Nifty (50mm 1.8) Sharpness problem?

So I've had my nifty fifty (50mm 1.8) for a few days now and I'm not all that happy with it. I bought it planning to shoot wide open or near wide open, and I've been having a lot of difficulty doing that. I've tried a bunch of flower shots and none of them have came out good (I would focus on one leaf, and it would end up being out of focus, even with a tripod.) Today I tried some shots hand-held when it was less windy and still, out of focus, and it can't be my hand because they are not all that shakey and well, shooting at such high shutter speeds makes me wonder if hand shake could do that much out of focus to what I have focused on. Perhaps I have an autofocus problem? I am just asking because I bought it at Henry's and I'm sure they'de exchange it for the same one. I'm using an expensive sigma dg 52mm ultra low reflection multi coating UV filter (the guy at the store recommended it, I am pretty sure it wasn't necessarily and that a cheaper one would have done, but he said the other ones were junk, and we were getting along really well so I didn't want to ruin the atitude by saving like $10.

Anyway, I decided to do some test shots today with my tripod, nifty fifty and 30D. Check out my gallery and tell me what you think. All the photos were using the center auto focus points on the rubber grip of the pencil.

http://jagwire.smugmug​.com/gallery/1978918

That's the gallery for the shots starting at f1.8 going to f6.3 of the pencil. They are in order from widest aperture to smallest aperture (1st photo is f1.8, last f6.3.) I am also about to start another gallery with all the shots I took today which have a lot wide open and then the same shot with a smaller aperture so you guys can take a look and tell me what you think. All the EXIF info is in tact.

Here's the other gallery:
http://jagwire.smugmug​.com/gallery/1978926/1​/100809780

You can see some of the flower which which didn't turn out too nice. I almost always use the center autofocus point if your curious where to look for sharpness.

Here are two photo that did seem to come out well though, what do you guys think?

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Here's another photo I took a few days ago i was sort of happy with, the cherry thing I focused on seems in focus okay, but it was probably too small to use as a focus point.

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I'm finding it a bit hit or miss using a nifty that I bought recently. I'm pretty sure it's my inexperience that's causing my soft pictures though.

I'll be interested to see what others have to say about your thread, I'll hopefully learn something too!

Your pen pic looks pretty sharp.

The shots look fine to me..........you cannot expect perfection from this lens! It is sharp but as the flower shot shows, backgrounds are irritating because of the diaphragm blades........I never enjoyed using this lens even though value is high and with careful use you can get some very good natural-light shots. The 'cheapo' factor just didn't inspire much confidence for me..........

50 1.8 is commonly know for its not to superior focus!

In dimm conditions you can use a spead lite for focus assist and disable the flash in the setup!

schmoelzel wrote in post #2091951
The shots look fine to me..........you cannot expect perfection from this lens! It is sharp but as the flower shot shows, backgrounds are irritating because of the diaphragm blades........I never enjoyed using this lens even though value is high and with careful use you can get some very good natural-light shots. The 'cheapo' factor just didn't inspire much confidence for me..........

Which shot?

Yeah, tumblew, it doesn't look too bad, but some of my other ones do.

I'm not sure if I can deal with a hit and miss lens if you know what I mean. I'm not expecting perfect shots every time, but I am expecting a decent line of reliability when I am shooting at those wide apertures (I bought this lens specifically for the f1.8, in a few weeks I'll probably have a Tamron 28-75 f2.8 which would cover the 50mm range anyway.)

I am curious because I am willing to exchange it if others think my copy is bad. If it does turn out all the copies are like this or it's hard to get a good copy, I have NO problem returning it because I am planning to get a 85 1.8 in a few weeks for shooting sports. I really just bought this lens because it has such a reputation and maybe I guess my expectations were too high.

BTW, Overkill, all my shots were done without flash. I don't have a speedlite now as I'm doing most shooting outdoors. How would focus assist help (is that the red beam.) I didn't know you could use that and disable the flash if it is that red beam thing.

And I thought this lens was good all around except for build quality? If you look through my gallery some of the shots are like totally out of focus. Is it like this with all the copies (the bad focus mechanism?)

Oh, and my next question: Would the 50 1.4 fix all the problems that I am experiencng with this lens?

If you take a look at my flower gallery you'll see all the shots were done with my sigma 70-300 apo in macro mode which came out pretty damn sharp in my opinion. I was planning to use this lens for indoor shots like the pen one and for shooting some flowers and portraits of people (not for professional work or anything, just a year book for school probably.)

