50mm 1.8

Your focus point appears to be just ahead of his hairline. With the angle of his head the rest would be reaching to the limits of the DOF @ f/2.8.

The 50mm f/1.8 is famous for being exceptionaly sharp. The problem I often see, my copy included, is the poor AF which often results in softer images. With correct focus though the 50mm 1.8 is very sharp has great IQ. It's strange that you'd shoot down such a huge volume of praise with your evaluation just one capture.

The AF Points, according to Digital Photo Pro, are on his face (middle of face) and on his middle upper shirt.

I've looked back at photos I've taken in the past, and noticed the exact same thing...I wouldn't base this on one photos, that would be stupid. This is just an example photo.


But you know what...the more I look at the photos I have...it DOES seem like it could be forward-focusing....great...I didn't know this lense had this problem.

Perhaps the perspective is distorted, but it doesn't seem like those two points are in the same plane. At f/2.8 they don't even seem close. That's probably just my perspective though. I have a compulsion to select AF points and am always suspicious of 'auto'-AF.

Agreed, I didn't mean to assume that you'd evaluate a lens off of only one shot. The shot you provided however seemed reasonable sharp for what was contained in the DOF given the lighting situation. The 50 1.8 usually shines a bit more than the image you provided in terms of sharpness and given only that image I'd be a little suspect fo a bad copy, but I'd lean much more towards a bad focus point, lighting or camera movement.

I don't know that I've ever heard of a bad 50 1.8 lens. It's one of simplest builds Canon makes.

Can you provide other shots that illustrate the lack of a "very sharp image"? I'm really curious as I've gone through 3 of these lenses and I've always been very impressed with their sharpness and IQ - WITH correct focus (I hate the AF on these buggers - and the MF ring).

Edit: I'm late, nevermind.