Why the 50mm lens?

[michaelborger]

This is a beginner question, but I see so many people recommending I

get a 50mm 1.8 lens. I know it's supposed to be light and only

around $100, but why the insistence on this? Is it the wide open

aperture? How much of a difference in image quality would a lens

like this make over my kit 18-70mm lens at the same focal length at

a slightly different f-stop?

 

Obviously to me, the main drawback is that you actually have to move

in closer or step away from the subject to compose - no zooming. I

imagine this makes composing your image quite difficult.

 

Thoughts? I'm off to NW China soon for a month and don't want to

carry too much stuff, but I'm considering getting a lens like this.

[kuryan_thomas]

One objection that I personally have against zooms - even though I use them extensively -

is that they have no "point of view." The very thing you mention - no zooming - imposes a

kind of shooting discipline in regard to composition and how you relate to the subject.

Zooms don't do that, because you can simply change the POV instantly.

 

Kind of a high-falutin answer, but try this exercise, which I sometimes do. Fix a focal

length on your 18-70. Whatever you like: say 35mm, which is about a normal lens on a DX

sensor. Now go and take photos without ever changing the length. You'll begin to see

what I mean about having to think about how you relate to the subject.

 

My personal opinion is that once you do this a few times, you'll be better with a zoom lens

too, because you'll ask the right questions about what you want to say in the image.

 

The 1.8 aperture is nice, but in a digital camera with variable ISO, that's not essential.

[ShunCheung]

In 29 years of shooting Nikon cameras, I have never bought a 50mm lens of any type. Since you already have the 18-70mm lens, which is DX and therefore I assume you have a DSLR. Unless you frequently shoot indoors with existing light, a fast 50mm lens such as f1.8 (around $100) is not necessary.

 

Some people use the 50mm as a portrait lens and the fast f1.8 helps them to achieve very shallow depth of field. That may be another application, but 50mm is not quite ideal for portrait either.

 

I suggest you use your 18-70 for now. Buy another lens only if you feel that you need other focal lengths, a faster lens or a macro.

[peter_evans4]

Henri Cartier-Bresson (just to name one) did most of his work with a 50mm lens and this didn't seem to cramp his style.

[kfoster70]

Typically Prime lens like the 50mm have always been sharper then zooms. Not to mention the wider apeture is great for low light as well as doing shots with blurred backgrounds. There are some zooms out today that are as good if not better then some primes but they are extremely expensive.

 

The 50mm f/1.8 is one of the cheapest lens out there and is also one of the shapest. Your 18-70mm lens is a good zoom lens, especially since Nikon made it a kit lens. However, if you do some testing between the two lenses you will see that the 50mm is much shaper.

 

Another main reason many people recommend this lens is because of price. You can put a nice sharp lens in you bag for under a $100. And having another lens to choose from is always nice. Plus if you end up in a low light situation you gain almost 2 stops with the 50mm. You will be real surpised on how much gain that is.

 

To me its like having tools in your tool box. Some you use all the time and some you use rarely. How frusting is it when you want to do something and you dont have the right tool. Adding a 50mm will be one of those tools you may not use all the time but will be a life saver when you need to shoot in low light.

 

K

[mendel_leisk]

What sort of camera are you using? Is it a digital single lens reflex, with a smaller than 24x36 mm sensor, creating a "crop factor"? Or a regular film body? With the film, the 50mm lens is considered a "normal" focal length, showing more-or-less the same perspective and field of view we see with our eyes. With a crop factor digital slr, say in the 1.5 zone (focal lengths multipy by 1.5), a 35mm lens would be the (rough) equivalent.

 

50mm used to be the standard "kit" lens, and most single lens reflex's came with one. A lot of photographers used it day-in day-out, occasionally switched to a wide or telephoto.

 

It is a "mature" lens, I gather fairly easy to manufacture (therefore cheap), light-weight, compact and discreet. Still relatively inexpensive, compared to a lot of today's zooms.

 

You might also consider a 50mm f1.4. Not sure how the Nikon 50mm 1.4 stacks up, but often the 1.4 lens has better out-of-focus appearance, better build quality, and also give a bit of an edge in low light.

