Good glass counts! So why would a 50mm prime lens be better than the 18-55 zoom kit lens that came with your camera? Two primary reasons: If you had the choice of an entry-level camera body with a good lens or a high-end camera body with a poor lens the former combination would make a better photo every time. So, you’ve gained some focal length versatility with a kit lens zoom, but you’ve also made some sacrifices! What have you sacrificed?Ī camera is only as good as the lens you have attached to it. Using the 1.6x “multiplier” for a Canon crop sensor, (1.5 for most Nikons) your 18-55mm lens is more like a 28-88 mm lens on a full-frame camera. Lenses with that focal range on crop sensor cameras will give you a range from slightly wide-angle through normal and into slight telephoto. That’s what you’ll get as a kit lens on for instance a Canon Rebel or Nikon D3000-series camera. So, to speak both to the desire for zoom lenses and accommodate the crop sensor cameras, the typical kit lens sold with entry-level DSLRs is usually an 18-55mm lens and typically with a variable f/stop of f/3.5-5.6. It was the only lens I used for many years.īy the time digital came along, people wanted zoom lenses and unless you had a full-frame sensor camera, (“full-frame” meaning the sensor size is the same 35mm as the film camera used), 50mm was now a somewhat “longer” focal length on a crop-sensor camera. This was my first camera, a Hanimex Practica Nova 1B. The 50mm lens was considered the focal length that, when used on a 35mm camera, to best approximate the average human field of view. That too came with a 50mm lens, an f/2 Asahi Optics M. No zoom, that came years later when I purchased the Pentax ME Super I still have. For many years, it was the only lens I had. The lens it came with was a 50mm f/1.8 Meyer-Optik Gorlitz Oreston. My first camera which I bought in the early 70’s while still in high school was an East German-made Hanimex Praktica Nova 1B. Invariably, the “kit lens” that would have been sold with those cameras was a 50mm prime. Or, if you’re an experienced photographer but don’t own a 50mm prime lens, I’d suggest this is definitely one you should be adding to your arsenal.īefore the advent of digital cameras, the most popular choice for serious hobbyists, photojournalists, and those seeking a good combination of portability and quality were 35mm film cameras. So how much thought have you given to the lens you want to use with your “new baby?” Will you be happy with the “kit lens” that is often bundled with the camera or should you be looking at something else? This is hardly novel advice, but if you’re new to photography you may not have heard the recommendation that a 50mm “prime” lens, (that is, a lens that has a fixed focal length, no zoom), may be your best bet. Or maybe you’ve decided to buy one for yourself, perhaps as a brand new photographer or maybe as an upgrade to an existing camera. f.4.0 ISO 400 – Photo by Rick Ohnsman Perhaps you’ll be one of those lucky photographers who’ll open a new camera as a gift this holiday season. The little “Nifty-50: can do! 1/3200 sec. It won the Corel International Food Photography Contest. I made this shot with the Canon EF 50mm II lens on my Canon 50D.
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