3 Reasons why YOU need a 50mm Lens

Ahh, the good old of Nifty Fifty. I think it would have to be my favourite lens in my camera bag. That may sound strange coming from a landscape photographer who uses a wide angle lens 90% of the time but there is just something special about the 50mm f1.8 prime lens. Every time I use it I am amazed at the quality of images that it produces so I want to share with you why YOU need a 50mm Lens.

 1. It’s a great walk around lens.

Whenever I am travelling to cool cities and want to carry my camera around with me, I always put my 50mm lens on because its so light compared to the 15-35mm lens that I use for landscapes. It is also great because when you’re walking around a city taking shots of interesting things like graffiti or street shots of people it just makes the images  so much more interesting. Because its a prime lens it has beautiful sharpness and being f1.8 its awesome for low light photography as you can really open it up to allow more light in. The colour rendition of this lens is bucket loads better than a kit lens.

2. Takes beautiful pics of kids

Well it takes beautiful pics of anyone really. Again for the reasons above. You can get super sharp focus on the subject with a soft dreamy background. Opening up the aperture to around f2 (which seems to be the sweet spot for my Canon 50mm f1.8) creates beautiful dreamy pics where the subject is sharp but the background is nice and soft (shallow depth of field). The 50mm lens’ field of vision is close to the human eye therefore it can make people feel as if they are in the moment that you captured.

3. Great for food photography

These days everyone has got a blog about healthy food! I have nothing against this, I actually follow loads of healthy eating blogs and I love the beautiful photos that people are taking of food for their blogs. If you are into taking beautiful pics of your food then the lens that you need for this is the 50mm lens. Because this lens is great for low light photography it means you can take beautiful photos of your food indoors next to a window with gorgeous natural light flowing in and not need a tripod or flash. Note: flash is the worst thing that you can use on your camera! Just saying! Again, choose an aperture of around f2.0, and if your camera is still showing that its a bit underexposed bump up your ISO a bit until your camera is showing  a neutral exposure. If you want more of the picture in focus then just keep turning up the aperture towards f5.6 and click away until you get the desired amount of depth of field that you are after!

The other great attribute of the 50mm lens is that its cheap! You can pick one up for around $100. Such a bargain for such a quality, professional and versatile lens. So as you can see it has so many worthwhile features. The only two lenses I generally use now are my 17-40mm for landscapes and my 50mm for everything else. It makes travelling a whole lot easier with just two lenses.

Did you enjoy this article? If so leave a comment below and let me know your experience of the 50mm Lens or if have any more question feel free to drop me a line!