Tips / A Great Lens for

Portraits & Low Light

There are four reasons to consider getting a 50mm lens.

A 50mm lens on a consumer digital SLR is a good portrait lens.

Remember, a 50mm lens on a consumer-level digital SLR is like a 75mm or 80mm lens on a film camera.

Those a great focal lengths for headshots (faces).

A 50mm f/1.4 lens lets in eight times (3 stops) more light than does the typical zoom lens.

Eight times more lights means:

1) You may not have to use flash for indoor photography

2) Night photograph exposures don't have to be as long, and are therefore have less noise.

You may encounter the phrase fast 50.

Fast denotes a lens that let's in lots of light, such as most 50mm lenses.

Digital SLR camera have far more depth-of-field than film cameras.

With a 50mm lens opening of f/1.4, you have three stops less depth-of-field that your zoom at f/4.

That's great when you're doing a portrait, for example, and you want to blur the background.

A 50mm lens weighs far less than a zoom lens.

The widest aperture of a lens is an important specification.

Both Nikon and Canon sell 50mm lenses with different widest apertures: f/1.4 and f/1.8.

A 50mm lens with a widest aperture of f/1.4 lets in about two-thirds of a stop more light than does a f/1.8 lens.

However, for this added amount of light gathering ability, you pay much more.

Check your camera manufacturer's website for compatibility information.

Here are two charts for Nikon lenses.