I finally got around to doing it - Comparing the Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 mk II, The 50mm F/1.4 USM and the 50mm F/1.2 L USM. All non-macro Canon 50mm primes currently in production. I have owned all 3 of them myself, starting with the Nifty Fifty for my 400D, then upgrading it to the 50 1.4 until I finally pulled the trigger on the 50L.
For starters, the 3 lenses are very different beasts to look at and hold. The 50mm 1.8 feels like something built by Fisher Price on a bad day, is noisy when focusing but takes great pictures. Far sharper than any kit lens, and with the relatively large aperture it is a bargain at $100 and often the first lens purchased when a Canon DSLR user wants something better than his/her kit lens. The thing that nagged me the most when I had the 50 1.8 was the autofocus. Slow, noisy and inaccurate.
The Canon 50mm 1.4 feels much more like a proper lens, but not overly impressive either. A compact lens with much better AF than the 50mm 1.8 and even a bit sharper at larger apertures. The bokeh is also much more appealing on the 1.4 than on the 1.8, due to the 1.4 having 8 aperture blades where the 1.8 has five. More on that later. At $350 the 1.4 is a lot more expensive than the 1.8, but still a relatively cheap lens if you need something fast and sharp.
As the most expensive Canon 50mm by far, the 50L will cost you $1480, almost as much as a 7D with a 50mm F/1.8. Is it worth it? For starters, the build quality is far superior to the other two 50s with that "solid as a brick" feeling you get from L lenses. It is weather sealed and the nice, broad focusing ring is sooo smooth. In short, a typical L. But then again, you sure get to pay for that feeling. As the only one in the bunch with real "ring USM", the fast, accurate and silent AF you know from Canons other USM lenses, auto focus with the 50L is a breeze. Provided you get one of newer copies, that is. The 50L is notorious for the "focus shift issue" where the lens focuses wide open, but as it stops down to take the picture, the focus shifts. I have not experienced this myself and I will not dive deeper into that discussion in this thread. There are plenty of threads about it already.
The Test Pt 1
We did a setup in a small studio with my sons tin robot (Retrobot from now on), a Mountain Dew (curse you, David Hobby for pushing me into this addiction), 4 candles, a gold reflector and a small LED light with a 1-stop ND gel in front of it to prevent the gold reflector from being a total whiteout. The room was lit with the pilot lights of two cheap strobes aimed at the ceiling at their lowest power setting. At F/4 and ISO 50, we got 1.6 seconds of shutter, so the room wasn't overly lit.
The test was performed with my 5D mk I on a tripod, center AF point on the "clock" on Retrobot's chest. Cable release was used, and the setup was shot at F/1.2, F/1.4, F/1.8, F/2.0, F/2.8, F/4, F/5.6, F/8, F/11 and F/16 with each lens. Obviously only the 50L at F/1.2 and the 50 1.4 and 50L at 1.4.
This test was done in my spare time, out of sheer curiosity and is by no means intended to be the definitive answer to which 50mm lens is best. In real world shooting, the biggest difference between the 3 lenses is their AF performance, which is not really tested here. My findings and conclusions are my personal opionions based on the full resolution images, available here
. No sharpening or any other PP was performed, just a straight conversion from RAW to JPG in Bibble 5.
So, lets get on with it!
F/2.0:
Just a shot for a quick comparison, but at F/2.0 the 50 1.4 looks to be just a hint of a tad sharper than the other two contestants, but you REALLY need to pixel peep to see that.
F/2.8:
At F/2.8, all the lenses are RAZOR sharp and judging by sharpness alone it is near impossible to tell which lens was used. But when you look at colors and contrast, there is a difference. The 50 1.8 produces nicer colors (in this particular shot) than the 50 1.4, but less contrasty and perhaps a bit darker than the other two. The 50 1.4 looks nice but is bested by the 50L with its great contrast and rich saturated colors. Ok, thats a 3-second-fix in PP to eliminate that difference.
F/4:
All are sharp, only the highlights at the bottom right shows which lens was used. Tell-tale pentagram shape for the 1.8, octagon for the 1.4 and a smooth, roundish blob from the 1.2.
F/8:
At F/8, all 3 contestants are mind-bogglingly sharp and not even the bokeh can tell them apart.
Bokeh!
Lets zoom in, and look at that bokeh - after all, it is the reason most of us buy fast primes, or at least I know that for me it was the desire to separate the subject from the background (and blur that background) that pushed me into buying the 50 1.8 and thus set the lens lust ball rolling.
This is from the F/4 shots, just way closer. Now we can see the different ways these lenses render out-of-focus highlights in the reflections on the MD bottle.
The test Part 2
I wasn't quite satisfied with how the highlights were showing up, so last night I did a second setup at home:
Retrobot at the front, 9 crystal red wine glasses behind him. 3 Speedlights (540EZ @ 1/64 if anyone cares) aimed at the glasses from different angles. 580EX + Ray Flash on camera at 1/128 to illuminate Retrobot.
Voilá, at F/2.8 the highlights looked like this:
Now we can very clearly see how the aperture blades in these lenses make a difference for the bokeh. The 50mm 1.8 has pentagram-shaped highlights, very easily recognized and very different from the two other contestants. The octagon shaped highlights from the 50 1.4 are easy to see in this picture, but I think you need to be a bit of a photo buff and quite the gear hound to notice them in any "real" shots. Highlights from the 50L are smoother than those from the 50 1.4, due to the rounded aperture blades, but you can still tell that there is 8 aperture blades in this lens. VERY pleasing bokeh from the 50L and together with the improved AF performance the reason I upgraded from my 50 1.4.
Conclusion:
The 3 contestants came a lot closer than I had expected in this test, when you look at the images. Looking purely at optical performance in a controlled environment, it is hard to justify the cost of the 1.4 and especially the 1.2 versions. The 50mm 1.8 "nifty fifty" is GREAT value for money and a cheap way to dip your toes in prime waters.
Once you start shooting more with your 50mm prime, the little differences start becoming clear. The AF on the 50 1.8 is slow and noisy and the manual focus ring is a joke. Enter the 50 1.4 with improved build, better AF and a way nicer focus ring. At $350 still good value and I believe it to be the best buy of the 3 lenses. More expensive than the 1.8, but so much nicer to use. If you (like me) use your 50mm often, the 50 1.4 will be worth the extra cash.
That leaves us with the 50L. At $1100 more than the 50mm 1.4, what makes this beast special? For me, it's a combination of things. The AF is better than on the 50 1.4 that sometimes hunt for focus. The build is just plain awesome and the thing feels like a tank. I like shooting in the rain so the weather seal offers me some peace of mind but doesnt really make much of a difference on my 5D mk I. Those reasons are why I shelled out the $2080 that this lens will cost you here in Denmark. I had a great copy of the 50 1.4 so I was worried that I would regret my purchase but once I started shooting with it I haven't looked back. The bokeh is amazing, and shooting portraits at F/2.0 the eyes just POP. Is it worth the extra money? Probably not, but I absolutely love the shots I get from mine, YMMV.
Not all of us can spare $1300 on a lens and really dont need f/1.2, but we do want a more circular aperture