[mawz]

The 50mm is extremely sharp, by far the sharpest lens for money spent in the lineup. It's fast

enough to shoot indoors with no flash and allows much shallower depth of field than any

zoom. It's also dirt cheap. And on digital it's pretty much the perfect portrait length (on film

it's a normal, which a 28-35mm lens would be on Digital).

m

I personally only shoot with primes, no zooms. I rarely miss zooms. usually there's a 35m or

a ~50mm on the camera, sometimes a 24 or 100. You need to think a little more than with

zooms, and walk a little more, but it's worth it (And since I shoot with MF gear, it's dirt cheap,

my 5 lens kit cost me less than one new Tamron 28-75 f2.8)

[jbq]

-This is pretty much the sharpest Nikon lens that you can buy.

 

-No other lens in that price range allows for such a shallow depth of field, and such a background blur in that price range is usually reserved for the long end of telephoto zooms.

 

-No other lens in that price range gives as much hand-holdability in low light.

 

-Using a prime will indeed force you to consider alternatives when composing, which will actually force you to consider different perspectives.

 

-If your kit lens is a 18-70, you must have a small-sensor DSLR, and the 50/1.8 can be used for traditional head-and-shoulder portraits with great results. Unfortunately it's probably a bit long to use as a "normal" lens.

[rich_dutchman1]

Cheap. Incredibly sharp. Fast. Close focusing. Fast focusing.

 

For convenience, I still prefer shooting most of the wedding day with a 17-55 2.8 and an 85 1.4, but the 50 is always in my bag. Makes a killer portrait lens with digital crop.

 

For travel, a 20 2.8 and 50 1.8 make a nice compact kit with a digital body. Shooting film without the crop issue, I take my 28 1.4 and 85 1.4.

[tommyinca]

Here are 10 more:

 

1. An Auto Focus (or anything that went wrong in the body) checking tool

 

2. A Loop to view (e.g: your negative,slide)

 

3. Emergency macro (reverse it and you don't even need an adapter)

 

4. Body Cap (when you hand the camera to your kids)

 

5. A quick fix to stop the urge to spend on a AFS-VR-IF-ED

 

6. To cost average out the extended warrenty and ultra thin multi-coated UV filter.

 

7. A get out of dog-house ticket when wife give the sell order

 

8. A topic starter for your fellow photographers

 

9. A career starter as a lens technian

 

10. Your own answer to "It is better than"

 

What it doesn't do well is as a paper weight.

[ilkka_nissila]

The 50 mm f/1.8 is ridiculously cheap and a very, very good lens. That's why people recommend it. It performs well up close, is superb stopped down, has high contrast and low flare/ghosting with a recessed front element so you don't need a hood unless you use a filter, it's fast, sharp, and costs next to nothing.

 

However, if you want to get a prime for a DX format camera, I recommend the 35/2 AF-D. It's almost as good as the 50 mm and offers the field of view that a 50 mm would give on 35 mm film.

[walterh]

You can take all the advice above or just this one - its up to you.

If you like the angle of the 50mm lens get the AFD 50mm F1.8 for all the above reasons - if you do prefer another angle do not get it - its as simple as that. (If not check again in a year - your taste might have changed)

 

Cheers

Walter

[daniel_taylor]

"Obviously to me, the main drawback is that you actually have to move in closer or step away from the subject to compose - no zooming. I imagine this makes composing your image quite difficult."

 

The fact that you made that statement pretty much explains why you should pick up a 50mm prime. And then put your zoom away for about 6 months.

 

Unless you can't move or move quickly enough, you do not compose by zooming back and forth until your subject fills the frame. You choose your focal length to achieve the look you want before you ever put camera to eye and position yourself relative to your subject (your position being something you visualized, with some accuracy, at the same time you chose your focal length, again to achieve a specific look/effect).

 

Having a 50mm prime on your camera will force you to learn the look of that focal length and how to vary that look using your position relative to subject. It will start you on the path to understanding the focal lengths on your zoom as more than just a convenient way to avoid walking.

