The secret behind Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens
Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens is very, very popular.
The secret? The price. The optics behind Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens is in one word excellent.
- 50mm standard lens with f/1.8 maximum aperture
- Traditional Gauss-type optical design is extremely sharp
- Focuses as close as 18 inches for extreme close-ups
- Ideal for natural-looking shots; excellent color balance
- Measures 2.7 inches in diameter; 1-year warranty
For really low price
So you get great value, for low price.As a classic standard prime lens, it’s very sharp when stopped down (especially in the centre), shows minimal chromatic aberration, and has relatively low distortion; APS-C users will also benefit from extremely low vignetting.
If you compare it with its much more expensive bigger brother, the Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM Standard & Medium Telephoto Lens for Canon SLR Cameras
Of course getting great optics for relatively little money means that corners have to be cut somewhere along the line, and in this case it’s in the build quality. This alone will put off some potential purchasers, who will likely gravitate towards the better-made F1.4 lens instead, but in truth it’s just fine for everyday amateur use. Of course the flipside of this is that it’s extremely light, and won’t add much strain on your shoulder carrying it around all day, so it’s a great option to throw in your bag for low-light shooting when travelling.
The other slight negativness is the autofocus; the micro-motor system is a little slow and therefore not an ideal choice for moving subjects. More problematically, focusing can be inconsistent and inaccurate in low light, something that will be most obvious when shooting at large apertures. There’s also no full-time manual focus override for those users who don’t like to trust their camera’s AF system; again these issues are all reason to consider the F1.4 lens instead.
Given the price, it seems reasonable to assume that this lens will overwhelmingly be used on APS-C bodies, and in this context it’s worth pointing out that it’s sharper than any of the EF-S lenses we’ve tested so far (the 18-55mm F3.5-5.6 IS, 18-200mm F3.5-5.6 IS or even the 17-85mm F4-5.6 IS USM, which is at its best at 50mm). We suspect full-frame users will on the whole be buying more expensive optics, but to overlook this budget option completely would be a mistake, as it can demonstrably perform very well even on the 21Mp EOS-1Ds Mark III (and therefore also 5D Mark II) at its optimum apertures. That F1.8 maximum aperture lets in more than four times as much light as a typical kit zoom, and so allows shooting in low light while keeping shutter speeds relatively high; this therefore provides a useful alternative to IS when the aim is to keep moving subjects sharp. It also enables the user to experiment with selective focus techniques impossible with slow zooms.
So ultimately this is a lens which we’d encourage any Canon DSLR owner currently shooting with ‘kit’ zooms to try. The overall image quality when stopped down a bit is very impressive indeed, and the fast maximum aperture offers creative options which are well worth exploring (while sharpness, particularly in the corners, may not be the best wide open, the point is that you can get to F1.8 at all). Ultimately this lens hits a price:performance ratio that’s very difficult to beat.
More reviews on Canon EF 50mm f1.8 lens you can read here
