Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM Lens

This lens creates great images and is lightning fast. You can hand hold shots with this lens that would fail miserably on a most other lenses. The shallow depth of field you can get wide open is striking. It’s great for portraits, macro, and low light situations.

Many have suggested that the cost difference between this lens and the 50mm f/1.8 is too much to justify getting the f/1.4. The thought being that you can use the money you save for other gear. I appreciate the argument but for me I prefer to save my pennies and get really nice gear rather than buy a bunch of bargain equipment and then always wish I had the good stuff. I say think about what you shoot and how and then proritize your aquisitions - Get the best gear you can and take care of it.

If you are serious about your photography and enjoy the challenge of shooting fixed focal length the 50mm f/1.4 will not disappoint. If your new to photography, are on a tight budget or just want to play around with a prime lens go for the f/1.8 – it’s only $75.00 last I looked.

The really hard core photo guys already know to get a full format SLR and go for the Canon 85mm L glass. For the rest of us with 10D, 20D, 30D or Digital rebel this is a close as we get to 85mm and high build quality.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM Lens

A prime lens like this one is a must have for any photographer's kit. Since adding it to my kit it is now my favorite lens to shoot with. The USM auto focus is quick and the noise is moderate. The construction of the lens is excellent, built much better then the 50mm f1.8 canon also offers.

The lens is quite sharp if you stop it down a little, down around f/2 to f/2.8, and even wide open at f/1.4 it's quality is good. This lens is fast, you have a lot more freedom with your shutter speed with the large aperture, especially indoors in dim light and hand held.

The shallow depth of field you can get with this lens is amazing, you can really make your subject stand out and give the background a beautiful blur. The bokeh this lens makes is much less harsh then the f/1.8 as the 1.8 uses a 5 blade aperture while the 1.4 uses 8.

Overall this is an excellent lens and I would recommend it to any Canon EOS user. One thing to keep in mind is that on the canon small sensor cameras like the Rebel series, this lens acts as though it has a focal length closer to 80mm then 50mm, while it is more like a 50mm on the full sensor camera's like the 5D. I shoot with this lens on a Rebel and the focal length does not bother me.

Great 50mm!

WHY GET A 50mm LENS?

1: Bright aperture! These lenses have been out for a while and their simple construction allows to give as much as f1.4 in a small and light barrel and with a good value.
2: Size & weight! 50 is a lens that will never be a burden. Very lightweight and small it's a perfect city-walk lens.
3: Natural looking photos! This may be a personal thing, but to many many people 50mm focal distance just looks right. It is as though there is no camera between you and your subjects. This focal distance is great for it has no distortions of a wide-angle and it is not tele- enough, to through an object completely out of context and change perspective so much that it is sometimes hard to understand how far the background is from a subject (standard situation when you use a long tele-photo lens).
4: No zoom! Some people may not see it as an advantage, but that is before they try THIS lens. Having no opportunity to zoom in and out for framing is a great learning tool for it helps build up your own photo-vision. Helps you understand how composition works. And simply brings a lot more thrill into photography. Just try it for yourself and you'll see.

WHY GET THIS 50mm LENS?
Compared to Canon 50 F1.8
1. Build quality is much better, proper focus ring, metal mount and distance scale - all signs of a high-quality gear.
2. Ultrasonic motor! Very fast and precise focusing. This point is probably crucial for a lens with such a DoF that a 2 cm movement of your subject or yourself will be visible on your photos.
3. F1.4! This lens is two stops brighter and overall image quality is a lot better than on F1.8 counterpart.

Compared to Sigma F1.4
1. Size. Sigma does not enjoy one of the best things about 50mm lenses - that is size. It's pretty big and heavy AND has a 72mm filter thread. (How much are you ready to spend on filters??)
2. Even though Sigma produced a brand new lens, using latest optical technology for a slightly better image quality there are all these comments on forums and review-sites about Sigma's front- or back-focusing problems... This may not be such a great issue for mid-level dslr's, but for entry-levels, like Rebels where you can not adjust lens auto-focusing this is basically a kill.
3. Price. Sigma is a little more expensive. Of course the price difference is not such a big deal-breaker in this case, but put it together with size, weight and possibly inaccurate focus... Now there's something to consider

Canon 50mm USM f/1.4 lens

I love that you can take close shots with this lens and get everything in the picture. It's my best portrait lens and I'm glad to have found a good one on ebay. I would recommend it for a carry around lens if you are in the city, in museums, etc. For that type of camera shot this is the one to have. It also is amazing in low light situations where it would either be embarrassing or just not good taste to be using flash shots all the time. What you see in a darkened setting is what you are going to photograph and it captures light really well. Outside of that it's great for photo's of mountains, landscapes, that type of picture where you want to get a lot of area and don't have to try for closeups. The only drawback, and it's not a drawback, it's what it was designed NOT to do is zoom in on a subject a great distance away and get absolute clarity. It wasn't made for that. When I do portraits, this is the one I go for. For the money it can't be beat. If I could only have two lenses this would be for the situations I described above and hey, I'm on a budget so I can't go above 300mm. So, it would, and is, this lens and the Canon zoom that goes up to 300mm with IS. Oh, I almost forgot. This is a quick lens. It doesn't have IS, but you don't need it. You have the picture before you know you even took it. It's a great lens and well worth the money. It's got a metal base and is pretty rugged. I highly recommend it. Happy shooting.

Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM The Standard

This is the lense that Canon advertised as it's standard by which all the others in it's line were measured when they made it in the FD version.
It's fast, sharp and silent to most ears. It's an excellent lense to use for weddings in churches or other places where the quiet operation doesn't distract from the dignity of the occasion.
It's strongest points are between f8 and f16 with f11 being the best for sharpness and contrast.
While it's common to think it's just a better replacement for the f1.8 version it's really a complementary optic.
The 50mm f1.8 while being more affordable actually gets much better results in sharpness at f2 than the more expensive big brother.
The 50mm f1.8 is also faster focusing in those dark reception halls than the 1.4 version simply because at f1.8 it offers higher contrast for the camera to work with than the 1.4 version.
I have both lenses and know from actual use how these two are really a tag team and not replacements for each other.

For the overall general purpose first prime lense the 1.4 is my recommendation. If you think you're going to get into photographing places where there isn't a lot of available light you're going to appreciate what the 1.8 version will do for you and your Canon camera.