low shutter speeds for handheld photography and so you also loose some sharpness to camera shake.
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Although I have never used the 50mm f1.4, I do use the 50mm f1.8 very often. I find myself shooting wide-open frequently since I use this lens mostly during low-light situations. Even at f1.8, this lens is very sharp. From about f4-f5.6 on, I would consider it "tack sharp" as you've mentioned.
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I own both, and wide open either will be very soft if your subject is at or near the shortest focusing distance; DOF is narrower the closer the subject is to the camera, and this is just the nature of optics.<BR>

Both lenses are very good, but I prefer the 50mm f/1.4 because of its full-time manual focusing feature, and yes, the bokeh is better (best noticed when you get a sparkling effect with a blurred background).<BR>

I use the 50mm f/1.8 most of the time solely because I don't like to use my 50 f/1.4 for "casual" shooting. The f/1.4 is also very quiet and has a , while the f/1.8 has a whirring noise when autofocusing.

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I got a EF 50mm f1.4 recently. The test on my 10D revealed that at wide open, f1.4 and f2 tends to be a little soft, but at f2.8, it is close to my EF 100mm Macro USM lens at same aperture. But I think I am ok with that since I am not sure if I want to have an extremely sharp lens for any portait work, though I have the option to set it to f2.8 if I want to. Another thing I find about this lens was that its build quality was not that great, considering the price tag. I knew alot of people have complaints about the cheap construct of new f1.8 MarkII. That's why I went for a f1.4. I don't know about the cheap f1.8 or the metal mount mark I, but this f1.4 certainly does not have the same feel of my other lenses, be it USM or non-USM, L or non-L. In terms of image quality, I have no complaint though.
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