5 Reasons You Should Buy a 50mm f/1.8 Lens

It doesn’t matter if you shoot Canon, Nikon, Sony or any other camera brand – fact is, every photographer should own a 50mm lens!  Here are my 5 top reasons why everyone should have a 50mm lens in the camera bag! This is a very small yet very powerful lens.

50mm prime lenses can give you high quality and versatility at a low price point. On an APS-C camera it’s one of my favourite focal lengths. 50mm lenses are simple beasts from a design point of view. Lens designers figured out a long time ago how to make a good quality 50mm lens, and the result is that the optical performance of even the least expensive 50mm prime outshines many zooms.

1. It’s Cheap and It’s Small
The 50mm f/1.8 is one of the cheapest lens you can buy. It’s also a great walk-around lens because of its size and weight.





2. It’s Great for Low Light Conditions
Because of its large f/1.8 aperture, it’s a really great lens to shoot with at night or in any low light situations.

3. It’s Pretty Sharp
For a small and cheap lens, it’s actually pretty sharp, and even more so when stopped down a little.

4. The Bokeh
Prime lenses typically produce nicer bokeh (how the lens renders out of focus areas) than most zooms, and with the f1.8 aperture you can make some really nice bokeh. Bright lights, off in the background, twinkle with this little lens!

5.  It's Versatile
the 50mm lens is a great street shooting lens, not too wide, not too long. On a cropped or APS-C sensor (any non full frame camera body) it is also a great portrait lens, just long enough to remove distortion from your subject’s face and flatter them a bit more, not so long you need to stand across the street.