Low light and portrait/still life lens

[Tom Camilleri]

I currently have three lenses: the 17-55mm f3.5-5.6 EF-s 300D kit lens, the 50mm f 2.5 Compact Macro EF, and a quite old but fully functional EF-L 100-300mm that someone gave to me and I don't use. It's big and not too fast, but the optics are very good as far as I can tell.

I have found that in many common situations, low available light is really limiting with these lenses, necessitating either a tripod or flash where I'd be better off holding and using available light. It would also be nice to be able to use pronounced selective focus. What would be the best lens to fill this niche, given my current compliment?

Would going for either of the EF 50mm lenses (the f1.4 or the f1.8) be redundant? If not, is the considerably more expensive f1.4 worth the difference? I can justify the price if it will yeild noticably superior results. B&H touts it as designed using computer simulation to provide a nice background blur. I'm also considering the EF 85mm f 1.8, which sells for about the same as the EF 50mm 1.4. I'd consider a zoom which extended my coverage from what I now have, but none seem to go low enough with f-number. I guess I'd consider one with IS, which is supposed to give you two or three stops.

Maybe a fast 35mm EF would round me out better? The price of the 50mm 1.8 makes me want to buy it, but maybe it's not my best purchase. Any thoughts as to what I should get to add selective focus and speed to my arsenal greatly appreciated. How fast does a lens have to be give you a really good background blur at five to ten feet?

[Andy_T]

Tom,

some thoughts.

there are no zooms faster than f/2.8.
That's not sufficient for low light, if your f/2.5 is too slow.

Both the 50/1.4 and the 85/1.8 are great lenses, make the decision based on the focal length you use more. I went for the 50/1.4, as I do most portraits in my home and the 85 mm would be too long.

The 50/1.8 is ok if you don't mind the peculiar bokeh ... read more about it here:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=69785

Also, have you set your ISO up there to 1600? The 300D doesn't have the same low light performance as the 350D or 20D, but it's pretty good if you add noise reduction.

Best regards,
Andy

[Tom Camilleri]

Many thanks for comments, Andy. Bokeh is a new concept for me, but the link was highly informative. The f1.4 gives softer blending in the background. In your opinion, is the 50mm f1.8 merely "different" or would you call it unacceptable?

Perhaps the 50mm f2.5 is right on the border line for me. Am I correct in thinking that the f2.5 50mm compact macro, when stopped completely down, will require a shutter speed that's roughly only twice as slow as the 50mm f1.4 when stopped all the way down?

I didn't realize there were low-light isses with the 300D. I would think these issues wouldn't apply to night shooting, where contrast is high. I have set the ISO to 1600 and found that I get a lot of noise. What noise reduction software do you use in post-processing?

[tim]

The 50mm F1.8 is a cheap lens, and it performs as such. It's good value, but many people upgrade to the 1.4 if they can afford it. I did.

F stops go F1.4, 2, 2.8, so between 1.4 and 2.5 is almost two stops, so your shutter speed will be 4 times as long (each stop halves the amount of light getting into the lens).

Have a look at noise reduction program reviews here (http://www.michaelalmond.com/Articles/noise.htm). Personally I got the noise ninja pro bundle, it works well when I bother to use it, which isn't often now. With the 20D a correctly exposed ISO1600 image is printable at 8*12 no problems. It's only if I underexpose or use ISO 3200 that I use noise reduction, and sometimes not even then.

For portraits in low light i'd suggest adding more light rather than getting a faster lens.

[Tom Camilleri]

Thanks Tim. Forgot that one divides an f number by 1.4 to get the next lower one.

Noise Ninja seems to be the way to go as far as cleaning up fast ISO images and I think I'll try it. The ISO 1600 images I've captured with my 300D were somewhat borderline. Do you use the Photoshop plug in?

You're probably right about adding light for portraits. The f2.5 doesn't afford as much bokeh (correct usage?), but playing with the background should work. Interestingly. when I checked the About photography glossary I got an article which claimed that, for mysterious reasons, lenses with odd numbers of blades offered better bokeh. By that standard, the 50mm f1.8's five blades should be better than the f1.4's eight blades.