 

Not to mention that the 50mm will let you shoot in 1/4 to 1/8 the light of your zoom. Do you want a deer in the headlights on-camera-mini-flash shot when light gets low? Or do you want a dreamy, romantic shot by existing light?

 

You should spend some time in the Learn > Tutorial section of this web site. Philip has plenty to say about fast primes vs. slow zooms and the effects of different focal lengths vs. compsure-by-zoom.

[daniel_taylor]

"However, if you want to get a prime for a DX format camera, I recommend the 35/2 AF-D. It's almost as good as the 50 mm and offers the field of view that a 50 mm would give on 35 mm film."

 

For learning, I second that response. You should really get a 35mm. 50mm on a DX camera will be a mild tele, almost a 85mm in full frame terms. The "mid point" 50mm full frame/35mm DX is better as a first prime.

[rustymadd]

50mm lenses are typically highly corrected for distortion, and thus the obvious choice of lens when shooting something with straight lines that you wish to keep straight.

 

 

C Painter

[peter_martucci]

Personally I don't really like the 50 on digital. Too long for a walkaround lens and too

short for a lot of shots too.

 

If I had to choose one prime for a walkaround I'd get the 35 f2.

 

Lot's of people used a straight 50 on film as a walkaround, but I don't know anyone that

does on digital (35mm will give the crop of a 50mm).

[aaron l]

The 50mm blows away the 18-70 in that focal length. It's light, cheap, ultra-sharp and can be used in low light. When people say you can just up the ISO, don't forget that the difference between ISO 1600 and 800 is huge! In the dark, your 18-70 just won't focus and you won't even be able to see what you're shooting.

 

All that being said, I went to China and took my 18-70 and 70-300. I didn't use the 70-300. I chose versatility and a single package over low light and sharpness. I wish I'd had a 17-55 for the improved light & sharpness but would have sorely missed the extra reach of the 70mm.

 

Walking back and forth to compose isn't bad. When you zoom, you are only cropping things, you're not changing the perspective or relative size of things. You're probably not even aware this is happening. Do some more learning before you head off so you can get the most out of NW China.

 

Here's my China gallery. You can see what the 18-70 can and can't do for you. I had only owned my D70 and 18-70 for 2 months at the time.

 

http://www.aaronlinsdau.com/asia/china

 

Aaron

[loreneidahl]

Granted my needs are different than yours and my shooting situations are probably different than most peoples here.

 

But the 50 1.4 is my bread and butter lens. Every camera body I have has at least one dedicated 50mm lens for it. Many have two. It's that important to me.

 

Next would be the 85 mm 1.4 followed by the 28-70 2.8

 

 

The 50 1.8 is probably the sharpest lens you'll ever get. Do you always need that sharpnees, thats up to you to decide. It is an excellant lens and it WILL be sharper than you 18-70 zoom. Mine is.

 

Why a 50mm ?

 

It will teach you composition. If you cant compose a shot using a lens that provides a "normal" field of view, composing a shot that alters that field of view becomes more challenging.

 

Using a zoom as a starter lens takes you from the realm of creating shots to recording images. A zoom is very easy to loose yourself in and as a result your photographic quality of the images may suffer unless your excecise discipline.

 

 

Walking close or further away from a subject using a 50mm lens is not zooming, it is called dollying. Zooming and Dollying deal with image perspective in a different way. Knowing the difference will show up in the quality of your images.

[steve_levine]

My own feeling is that the 50 being the standard glass, goes back to the dark days, when zooms were inferior on many levels to primes. When I entered the hobby in the late 1960's, you almost couldn't buy "just a body", without the 50. Zooms then were poorly designed, optical compromises. Their multiple element construction, caused sharpness robbing flare, and were overall poor performers.

 

 

In fact many of the 1970's zooms, wouldn't even allow a decent 8x10 to be made, without showing flaws. By the 1990's, multi coating and better designs, made some zooms as sharp as primes, especially when stopped down a few stops.

 

 

The reality is that a 50 is a great focal length, and can be used for many things. But limiting one's self to a fixed focal, because of percieved poor performance of zooms, is no longer a valid issue.

