I am still new to this whole thing so sorry if my question is silly. So, I have a new lens that my husband gave me at Christmas. It's a canon 50mm 1.8 and to me, the pictures that I take with it look way better than the ones I took with my 18-55 mm that came with the camera. My question is why? what I mean is what could be an advantage of having 50mm as apposed to 18-55mm?
I apologize if this question is super basic or doesn't make sense. I understand shutter speed and aperture now, but I somehow can't wrap my head around this and how it affects pictures
From what I have learned, the new lens is not a zoom lens, where the other one is a zoom lens. What happens with zoom lenses is they have a tendency to crop and lose some of the quality of your image where a prime lens, which your new one doesn't. Someone else might be able to put it into better words but that is the way that I understand it
@laurentye I suspect that it is because the 50mm is just a higher quality lens.
I took a look through your photos to see if I could find any examples but can't. It seems that you love your 50mm (and I love mine too).
Here is a whole writeup on what I suspect is your lens. You can just skip to the Summary and Conclusions and you might find your answer without having to get into all of the technical details.
Typically, a prime lens (your 50mm) is sharper than a zoom lens (18-55mm). It has better lenses (and is more expensive usually) and because it only has to focus at 50mm and not across a range, it does that well. Also, you might want to look at the aperture and shutter speeds. The 50mm is faster, and when you use an aperture like f1.8, you get a faster shutter speed and therefore less motion blur, and more pleasing bokeh. Why doesn't everyone use prime lenses all the time then? The trade-off is that you would need many expensive primes to cover the range your zoom lenses will cover.
@laurentye , Never apologize for asking a q. if you dont know. and dont ask then how will you learn, now saying that, I dont know the answer to that q. lol. My husband gave me lens for Christmas and I can barely get them on the camera..
Hope someone else can give you the info!!
It's not just the aperture; having a lens that doesn't have to zoom means simpler optics, which means less light bouncing around inside your lens and a sharper image.
thank you guys so much! I just spent some time googleing focal lengths and then came back here and found all your responses. First of all I think I didn't really understand what 50mm even meant, lol. but now I see that likely the reason I like my photos better than with my 18-55 has more to do with the aperture as @indiannie_jones mentioned. @michaelpage I don't think I have any pictures on this project that were not taken with my 50mm (except one picture with my powershot) because I never take my 50mm off anymore lol.
The aperture has nothing to do with the sharpness or quality of a photo. The only thing an aperture can do is let in more light so you can shoot in lower light conditions. If I shot a photo at an aperture of f/5.6 and then the same photo at f/1.8 using the same 50mm lens, the quality and sharpness would be exactly the same.
The only way lenses ever crop your photo is if you are shooting on a smaller sensor. Camera bodies such as the Nikon D100, D200, D300 have cropped sensors, meaning they are smaller than a 35mm frame of film. The D300, for example, has a crop factor of 1.5x. This means when you shoot at 50mm, you are actually shooting 75mm if you were using the same lens on a 35mm film camera. So what does this do? It crops off the right side of the lens, meaning you aren't getting the full width. But, this again doesn't really affect the quality or sharpness.
What it comes down to is what a few of you suggested: prime lenses versus zoom lenses.
Zoom lenses have more pieces of glass inside and moving parts. Because of the more pieces of glass, which is usually just one or two more pieces, it is more times the light must pass through something. Have you ever noticed how your 18-55mm lens will get longer and shorter depending on your focal length?
Prime lenses don't move like this, and as such have fewer pieces. Another advantage is the glass actually used in the prime lenses: because they don't need moving, sliding parts and have fewer glass elements, theses lenses have better quality glass.
In the end, prime lenses are always sharper than zoom. Nikon lenses are always sharper than off-brand. And maximum fixed aperture lenses (f/1.8 or f/2.8 for examples) are always sharper than variable aperture lenses (although, this is only a by-product, and not a specific reason).
@vikdaddy thanks. that part I was definitely not understanding. I couldn't grasp why it would matter if it had a fixed focal length or a range. but now when you guys explain it, it makes WAY more sense.
I'm so glad you posted this, because I've been wanting a 50mm fixed 1.8 and I haven't been able to explain why. :) Now I have all the rationalization I need, and can start saving!
@jasonbarnette I'm so thankful you were able to stop yourself from pressing delete before I got a chance to read lol :) thanks for describing prime vs zoom (I didn't even know it was called a prime lens) because that is exactly what i was so confused about. So thanks again everyone! between all these answers I think I may actually understand! hooray :D
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I took a look through your photos to see if I could find any examples but can't. It seems that you love your 50mm (and I love mine too).
Here is a whole writeup on what I suspect is your lens. You can just skip to the Summary and Conclusions and you might find your answer without having to get into all of the technical details.
http://photo.net/equipment/canon/efs18-55/
Hope someone else can give you the info!!
thanks again @indiannie_jones @silverhorn @michaelpage @pengu1n @nikkers you guys are very helpful :)
The aperture has nothing to do with the sharpness or quality of a photo. The only thing an aperture can do is let in more light so you can shoot in lower light conditions. If I shot a photo at an aperture of f/5.6 and then the same photo at f/1.8 using the same 50mm lens, the quality and sharpness would be exactly the same.
The only way lenses ever crop your photo is if you are shooting on a smaller sensor. Camera bodies such as the Nikon D100, D200, D300 have cropped sensors, meaning they are smaller than a 35mm frame of film. The D300, for example, has a crop factor of 1.5x. This means when you shoot at 50mm, you are actually shooting 75mm if you were using the same lens on a 35mm film camera. So what does this do? It crops off the right side of the lens, meaning you aren't getting the full width. But, this again doesn't really affect the quality or sharpness.
What it comes down to is what a few of you suggested: prime lenses versus zoom lenses.
Zoom lenses have more pieces of glass inside and moving parts. Because of the more pieces of glass, which is usually just one or two more pieces, it is more times the light must pass through something. Have you ever noticed how your 18-55mm lens will get longer and shorter depending on your focal length?
Prime lenses don't move like this, and as such have fewer pieces. Another advantage is the glass actually used in the prime lenses: because they don't need moving, sliding parts and have fewer glass elements, theses lenses have better quality glass.
In the end, prime lenses are always sharper than zoom. Nikon lenses are always sharper than off-brand. And maximum fixed aperture lenses (f/1.8 or f/2.8 for examples) are always sharper than variable aperture lenses (although, this is only a by-product, and not a specific reason).