Dinky Fifty

My EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens finally came in the mail today. I ordered it online the same day I bought my camera (2 weeks ago) so I could save $10 and ended up kicking myself for it because it took so long to come in! I really wanted to experiment with it while I was in Vegas. Luckily, my co-worker Ken was nice enough to loan me his EF 50mm f/1.4 USM for the weekend. I was actually going to decline, didn't want to get used to the faster lens and get stuck with the 1.8, but I wanted something other than my zoom to play with so I borrowed it anyway.

So now that I had both in my possession, it was time to test out to see if the 1.4 really is worth 4x more ($389 vs $99). First of all, the 1.8 is dinky compared to the 1.4. It's made out of a cheapy plastic that is lighter and shinier. It's super light and surprisingly quite smaller. It really is a no-frills lens. It took a while to get used to the 50mm in general... it almost reminded me of my first 35mm camera when I was 13 (won it in 7th grade for selling 12 boxes of chocolate). No zoom, no frills, just get close to your subject and shoot. The 1.8 was quick and it was easy to adjust aperture and shutter speed to get a good amount of light in, especially since our media room is kind of dark. However, the preview for each photo seemed so blurry. I was disheartened but kept on shooting. After I viewed the pics on my computer, I realized that the larger aperture had such narrow depth of field that it blurred out everything except for the very point I was focusing at. It was even more ridiculous in the 1.4. (I was shooting both in Tv, letting the camera choose the aperture)

50mm f/1.8 II // quick and dirty

50mm f/1.4 USM // super quick and much more vibrant

So, for now I'm not a good enough photographer to show much of a difference between the two so I am happy to practice with my 1.8. It's small and light and will be much easier to work with when I'm not freaked out about knocking it on a wall. At $99, you really can't complain.

P.S. Doesn't Cora look silly with short ears?