[ky2]

<I>"the main drawback is that you actually have to move in closer or step away from the subject to compose - no zooming. I imagine this makes composing your image quite difficult."</i><br><Br>

Actually, it doesn't. I mainly use primes, because my brain is trained already to what 105mm feels like on an Fm3a, and on a D200. If I use a zoom, then I preset the focal length and only then look through the view finder: Moving will change your perspective, and that is one key aspect of composition.<br><Br>

I'm a 50mm freak, because it feels so much "at home". For $100, the 50/1.8 AFD can't be beat for its versatility: sure, it's fixed focal, but its FAST, LIGHT, and SHARP. It can't be compared to the kit lens, but at 50mm, it swipes the floor with it.

[always_wanderlust]

It's recommended for reasons already mentioned above. But, all those reasons are pointless if you don't use the lens. That focal point is, for me at least, not very useable. I have the 50mm f/1.8 and it collects dust. Sure it's sharp, very shallow DOF, etc., but I'm too lazy to lug it around or replace my zoom that already has that focal point covered. It has become an inconvenience or to put it mildly, a special purpose lens.

[arthuryeo]

The 50mm double-gaussian design is a well understood design and it is highly refined. Between the nikkor 50mm/1.8 and the 50mm/1.4 AFD, get the 50mm/1.8. It has better usable resoultion wide-open.

 

Having a lens that can perform reasonably well at f/1.8 can give you images that you can never get under an available light or available darkness situation. Going to China, I can image indoors situations with some light coming thru the windows which will be most suitable for this lens.

 

Carrying this concept to the extreme is, of course, the Leica-M concept.

[david_h._hartman]

There is nothing exciting about the perspective that the 50mm

lens suggests. Its an average sort of angle of view. This

can be good. If the image is boring its because the content

is boring. The perspective from a wide angle or telephoto lens

can look dynamic when the content of the image is very ordinary.<br>

<br>

Now please note the perspective is a function of the distance

from the lens to the subject. I say that certain lenses suggest a

perspective because of the way we typically use them but the lens

itself does not determine the perspective.<br>

<br>

The 50mm lens is the longest lens that many can hand hold at

rather slow shutter speeds. Its also an easy lens to

manufacture and for years has been the sharpest lens available.

The sharpest lenses Ive tested are the 50/1.8 AI and 55/2.8

AIS Micro-Nikkor.<br>

<br>

For me its the quietness of the lens, its lack of

intrusiveness in the image. It also allows me to shoot photos of

people without distortion (perspective effect) in rather low

ambient light. When the light is nice its a shame to be

forced to use on camera flash. The ambience is lost and you are

reminded that you are looking at a snapshot rather than a slice

of life.<br>

<br>

The normal focal length for the DX formats is a 35mm. On the DX

formats the 50mm lens is on the short end of portrait lenses and

suitable for 3/4 length views so its a very useful focal

length on DX as well as 24x36 (full format, 35mm).<br>

<br>

Regards,<br>

<br>

Dave Hartman.

[StuartMoxham]

Why do so many people recomend the 50mm 1.8, simple it is just to good not to get one.

[Guest]

I think there's more insistence on getting a zoom than a 50mm. But yes, the 50mm/1.8 is singled out when primes are mentioned. It's much cheaper than a 35/2, for one thing.

 

For all the reasons people have given above, I bought a 50mm a couple of months after I started photography, and never touched my 28-100 kit zoom again. Or used a flash. I made it work for me for six months before getting another lens - a 35mm...

 

Now, I don't own a zoom. I don't get on with them. They make me fuss over focal lengths but don't give me the option of a fast aperture. True, sometimes I think my prime lens isn't wide enough, but I can think that about the wide end of a zoom. And I like my lenses compact.

 

Some people don't get on with primes. There's no right or wrong about it. But you owe it to yourself to think through the issue.

 

And it's not either/or. There's a good argument for keeping a zoom but getting a faster prime - 50/1.8, 50/1.4, 35/2 - as well. The prime lens is pocketable, and the zoom and the prime complement each other well. Zoom for the day, fast prime indoors, at night, or when you don't want to carry a big zoom.

 

I shoot mostly indoors or at night, which is my main reason. Any optical superiority is just a bonus.