Choice of 50mm 1.4

Hey guys,

I am looking at 50mm Primes. I am looking to go for a f/1.4 as I have not way near enough money to afford a f/1.2... yet :P

But I am stuck on choice wise. I have been looking at the Canon f/1.4, Ziess planar f/1.4 and the Sigma f/1.4.

I have a see the build quality of the Ziess and I much prefer it and also optically i thought it was better than the two. The main problem is that it is MF.

At the beginning of next year I am getting a 7D as I am going to start filming. As I have seen from the other thread, people have said that the Ziess is really great for filming. but the problem is that I also do Music photography and the AF helps a lot! so this is where I am stuck... SO if someone could help point me in the right direction it would be great

I want to stay away from the 50mm f/1.8 as I have had two and they felt really plasticy and the second one fell apart on me.

Are there any other possible suggestions for a 50mm Prime?

These are all excellent choices. I have owned a 50 1.8 and two 50 1.4 made by Canon. I have heard very good things about the Ziess and the Sigma, but I don't think they're really worth the extra money. You'll get quieter autofocus, but really that's about it... they are larger and heavier and more expensive than the Canon. I'd go for the Canon 1.4 anytime.

I'd go for the Sigma with those choices. Its a great lens.

Sigma has smoother bokeh and is sharper wide open especially in comparison to the Canon. Zeiss has great contrast and I really like it from 2.8 to 5.6. I've had all these 50mm lenses and only kept the Sigma because it was AF. I would have kept the Zeiss but I found the Contax Distagon to be essentially the same but at half the cost so I was willing to sacrifice electronic aperture. I kind of regret this though but since I only use it from 2.8-5.6 stopped down focusing isn't that bad. I use the Sigma when I need the AF as my MF skills aren't quite good enough to keep up with moving objects at wide apertures.

Okay, I am looking into the Sigma more now. But I cant see the reason at the moment to spend the extra £100 on a lens which might not actually be better than the Canon equivalent...

All these have been discussed ad nauseum here. Do a search to get tons of additional opinions.

I'm happy with the Canon 50/1.4. I've had it for probably 7 years.

Almost bought the Sigma a while back. But looking at the images from both side by side, I really couldn't justify the additional price, weight and size. Even more so with the Canon 50/1.2L.... Both of these are lovely lenses, but just not all that practical.

I have no experience with the Zeiss. It's a manual focus lens (so the autofocus on it is really, really quiet ), which are harder to use on crop sensor cameras, which is where I tend to use my 50mm most.

If you get the Canon, buy the matching lens hood. When the lens is stored, reverse the lens hood on it. That protects the focus ring from getting bumped. This is one of the weaknesses of the Canon... a hard bump on the focus ring can damage the mechanism.

I own the Sigma 50mm f1.4 and I love it mounted on a full frame body.

I found 50mm to be too long as a standard lens on a 1.6 crop body, I found the Sigma 30mm f1.4 to be much more of a useful focal length. In fact it was such a good lens it displaced a 17-40 and became the lens most often mounted to my 20D.

John.

I have been so impressed by Zeiss that I just sold 2 cameras, 1 TC and 4 lenses to fund more.

True, they are not autofocus - but they do use focus confirmation, both the red light with beep and the green circle at the bottom of the viewfinder - frankly the only thing I miss AF for is my kid running around.

With manually focusing you very quickly can get used to zone focusing with the distance scale on the lens and then refine your focus in the viewfinder. It's actually pretty quick once you're used to it...plus because they are made for manually focusing it is a lot easier to do than a FTM autofocus lens, those focus rings are really bad once you get the real thing.

The Zeiss rock if you do any video. The color and contrast out of camera is insane, they're razor sharp (though 50 1.4 is softer wide-open, it's crazy sharp at smaller apertures). They're built like tanks.

Id get the zeiss