I think I do need either a faster lens or an IS lens, though, for low-light situations.


The 50mm F1.8 is a cheap lens, and it performs as such. It's good value, but many people upgrade to the 1.4 if they can afford it. I did.

F stops go F1.4, 2, 2.8, so between 1.4 and 2.5 is almost two stops, so your shutter speed will be 4 times as long (each stop halves the amount of light getting into the lens).

Have a look at noise reduction program reviews here (http://www.michaelalmond.com/Articles/noise.htm). Personally I got the noise ninja pro bundle, it works well when I bother to use it, which isn't often now. With the 20D a correctly exposed ISO1600 image is printable at 8*12 no problems. It's only if I underexpose or use ISO 3200 that I use noise reduction, and sometimes not even then.

For portraits in low light i'd suggest adding more light rather than getting a faster lens.

[tim]

Yep I use the photoshop plugin, works well. Forget the odd number of blades thing, sounds like crap to me, especially 5 vs 8.

For low light, you can capture existing light, or add light. I prefer to add light myself, photography's about controlling light as much as anything, take control and make pictures, don't take them. Low light photos are compromises, better off doing the job properly.

[Andy_T]

Many thanks for comments, Andy. Bokeh is a new concept for me, but the link was highly informative. The f1.4 gives softer blending in the background. In your opinion, is the 50mm f1.8 merely "different" or would you call it unacceptable?


Yes, bokeh could very well be described as 'blending in the background' :wink:

I had the 50/1.8 MKI (the older version with the metal lens mount) and I liked it a lot. The bokeh CAN be a problem, especially when you have a background with a lot of lighting differences and hard shapes (e.g. light shines through leaves). If you have a rather uniformly colored and lit background and smooth shapes, you won't notice it so much.

I had a lot of great images with the 50/1.8, but also a fair amount of shots where I shook my head and sliently muttered curses when I viewed the downloaded images. In a nutshell, the 50/1.4 gives me more keepers. It really is an awesome lens.

Also, I normally don't use my lenses wide open, because that's not where they are sharpest. I used the 50/1.8 at f/2.8 mostly, and I use my Tamron 28-75/2.8 and Canon EF-80-200/2.8 L normally at f/3.5. The 50/1.4 is quite usable at f/2.0, so it gives me a stop over the 50/1.8, if it has to be.

However, in normal daylight shooting I use it at around f/2.5 so that I have sufficient DOF to have my main object sharp ... no visible difference here.

So a suggestion would be to get the 50/1.8 to try out how you like fast primes, and sell it on later if you feel you have to upgrade to the 50/1.4. You won't lose much that way. If you're lucky, you can also go hunting for the 50/1.8 MKI version. It's more expensive used (~US$ 120) than the 50/1.8 MKII new, but it definitely has better build (metal instead of plastic lens mount, distance scale) than the MKII version and will give you a nice feel when handling it (for me that's part of the magic of photography :wink: )

Also take a look at this thread:
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=86571
I've included an image I took with the 50/1.8 @ f/2.0 and ISO 3200 with my 20D that looks quite nice after noise reduction:

f/2.0
ISO 3200
1/40 s handheld
Large JPG, noise reduction with Noiseware Community edition
resize & USM in BreezeBrowser

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=19878&d=1121868614

I even find that the bokeh adds a bit of interest to the image in this case.

Best regards,
Andy

[Tom Camilleri]

Thanks for al your comments, Andy. Is the optical performance of the MKI the same as that of the MKII, or is the better built lens superior in image quality as well?



Yes, bokeh could very well be described as 'blending in the background' :wink:

I had the 50/1.8 MKI (the older version with the metal lens mount) and I liked it a lot. The bokeh CAN be a problem, especially when you have a background with a lot of lighting differences and hard shapes (e.g. light shines through leaves).

[Tom Camilleri]

Yep I use the photoshop plugin, works well. Forget the odd number of blades thing, sounds like crap to me, especially 5 vs 8.

For low light, you can capture existing light, or add light. I prefer to add light myself, photography's about controlling light as much as anything, take control and make pictures, don't take them. Low light photos are compromises, better off doing the job properly.


Thanks Tim. Guess I'll need to learn something about flash photography.