Review Digital Camera World 10-03-2013

Digital Camera World

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Best 50mm lens for your camera: 8 'Nifty Fifty' lenses tested and rated Oct 2nd 2013, 23:01, by anicholson What is the best 50mm lens for your camera? We put eight of the top ‘Nifty Fifty’ lenses currently available to the test to see which offers the best combination of image quality and value for money. Those of us with sufficiently grey hair and elephantine memory might just remember a time when a standard lens for a DSLR had a fixed 50mm focal length. Indeed, the early zoom lenses of the 1960s often had such dire image quality – loaded with distortions, flare and an almost complete lack of sharpness – that it took a long time for photographers to take them seriously. Things are different now: it's almost unheard of for an SLR to be sold with anything other than an 18-55mm or similar kit lens. Sure enough, image quality is generally streets ahead of yesteryear's zooms. They typically deliver a useful range, stretching from wide-angle to short telephoto, and they're usually compact and light in weight. Faster is better You can't beat the versatility of a zoom lens, but the compromise usually comes in terms of image quality. While kit zoom lenses and higher-quality standard zooms like the Canon 15-85mm and Nikon 16-85mm can offer good sharpness, distortions can still be a problem. Vignetting (darkened image corners) can also be problematic, especially when combining short focal lengths with wide apertures. But the biggest drawback, shared by all but the most expensive standard zoom lenses, is that the widest available aperture at focal lengths of around 50mm and beyond is about f/5.6. So what's so good about having a faster standard 50mm prime lens? For one thing, it enables faster shutter speeds, which can be useful in dull shooting conditions. For example, where gloomy lighting using the widest available aperture of a kit zoom lens would only enable shooting at, say, 1/15 of a second at ISO 100, a 50mm f/1.4 lens would enable a shutter speed of 1/250 of a second. That's good news for handheld shooting. Most kit zoom lenses now have image stabilisation built in, or it's available in camera bodies from the likes of Pentax and Sony. The requirement for fast shutter speeds in handheld shooting is no longer paramount, unless you need to freeze the action of people or objects that are moving around. Even then, given that current DSLRs tend to offer such good image quality at high sensitivity settings, there's always the option of bumping up the ISO when you need faster shutter speeds. Setting the standard There's still one thing that a fast prime lens can do that you can't replicate with a typical zoom. The wider aperture gives you a massive reduction in depth of field. It's great when you want to blur fussy backgrounds (or foregrounds) and make the main object in a composition really stand out. It's particularly good for portraiture, opening a whole new window of opportunity for many SLR owners, which we'll come to next. A 50mm lens is often referred to as a standard lens. This is because, historically, they give a natural perspective on 35mm film cameras – and the same is therefore true on full-frame digital SLRs. It gives a nice immediacy to your photography. You see a composition you like, lift the camera to your eye, and shoot without the complexity of adjusting zoom length. However, due to the crop factor of cameras with APS-C format image sensors, a 50mm lens has an effective focal length of 75mm (80mm if you're using a Canon SLR). This is absolutely perfect for portraiture, as it enables you to keep an ideal distance from the person you're photographing, so that they can feel comfortable and relaxed, without the camera being too up close and personal. Another helpful by-product of shooting with a 50mm lens on an APS-C format body is that, along with the increased, effective focal length, the depth of field is further reduced. Again, this is another plus point for portrait photography, but how does it work out in practical terms? Let's assume you're taking a portrait from a distance of two metres, using a focal length of 50mm (75mm effective). With a typical 18-55mm kit lens, the widest available aperture of f/5.6 would give you a depth of field of 36cm. Shooting with a 50mm f/1.4 lens at its widest aperture, the depth of field shrinks to a mere 9cm. Focus on the subject's eyes and you'll