50mm Prime why so popular

On a 350D it is equiv of a 80mm. I dont understand why one would want this ,due to the crop factor.

What is the reason that its so popular?

What is so good about having a fixed lens at 80mm?

Based on my earlier post about lenses that are close to a human eye, I would think people would want a 32mm or something.

Can someone tell me what im missing!

Thanks,

Simon

I suspect it's largely because 50mm was the "normal" length for 35mm cameras and there are so many of us old fogies who can't change the old paradigms.

On the other hand - in the 35mm days, an 80-90mm lens was perfect for portraiture. That would make the 50mm lens fit that use with many of today's digital SLR's.

I have several fast zooms - all f2.8 max aperture - which, so far, do everything I need. If I had to go to even faster lenses for indoor people work, for example, I would likely get some primes. The choices would probably include a 24mm f1.4, 35mm f1.4, and a 50mm f1.4.

The 50mm F1.8 is popular because it's cheap, and it's better than the kit lens. It's not great, but it's great value. I sold mine for the 50mm F1.4, which I use for theatre and low light pics.

As Skip mentioned, it's a great focal length for portraits.
Of course, if you can afford it, the 50/1.4 or 85/1.8 are better suited for portraits because they have very pleasant bokeh (which the 50/1.8 has not)

In addition it is very sharp and also quite fast... making it a very worthwile addition for everybody who has the 18-55 kit lens which is ok, but neither particularly sharp nor particularly fast.

Best regards,
Andy

My personal guess is that its simply low price for low f numbers. If we take a look into local prices in Finland, we can come up with following list:
24/1.4 1350EUR
24/2.8 499EUR
28/1.8 489EUR
28/2.8 209EUR
35/1.4 1315EUR
35/2 289EUR
50/1.4 389EUR *cheapest f1.4 lens on list)
50/1.8 110EUR *cheapest lens on list*
85/1.2 1710EUR
85/1.8 411EUR
100/2 482EUR
135/2 1045EUR
180/3.5 1430EUR

So if you plot that into curve, you can see that 50mm offers cheap entry fee (in comparison to other lenses) for testing what you can do with fast prime lenses. And if you end up selling it, you can expect the price difference to be relatively small, since the initial investment was pretty small in comparison to what other lenses cost.

Another issue is that 17-40/4 + 70-200/4 seems to be pretty popular setup nowdays and 50/1.8 offers cheap way to have something in that 40-70mm gap between those two zoom lenses.

For my 20D, I picked up the Canon 50mm 1.4 for the speed, and the portrait abilities of the lens. The bokeh is very, shall we say, pleasant. It is a nice lens indoors, as you will not need to use a flash in most situations. And the 50mm works great in small groups if a fast f2.8 zoom lens is not available. Mines a keeper.

When I bought my 1DMKII, I went ahead and bought the Canon 85mm 1.2L for the same reasons. Talk about a lens! I still drool when it is mounted on the camera. You will never see such creamy bokeh out of any other lens. And there is a learning curve, as you can cream out a subject if not careful, it's that sensitive.

And you are correct about the 30-35mm range. I have one of those Canon 35mm 1.4Ls on my list. My zooms will have to fill the want for awhile, buying another rig/semi, expanding the business. It really sucks being a lens junky, as this is not a cheap hobby.

Mike

The 50 F1.4 will be my first good Canon lens.

Because the 35mm 1.4 is triple the price

I find the 50 on the x1.6 to be nice to isolate your subject.. 85mm is a bit too long for me for general purpose, but the 50mm f1.4 is a nice "piece of the background" (field of view), and with the f1.4 (and potentialy Neutral filter) you can even sometime *remove* the background as well and keep your subject nicely isolated... and that at a reasonable distance from it...
In other words, I really like that focale

The human eye sees almost 180 degrees, so I'm not sure what the people saying that 50mm is a human eye. I don't see why people like 50mm or even 85mm fixed length on a dSLR of 1.6x mangification factor. I'd rather have the kit zoom lens on my camera all the time than my 50mm f1.5 which I use for low light and portraits.

Well, preferences vary
I'd take the other one and zoom with my feet.

A better alternative to the kit lens is the Sigma 18-50/2.8 EX. Range of the kit lens, but fast and with very good image quality.

Best regards,
Andy

Because of the thread like this . Everyone says it's a must have, and it is.

It might well see 180 but that's not in focus, 50mm is seen in photography as close to how the eye see's focus wise

Most of what we see is periferal vision. However, we are asuming that we are looking through a mask of the proportion of the photograph. The image is neither zoomed in, nor distored in a wide angle sense. Presumably that makes it easy to manufacture and reletively cheap, hence it's appeal.

It may well be more difficult to get the 'wow' factor with a 50mm lens, but that is where the art is.

Graham

Everyone definately has their own opinion on this, as they should.