Jer & Min Photography

The Canon EF 50mm f/18 II lens is amazing.  It is a very fast prime lens that is capable of creating great photographs.  I’ve been shooting with nothing but this lens all weekend to get used to it and familiar with its strengths and weaknesses (as of this writing, the weakness column is pretty short).

Here are a couple of the strengths I’ve found so far:

1. f/1.8 – This is a great low-light lens.
2. Bokeh* – Part of having a huge aperture is the benefit of having a very shallow depth of focus.  When wide open, the bokeh is absolutely beautiful.
3. Sharpness* – I am very impressed with the sharpness of images created by this lens
4. Price – It is less than $100.  Enough said.

To demonstrate the Bokeh, Sharpness, and shallow depth of focus achievable by the f/1.8, I’ve included the following photograph.

For this photograph, I focused on Min’s eyelashes.  As you see the bokeh shown on Min’s lower portion of her face is very creamy and quite beautiful (it helps to have a beautiful subject).  To view the shallow depth of field and the sharpness of this image, I’ve cropped a subsection of this photograph below.

You’ll notice, the only portion of this shot that is in focus is part of the eye.  Bokeh begins around the far edge of her eyelashes.  Additionally, notice how sharp and defined the actual individual hairs are.  To see a larger image, click on the photo.

I’m really enjoying this lens, I’ll put each shot I take with it in a set on flickr as a mini-project.

* Things such as Bokeh and Sharpness I have no way of offically quantifying other than my impressions and opinions of them.