Why a 50mm Prime Lens Is Good For Your Photography & Why You Need It

When buying a digital camera, the body itself is only a small part of the equation. Most of the responsibility for image quality is actually in the hands of the lens.

Lenses are also the tools that provide different creative possibilities. Some lenses are great for portraits, some are for working in low light, some can produce wide shots, some can zoom in on subjects for long shots, and some can get right in close and produce macro shots full of wonderful details.

The reasons why you need a 50mm lens

Image Quality

A 50mm prime is a great place to start when you’re ready to expand your lens collection. The 50mm focal length produces a very natural field of view on a full-frame digital camera, similar to that of our own eyesight. The lenses are usually small and light, which makes them inconspicuous and easy to work with, and they offer some of the best image quality available at the lowest prices.

They are sharp, full of detail, low distortion and fast, because they can be so simple. Zoom lenses require many elements to be so flexible, and the more elements light has to pass through, the lower the contrast and sharpness of the image they produce.

A Canon 50mm f/1.8 can be had for US $100, and it’s a brilliant lens. It doesn’t feature indestructible build quality, but it’ll give you image quality that’s equal to, or better than, a zoom lens that’s ten times the price. It also weighs nothing and is easy to throw in a camera bag with your other accessories. This makes it a fantastic first step after the kit lenses that come with entry-level DSLRs and a great start to learning about lenses and what you want to be able to do with them.

Depth of Field

Prime lenses tend to offer the widest apertures at any particular focal length. Aperture controls how much light is let in to the camera when an exposure is taken. As you open up the aperture (smaller number), you let more light into the camera and speed up the exposure time. A wider aperture produces a shallower depth of field in the resulting image.

Depth of field describes how much of the foreground and background, outside of the exact point of focus, is in sharp focus. A shot with long depth of field will result in much of the image being in focus, while a shot with thin depth of field will have just the focus point in sharp focus, with everything in front and behind it blurred.

This background blur is called bokeh, and different lenses have different bokeh qualities. Higher quality lenses, usually with faster apertures, tend to have smoother bokeh with better colour rendition. The Canon 50mm f/1.8 mentioned earlier has a slightly busy bokeh quality.

There are creative uses for depth of field, like subject isolation. Subject isolation involves having the subject of your photograph in sharp focus and the background blurred away. This is fantastic for portrait work and has many, many creative and practical applications in photography. Choosing the areas of your image that will be in focus and out of focus is an important part of creative composition.

Shooting at wide apertures and working with a thin depth of field will teach you a lot about focus! At f/1.2, moving your body back or forward by tiny amounts, even unconsciously, can be the difference between a well-focused shot and a missed opportunity.

There are also some very practical uses for a wide aperture. Being able to shoot on a wide aperture like f/1.8, f/1.4 or f/1.2 is great for available light photography because it speeds up exposure times. This means that you can shoot in low-light situations without increasing ISO, or using a flash, and still produce sharp images.

Composition

Shooting with a 50mm prime after using zooms for a long time is going to take some getting used to. You can’t just stand still and twiddle your fingers to frame shots anymore; you have to move your body around to get into position. And that’s a great thing.

Want a bit sized down of what is 50mm lens good for?…

Here are a few more reasons why you need a 50mm lens

1. Affordability. 50mm lens is the most common lenses you can buy. Whether you want to purchase a brand new one or a used, there are both markets and it’s inexpensive.
2. They’re light and compact. When to use a 50mm lens? Many 50mm lenses are lightweight, especially the f/1.8 version. The faster 50mm lenses like the f/1.2 and f/1.4 are heavier because of their construction, but even so, they are still pretty light for street photography and you won’t hit anyone with your lens.
3. They’re Sharp. They have fewer internal elements than a zoom lens, which also means sharper and clearer photos. 50mm lenses often have better color rendition and less chromatic aberration than your average kit lenses, so you get sharper photos and more accurate colors. For example, the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM ART lens shown above is one of the sharpest lenses available today. Obviously, it’s a higher-end, but even entry-level 50mm lenses like the Canon 50mm f/1.8 II provides excellent sharpness.
4. It’s versatile. Whether you are taking photos of the city, or taking your 50mm lens for landscape photography during sunsets, or photos of your kids. It’s a great travel lens for many occasions.
5. TWorks on both Full Frame and Crop Sensor Cameras. Most of the 50mm lens work on either or, making it future proof and worth your investment.
6. Low-Light Shooting. 50mm lenses can collect a lot of light, with a maximum aperture of f/2 and larger. And without needing flash, your shots will look more natural. To compare, a 50mm lens lets in 8x more light than your typical lens kit with a maximum aperture of f/5.6.
7. They’re Fast. With larger aperture, comes faster shutter speeds. Which also means, avoid using higher ISOs and make your shots look sharper.
8. Focal Length. A 50mm lens closely resembles what we see with out eyes, which then helps you see scenes in a much more familiar way and compose your shot better. Even with a crop sensor camera of 1.5x, it will make your 50mm lens act as a 75mm lens, easily fill in the fram with your subject from better distance.
9. Depth of Field/Bokeh. If you like blurry background, then a 50mm lens would make your photos better without spending time editing on Photoshop.
10. Helps with being more creative. It makes you move around and work a bit harder to frame the shot you want. Because of its fixed focal length, you can stand still and zoom as you please. Whether you call this a con and not a pro, I believe it helps you be more creative in capturing the shot.

Conslusion

Having to move around to frame shots makes you more aware of the orientation of your body in relation to your subjects and this forces you to think more about your compositions. This will result in more engagement with your photography and more creative compositions, and that will make you a better photographer.

Which is what we all want to be.