The 50mm f/1.4 lens:
Photography's Magic Bullet
The Nikon 50mm f/1.4 "normal" lens is really, not that normal at all. With this lens a
photographer can achieve amazing photographs with any situation. Low light, portraits,
indoor action, extreme close-ups, street photography and soft-focus romance are all
able to be achieved with the 50mm f/1.4 lens. It is compact for travel and it’s light
enough to carry with you all the time. That big maximum aperture delivers a blindingly
bright finder image. Also, the 50mm f/1.4 lens is a very reasonable price and that is the
reason why so many professionals have it.
While teles compress space and wide-angles expand space, the 50mm renders
special arrangements almost exactly as your eye sees them. If you were to look through
your viewfinder and then slowly lower the camera, there is little difference between the
views. The distortion-free magnification, perspective and angle of view is why it’s called
a “normal” lens.
There are many good techniques and
times for using this normal lens and one
of them is portraiture. For much of the
film era, 35mm portraits opted preferred
focal lengths between 70mm and
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135mm. They preferred these because
they flatter the human face. Theyre
neither long enough to compress space, with
flattens contours, or wide enough to expand a nose. This got rid of the 50mm lens in the
portrait business. The 50mm though, even beats “portrait” lenses (105mm f/2.8 or
135mm f/2.8) allowing convenient working distances and beautifully out-of-focus
backgrounds. With this lens you can stand close to your subject and get a nice shot.
Column2
Tested
Focal
Length and
Maximum
Aperture
Canon EF
50mm
f/1.4 USM
AF
51.68mm
f/1.46
Nikon
50mm
f/1.4D AF
51.68mm
f/1.46
Pentax
Sigma
SMCP-FA
50mm
50mm f/1.4 f/1.4 EX
AF
DG HSM AF
Sony 50mm
f/1.4 AF
51.93mm
f/1.45
48.00mm
f/1.48
51.58mm
f/1.46
Sony AF,
Minolta AF
Mounts
Canon AF
Nikon AF,
Fujifilm AF
Pentax AF,
Samsung AF
Canon AF,
Nikon AF,
Pentax AF,
Sigma AF,
Sony AF
Weight
0.62 lb
0.51 lb
0.50 lb
1.16 lb
0.49 lb
Length
1.96 in.
1.65 in.
1.44 in.
2.68 in.
1.67 in.
Filter Size
58mm
52mm
49mm
77mm
55mm
For action shots, this lens is also great. With its bright apertures of f/1.4, f/2, and
f/2.8 letting in generous amounts of light through the image sensor, the 50mm f/1.4
affords shutter speeds fast enough to freeze most common forms of human motion.
Because most of today’s 50mm f/1.4 lenses have their origins in the film era, their
autofocus is rarely fast. But that shouldn’t discourage you, because most indoor sports
move within the plane of focus. Also, because the 50mm lenses are so compact, they’re
a lot easier to focus manually than most zoom lens and in really low light, manual is
preferable to auto.
Soft focus works the best when you have such a large aperture. You usually use
this lens for focusing on small details and successfully throwing everything but your
subject out of focus. It strongly forces viewers’ attention to where you want it, while
simultaneously casting a soft focus over everything else.
Shooting in low light has endless possibilities with the 50mm f/1.4 lens. Today’s
50mm f/1.4 lenses make sharp photography possible in the kind of light so dim, you
probably would never even take out your camera before. There are numerous factors
that contribute to give the 50mm its awesome low-light performance. Obviously, the
high-speed f/1.4 maximum aperture allows more light through the image sensor than
almost any other lens available. Also, the compact dimensions of the 50mm lens are
less likely to cause camera shake. And last, if your camera body has sensor-based
shake control, it will give you yet another stop of sharpness when lights are low. With all
these factors you can see how with this lens you can leave your flash and tripod at
home.
The 50mm f/1.4 lens seems really amazing. I would love to get one. The
possibilities of the aperture and the size of the lens itself seem so easy to handle. All of
the techniques with this lens seem achievable for an amateur photographer, like myself,
and not just professionals. It is also a very affordable price unlike everything else in
photography, but for all that it can do it is definitely worth buying without a doubt.