I meant to say that sharpness looks ok in what you posted but you should never judge sharpness by web-sized pics. You have to look and/or post 100% crops in order to show sharpness accurately. The 50 prime will probably be sharper than the Tamron you will be getting since primes are known to be sharper than zooms. But a lot of shooters here do not like to have overlapping focal lengths so if you have this FL covered, return the 50. That said, it isn't the biggest investment you'll make and sometimes the aperture will come in handy. F1.8 is a huge way from f2.8!!

schmoelzel wrote in post #2091969
I meant to say that sharpness looks ok in what you posted but you should never judge sharpness by web-sized pics. You have to look and/or post 100% crops in order to show sharpness accurately. The 50 prime will probably be sharper than the Tamron you will be getting since primes are known to be sharper than zooms. But a lot of shooters here do not like to have overlapping focal lengths so if you have this FL covered, return the 50. That said, it isn't the biggest investment you'll make and sometimes the aperture will come in handy. F1.8 is a huge way from f2.8!!

Yeah, that's why I bought it, I wanted 1.8 at this sort of focal length as I figured the 85 may be a little too far of a zoom lens for portrait work or whatever.

If you guys want to take a look at the sharpness of this lens with 100% crops, just go into my smugmug gallery and click original. I am a little lazy to go cropping around as a lot of those shots were just not all that great to begin with, but it should give you guys a decent idea.

I don't know about you guys, but my sigma 70-300 APO macro (flower gallery) seems pretty sharp, and that's at f5/5.6, which is almost wide open for that lens. I realise f1.8 will give me a much more narrow depth of field and will give me more out of focus areas, but whatever I do focus on I would think should be pretty sharp?

I've owned both the 1.8 and the 1.4 and I can say that the focus accuracy on my copy of the 1.8 was, well, not exactly precise. I found it to be sharp enough wide open and improved a fair bit by 2.8 (and f/4 absolutely slaughters my 17-85 at f/4) but you may need to manually focus or pay very close attention to what the autofocus is doing to get optimal results.

Jim G wrote in post #2091999
I've owned both the 1.8 and the 1.4 and I can say that the focus accuracy on my copy of the 1.8 was, well, not exactly precise. I found it to be sharp enough wide open and improved a fair bit by 2.8 (and f/4 absolutely slaughters my 17-85 at f/4) but you may need to manually focus or pay very close attention to what the autofocus is doing to get optimal results.

I never use manual focus unless I have to. Maybe I should begin to.

When I autofocus, I just look in the viewfinder and whatever looks good for the settings I have chosen is what I go with. This is all I should need to do, right?

Should I try stopping the aperture down to like f2.8 and see what my results are like? I really have been avoiding doing so becasue I wanted this lens for it's capabilities wide open.

Other then the focusing, did you find the image quality better on the 1.4, and most importantly was it sharp / usable at f1.4?

BTW, anybody have anything to say about the pencil shots? At 100%, the rubber eraser doesn't look bad at f1.8.

As said, this lens is not known for consistency. It's sharp, or at least can be, but AF reliability is not its forte. This is why there's a better USM version.

You get what you pay for...

cdi-ink.com wrote in post #2092023
As said, this lens is not known for consistency. It's sharp, or at least can be, but AF reliability is not its forte. This is why there's a better USM version.

You get what you pay for...

So I guess the 1.4 would fix most of the problems?

And you guys don't think I have a bad copy, just am expecting too much for a cheap lens?

BTW, does the 85 1.8 have focusing problems too? Before I clicked this thread to check the newest message, I saw a thread above it labelled 85mm 1.8 focusing problems or something.

JaGWiRE wrote in post #2092038
So I guess the 1.4 would fix most of the problems?

And you guys don't think I have a bad copy, just am expecting too much for a cheap lens?

BTW, does the 85 1.8 have focusing problems too? Before I clicked this thread to check the newest message, I saw a thread above it labelled 85mm 1.8 focusing problems or something.

Your copy looks to be sharp when it hits. It just doesn't hit all the time. Normal for that lens...

Anything with USM is gonna be a lot more consistent than that 50.

I don't see an 85 focus problem thread. I see another 50 one though...

cdi-ink.com wrote in post #2092041
Your copy looks to be sharp when it hits. It just doesn't hit all the time. Normal for that lens...

Anything with USM is gonna be a lot more consistent than that 50.

Oh, right. BTW, it wasn't an 85 that was in this forum section that somebody posted with focus problems, it was the 50mm, haha.

A lot more? In the other thread (perhaps they should be merged) one poster says:
"If you NEED the lens to have that extra stop and be quiet and focus a bit faster, then go for 1.4."

He doesn't say anything about better focus though, just faster. Hmm? I am really lost here. I don't know if I'll buy a 1.4 because it is quite pricey and I only bought the 1.8 because it was cheap and I figured I might have uses for it.