find that even their ears can be starting to look soft. The widest aperture of a 50mm f/1.8 lens is two-thirds of a stop slower but, even so, it enables a tight depth of field of just 11cm at a shooting distance of two metres. One frustration here is that you often can't utilise the widest available aperture to gain a tight depth of field when shooting under bright, direct sunlight. This is because it's likely to require a shutter speed for a correct exposure that's faster than the camera can deliver, even at its minimum ISO setting. The situation can be easily rectified, however, simply by fitting a Neutral Density (ND) graduated filter to the lens. PAGE 1 – What is a 50mm lens good for? PAGE 2 – Features to look for in a Nifty Fifty lens PAGE 3 – Best 50mm lens: 01 Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM PAGE 4 – Best 50mm lens: 02 Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II PAGE 5 – Best 50mm lens: 03 Nikon AF-S 50mm f/1.4G PAGE 6 – Best 50mm lens: 04 Nikon AF-S 50mm f/1.8G PAGE 7 – Best 50mm lens: 05 Pentax SMC DA 50mm f/1.8 PAGE 8 – Best 50mm lens: 06 Sigma 50mm f/1.4 EX DG HSM PAGE 9 – Best 50mm lens: 07 Sony 50mm f/1.4 A PAGE 10 – Best 50mm lens: 08 Sony DT 50mm f/1.8 SAM PAGE 11 – Image quality comparison PAGE 12 – Best 50mm lens: Verdict READ MORE 11 common lens errors (and how to avoid them) DO or Di? Your lens markings explained DSLR Lenses: 7 questions photographers must ask about their next piece of glass 10 reasons why your photos aren’t sharp (and how to fix them) Best memory cards for cameras: 9 top models tested and rated Nifty Fifty Lens: how much blur do you get with a 50mm f/1.8 Oct 2nd 2013, 11:15, by jmeyer If you love bokeh or shoot handheld after dark, a so-called Nifty Fifty lens is just what you need. Find out why as we explain the benefits of a 50mm f/1.8 lens. A 50mm f/1.8 prime lens is affectionately known as the photography slang term 'Nifty Fifty' because, despite its tiny size, it lets you do things that most other lenses simply cannot do. A Nifty Fifty’s unbelievably wide maximum aperture of f/1.8 lets you get incredibly narrow depth of field, which is ideal for portraits or still life photography – allowing you to throw your background out of focus, getting great bokeh effects. It is also about the most affordable lenses you can buy. A Nikon D-series version, for instance, costs about £110 ($130) – hence it is also known as a 'Thrifty Fifty'. On a full-frame DSLR, a Nifty Fifty is a good all-round lens which gives the same central field of vision as the human eye. But on an APS-C-format DSLR, the effective focal length becomes 75mm, making this an ideal people lens for fashion shoots, for kids, posed portraits, and party pictures. You don't get the best optical quality from a Nifty Fifty lens at f/1.8, but if you want the lens to give you strikingly different-looking shots, this is the aperture you should use. Be warned, the limited depth of field means you need to focus on the key point of your subject precisely. Back in the day, every DSLR was sold with a Nifty Fifty f/1.8 lens. Most people started out using one to take all their pictures. If you have one, try spending a day shooting with it, without using a wide-angle or telephoto lens, and making your eyes and feet work harder to find the picture. How much more blur do you get at f/1.8 A traditional standard lens is three-and-a-third stops faster than a modern standard-issue kit zoom… 01 50mm at f/5.6 The standard zoom that came with our Nikon DSLR (the popular 18-55mm) offers a maximum aperture of f/5.6 when set at 50mm. It is not wide enough to blur the car in the background in this portrait.   02 50mm at f/2.8 You can get zooms with wide maximum apertures. The 24-70mm f/2.8 is a pro's favourite and allows you to shoot at f/2.8 at 50mm; that's two stops faster than shooting at f/5.6, and gives you nice blurred backgrounds and bokeh.   03 50mm at f/1.8 It seems a small step from f/2.8 to f/1.8, but using Nikon's low-cost 50mm prime for this tutorial let us open up the aperture by another one-and-a-third stops. The depth of field when used wide open is noticeably narrower, which is great for portraits. READ MORE 11 common lens errors (and how to avoid them) DO or Di? Your lens markings explained DSLR Lenses: 7 questions photographers must ask about their next piece of glass 10 reasons why your photos aren’t sharp (and how to fix them)

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