Does having NO Image stabilization matter much for 50mm?

I'm shopping for a 50mm prime lens, probably the f/1.8 because i can afford that now and I will upgrade to the f/1.4 in the future.

I notice that these lenses do not have IS. Does that make a big difference for these types of lenses? will more of my photos be blurry because of it? Any problems for you guys?

Just wondering... I'm sure my hand is not the most stable in the world.

I've shot with a lot longer lenses than that without IS no problem, depends on what shutter speeds you will be using, but personally I wouldn't have thought IS was neccessary on a 50mm until you get down to 1/15 or slower, practice your technique.

My 50 f1.8 is very, very frustrating when it comes to shutter speeds...I have so many throw-aways and few keepers because there is no IS; I'm used to IS from my kit lens, so I must have developed bad habits. But I do highly recommend this lens; the keepers that you do have will be very good keepers. Here are a few that I took:

Unless you have a medical condition that causes you to shake more than normal, then you shouldn't have any problems. The 50mm f1.8 is light enough to be readily hand held. As long as you use proper hand holding techniques, i.e., cradling the camera in your left hand, keeping your elbows in and exercising proper breathing control, you will be fine. Also, remember to keep your shutter speed at 1/focal length or higher...

If you photograph people with it, handheld, the answer is: no. Generally people move, and you need to have a shutter speed as fast as the inverse focal length rule indicates, as a minimum. For kids it often needs to be twice as fast.

So, if shooting people in low light is the aim, use a reasonable aperture (F/2 maybe), and just up the iso up to a point where you get at least 1/50 s on FF or 1/80 s on APS-C.

With good technique as indicated by John you may be able to use longer shutter speeds, but to be very honest, it will be very hard to get sharp pictures of people with longer shutter speeds, because they often move to much.

For anything static, you can use the same technique, or use a tripod, of course, if you get into longer shutter speeds.

Kind regards, Wim

Do not buy the 50mm 1.8. The AF is so horrible in low light, slow and inaccurate. Also if you want to shoot it wide open, even on APS-C, it won't be very sharp. Needs to be stopped down to about 2.2 to be ok. At 2.8, the IQ is about the same as my 24-70L, so I sold the 50mm. I only had about 75% keepers, while my 24-70L has keepers every time. The AF accuracy is seriously lacking.

I tried the 50mm 1.4, and it was everything i hoped the 1.8 to be. Soft wide open but very sharp at 1.8. Full time manual focus is a must for low light.

I do not have problems using the 50 1.8, even without IS. My photos are usually sharp, with nice bokeh.

It just means you will need to keep your shutter speeds around 1/80-100 to get sharp shots. That is easier than on most lenses thanks to the ability to go to f1.8.

no it doesn't

I think IS, VR, OS or whatever else it's called has caused photographers to either get lazy with (or not learn in the first place) proper camera handling techniques. I think people tend to rely on IS too much, expecting it to make every shot "tack sharp" when it really should be an adjunct to proper hand holding techniques.

When I was a young whippersnapper, I was routinely able to successfully handhold shutter speeds as slow as 1/15. Of course, I can't do that now at age 63...

Alright thanks guys. I think I'm just gonna wait, even if its half a year, to get the f/1.4. I haven't had my 450D for long so I'm going to keep learning/practicing technique first before I jump into buying a lens.

You might want to consider the Sigma 30mm f/1.4 instead of the 50mm.

JWright wrote in post #8327654
I think IS, VR, OS or whatever else it's called has caused photographers to either get lazy with (or not learn in the first place) proper camera handling techniques. I think people tend to rely on IS too much, expecting it to make every shot "tack sharp" when it really should be an adjunct to proper hand holding techniques.

When I was a young whippersnapper, I was routinely able to successfully handhold shutter speeds as slow as 1/15. Of course, I can't do that now at age 63...

Thank you

Heck when i got into this hobby a few years back the number of IS lenses were very VERY few...and no lenses I owned had IS for quite a while [My first IS lens was a 24-105 f/4L IS] If I remember right when i switched to Canon, there was the 28-135, 70-300, 100-400 and the 70-200 f/2.8 IS that were affordable to most people..that was all...

IS however, was a large reason I came to Canon, at the time Nikon only had the 24-120 and the 80-400....

is IS useful? Yes yes it is, is it necessary? no

With an f/1.8 aperture you should almost certainly be able to handhold in most conditions, I'd wager a bet if you're shooting people and you had an IS lens in those same situations, you might be able to handhold it, but you will get soft results because of subject movement...

IS is less helpful with lenses shorter than 200 I've found, Its nice, But its just not as dramatic because down in the 24-50 range, you can handhold down to some pretty slow speeds, so any problems you're going to have are likely not going to be corrected by IS...

JWright wrote in post #8327654
I think IS, VR, OS or whatever else it's called has caused photographers to either get lazy with (or not learn in the first place) proper camera handling techniques. I think people tend to rely on IS too much, expecting it to make every shot "tack sharp" when it really should be an adjunct to proper hand holding techniques.

When I was a young whippersnapper, I was routinely able to successfully handhold shutter speeds as slow as 1/15. Of course, I can't do that now at age 63...

Yeah. I routinely hand-hold my 70-200 out to 200mm at around 1/25th. As long as I stay away from the coffee anyway

When sober and a room temperature, I can pretty much guarantee a sharp image (by that I mean none-shaken) with the 50mm up to shutterspeeds of around 1/30.
Slower than that and the rate goes down to about 75-50%

I don't have IS on any of my lenses yet, but I'd REALLY love to have it on my 100mm macro. Never really have the need on either the 50 1.8 or the Tamron @50mm.
My next lens will probably be the 70-200F4IS. I think I'd prefer shooting 200@F4 with IS and double the shutterspeed to 200@2.8 without IS.