My Favourite Lens ... so far ...

Something all you budding photographers might like to read – I’ll come out with it straight away – my favourite lens has to be the 50mm, f/1.8 lens. I say “so far” since I really haven’t tried out every single lens there is and one day I might have a new favourite.

I was motivated to write about this when I was recently asked how a particular photo was taken – it had a very shallow depth of field making one question if the effect had been produced by a programme such as Photoshop instead. 

Though taking photos with an extreme aperture of 1.8 may not produce best quality photos, interesting effects can be made. Here’s a photo of cracked paint taken at f1.8:

Cracked Paint

I find the best use of this lens however is for portraiture. Its crystal clear optics and again its shallow depth of field make for very nice portraits.

Furthermore we can turn this lens into a macro lens by attaching a macro filter onto it. Although not perfect, it’s another interesting use.

This 50mm lens is light weight, fast, has great optics, and is one of the cheapest lenses on the market.

DH