A Nifty Fifty!

Being a great fan of bokeh (which is, by the way Japan­ese for out-of-focus blur in pho­tographs) it didn’t take long for me to be tempted to get myself a fast prime lens.

Luck­ily Canon had this really, really afford­able lens in the form of the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II that wouldn’t really hurt my wal­let after spend­ing on the 1000D just less than two months ago. Which, bring us to the fact that its been barely two months into my foray into the dSLR world and I’m already get­ting a sec­ond lens.

A few friends were sur­prised that I’m already acquir­ing a new lens so soon. Thing is, I’m not new to dSLRs or pho­tog­ra­phy in gen­eral. Even before I got a dSLR, I was already pretty sure what I wanted and had a (grow­ing) men­tal wish­list of gears I’d like to have. The only thing hold­ing me back is of course, bud­get. Because lets face it, pho­tog­ra­phy is an expen­sive hobby.

The Nifty Fifty and its box
The Nifty Fifty and its box

That said, Dad helped me get this one in KL dur­ing his last work­ing trip there! This is def­i­nitely the last lens I’m gonna acquire in awhile, for a kit lens + 50mm combo is more than suf­fi­cient for me to move on. =)

The 50mm spent its early days as an unglam­ourous ‘stan­dard lens’ that came default with all SLR cam­eras back in the 35mm film days. Its a prime lens, which means it has a fixed focal length unlike those of zoom lenses which allow you to zoom in and out of your sub­ject. So why would you want a lens you can’t zoom for, you ask.

Fall leaves
Fall leaves by the road

The main sell­ing point of the nifty fifty is it’s wide aper­ture, which you can’t get with the nor­mal kit lens or cheap zooms that comes with dSLRs these days. Wide aper­ture lens are great for shoot­ing in low light and are respon­si­ble for the bokeh effect due to a nar­row depth-of-field asso­ci­ated with a wider aperture.

By the road
By the road

If you really wanna know more about the 50mm and its advan­tages try out this arti­cle at Gary Voth Pho­tog­ra­phy: The For­got­ten Lens.

I don’t know but if you’d ask me. A 50mm prime is sure worth every penny. It’s very good glass, deliv­ers stun­ning qual­ity and it’s fast. My only qualms with this lens is it’s rather noisy clunky aut­o­fo­cus motor, but that of course, doesn’t affect image qual­ity whatsoever.

The Nifty Fifty and Me
The Nifty Fifty and Me

So yeah.

Slap on a 130g 50mm f/1.8 II (the light­est Canon lens ever) onto a 1000D body, which also hap­pens to be the light­est Canon dSLR at 475g — you’ll get a pow­er­ful 600g bokeh machine.

Tell me that isn’t good. =P

If you haven’t yet heard about it, check out my Pho­to­blog at http://img.tehCpeng.net!

29 thoughts on “A Nifty Fifty!”

    1. ember Post author

      Is that so? I must’ve missed her blog post on that then! I know quite a few peo­ple who also got a 50mm as their 2nd lens, which is really under­stand­able since they’re so cheap!

      Well. If you’d ask me, being a pho­tog­ra­pher is not about what gear you have, or don’t have. Of course you’ll obvi­ously need a cam­era but… that’s all to it!

      I’d rather explore the cre­ative lim­its of pho­tog­ra­phy with what­ever lim­ited gear I have rather than hav­ing a whole range of tools not know­ing how to exploit them all.

      Makes sense, dontcha think? 😉

        1. ember Post author

          My plea­sure. =D

          Oh yes, I would really crave for a USM on my 50mm f/1.8 now! But then again we wouldn’t have enjoyed such an afford­able lens had Canon decide to throw in USM. But the thing is, why couldn’t the 50mm f1.8 per­form as well as — if not bet­ter — than the 18-55mm kit lens, which is also non-USM? =(

          Stuck? Haha! I’m cer­tainly not get­ting that impres­sion. Every­time I focus the focussing bar­rel is bound to focus in and out of infin­ity at least twice or more before it locks — or in most cases fail to lock on the sub­ject. The nerve.

    1. ember Post author

      Post pro­cess­ing! A lit­tle curves-job in Pho­to­shop could do won­ders to your photos.

      As far as I know, the 450D and the 1000D are almost iden­ti­cal except that Canon removed or down­scaled a few fea­tures of the 450D to make the 1000D a step lower than its elder brother. So you actu­ally have a bet­ter cam­era than mine. =D

      Don’t be afraid to try out Pho­to­shop, you’ll be amazed at just how much you can achieve with your photos!

        1. ember Post author

          Cool! I agree. Flash pho­tog­ra­phy is really a whole new world to ven­ture into. But I think i’ll refrain from ven­tur­ing into that just yet while I sharpen my rookie dSLR skills, haha. Good luck on get­ting one though!

          It really depends on each photo how I post-process them. I usu­ally start with adjust­ing the curves, which affects the colours, con­trast etc. For a more artis­tic touch, I’d either do split ton­ing for that cross processed or lomog­ra­phy effect. When I get lazy I just apply fil­ters over my pho­tos which I’d always fine-tune to bet­ter suit the expo­sure and colours of that par­tic­u­lar shot.

          There are vir­tu­ally infi­nite ways you could post process a photo. You’re only lim­ited by your cre­ativ­ity! You should’t have a prob­lem though — I lov­ing your post-processing tech­niques too! =D

  8. lisadragon

    hey! clicked in from wpinspiration.com or ilovewp.com .. (some­where there, i had too many browsers open) look­ing at inspi­ra­tion to try and design a wp theme.. and got to your blog.

    I’m Lisa, a neigh­bour from Brunei and your About page made me laugh.. ppl do ask me, where is Brunei?? Do you live in trees?? oh in our case.. Do you use boats to go every­where?? Silly, silly.

    Any­way, hope to make your acquain­tance! Con­grats on your 50mm.. I love pho­tog­ra­phy too~

    1. ember Post author

      I bet it’s ILoveWP.com. Its a really fun site that gave me lots of inspi­ra­tion too! In addi­tion to fea­tur­ing my old design awhile ago.

      Any­way, it’s nice to have you here, Lisa! Haha. I bet a good chunk of us liv­ing in this region could relate to awk­ward inci­dents of get­ting those ques­tions thrown at us by out­siders eh? We get the ‘boats to go every­where’ one too! The nerve, right? =P

      I really wouldn’t mind to! I see you’re a pho­tog­ra­pher too. *high fives!* =D

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