A great value for beginners
For a very affordable price, this 50mm f/1.8 is a good-quality lens. It is lightweight, fast, and features a very wide aperture, making it suitable for many uses such as portrait and street photography. However, the optical quality lacks consistency at the widest apertures. I tested version 2, from 1991, on a Canon full-frame camera.
This lens is made of plastic and consists of 5 elements, which makes it very lightweight and easy to handle. The minimum focusing distance is 45 cm. After testing the various apertures, I found that sharpness was optimal starting at f/5.6. Sharpness is only moderate at f/2.8, which isn’t a major issue since f/2.8 is still a wide aperture.
The focus ring isn’t ideally placed; it is small and located at the end of the lens, making it somewhat difficult to use. Autofocus works well, although it is slightly noisy.
Sharpness test
In the test, this lens does not perform well in terms of sharpness. The images are quite soft and lack crispness at the widest apertures. The lack of sharpness at f/1.8 is forgivable on a lens of this caliber, but it is still noticeable at f/2.8. At the widest apertures, the images also lack uniformity: the center is much sharper than the edges, which is a common characteristic of lenses.
To achieve the lens’s best sharpness, you need to stop down to a narrower aperture, such as f/8. At this setting, it delivers very detailed images from the center to the edges. On the positive side, vignetting is mild, distortions are minimal, and chromatic aberrations are virtually absent.
Pros :
- Wide aperture f/1.8
- Creative possibilities with depth of field
- Not much distortions
- Discretion, weight and size
- 50mm focal is useful for all purpose
- Cheap
Cons :
- Soft sharpness until f/5.6
- No optical stabilization
- Strong vignetting at the large apertures
Sample photos
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