8 is one of the most affordable prime lenses available, its called the nifty 50 and its very common for beginners to pick this lens up, if youre new, to photography or videography. This is a great lens to learn on its capable of giving you professional looking results, but there are a number of drawbacks given its price for 250 dollars for a full frame. F. 1.8 prime lens its easy to look past. Some of these imperfections, though. However, if you can learn to get around some of the downsides with this lens youll be able to pick up just about any prime lens and get great results. Lets go over the specs and look at some test. Shots first then ill. Give you my thoughts at the end. First up is the price this lens costs about 250 dollars brand new and thats a full frame, prime lens, meaning it cant zoom. This is a big step up from the kit lenses to come with your camera, but it will take some getting used to if youre the kind of person that zooms a lot with your lenses to zoom in and out with this lens youll have to physically move Closer or farther away with your camera to your subject, this lens weighs about six and a half ounces and is 2.7 by 2.3 inches. Its very compact compared to just about any other lens. The build quality of the 50 millimeter 1.8 is about as basic as it gets.

No switches, no buttons. You have a focus, ring and thats about it. If you want to access the focus ring, youll have to go into your camera, select manual focus, and then you can do manual. Focusing the front filter is very small at about 49 millimeters, which compared to other lenses uh could be good. It could be bad. The 49 millimeter uh thread is really not something going to be sharing with other lenses, so if you buy filters for this theyre going to be cheaper but youre, probably not going to be able to use them with many other lenses besides this one, the 1.8 also Lacks any kind of dust or moist youre sealing on the back, so be careful when youre taking this in harsh conditions, the 50 millimeter 1.8 has auto focus, but the motors are very old and outdated compared to other lenses. This lens will try to hunt in focus. So if your subject is moving farther away and closer to the camera, your your lens might not even be able to find focus on stationary objects. This lens can be very good, but on moving objects, it really struggles. An example of your subject. Moving closer and farther away is shooting something like sports. For example, this lens is really going to struggle in auto focus, filming sports. Another downside to this lens is the very audible noise that comes when the autofocus motors are focusing. If youre shooting video your cameras, mic will definitely pick up the sound so be careful when youre using this lens with video.

If you want to capture clean audio, if this is an issue, i would look at some other lenses, but if thats just out of your budget, you can also manually focus this lens and when youre manually focusing you wont, hear any of those auto focus hunting. So it is silent when youre manually, focusing it. This lens is surprisingly sharp, given its price tag at 1.8, its sharp in the center, but has very soft edges on the frame with some vignetting the edges of the frame get sharper. When you stop down the lens to 2.8 and the edges are much sharper, most lenses are very soft, wide open, but the center is sharp enough to be usable with the 50 millimeter 1.8. Another drawback of the 50 millimeter 1.8 is how it handles flares point. This lens, at any kind of light source and youll, have some wild flares that can be pretty distracting in some cases using the plastic hood that comes with this lens. To avoid spill from the side will help a little bit, but pointing this light at a light source will produce a lot of lens flares. Chromatic. Aberration is also getting pretty nitpicky when you talk about a 250 lens, but its worth noting here. This lens does have some noticeable color fringing. When you point this at a bright background and your subject is darker in front of it. This is a really common sticking point for a lot of lenses, so i dont want to be too harsh here, but it is worth mentioning if youre a beginner, you might not even notice the chromatic aberration until you start really pixel peeping your images, similar story with The bokeh on the 50 millimeter 1.

8 – you can get some nice out of focus pokeballs with this lens, but they will have some texture to them and they arent the cleanest circles. You can get this lens also. Has the common problem of cat eye shape bokeh towards the edges of the frame? The minimum focusing distance is something you may have an issue with. If you like, taking pictures or videos of things up close, the closest you can focus from the sensor of your camera to your subject is 17.76 inches. This is a common gripe for me. With most 50 millimeter lenses minus the macro lenses 17 inches just feels a little far away. If you like to be shooting photos of close up objects, focus breathing is another issue with this lens, but since the autofocus is so poor in video, this is a problem that you may not even run into this lens is currently not compatible with sonys lens breathing Compensation like on the a74 or the fx6, this is also pretty nitpicky to mention, but if youre a beginner, you could probably just ignore this for now, but if youll be using this lens with rack, focuses in manual focus. This might be something you run into this lens. Like many other sony, prime lenses doesnt have any kind of optical steady, shot. Most sony cameras have some kind of in body stabilization, but there is no optical steady shot. If you have a kit lens and youve never used a fast 1.

8 prime lens, this is a great place to start without breaking the bank. The 50mm 1.8 is one of those lenses that i think everyone should have and start on its a great lens to learn, and you get some great results with a little bit of practice. Itll take some learning to get the most out of this lens, but once you understand how to use this lens – and you pick up a more expensive lens, youll – be able to use that more expensive lens much easier. The autofocus flares, build quality and minimum focusing distance reflect the price tag of 250, but it is a sharp lens that you can stop down and get some great depth of field and separation. From the background, the nifty 50 was my first lens that i learned down with my canon way back in the day, so i personally love this cheap lens and i think its a great addition to any beginner to intermediates bag. If youre looking for a more premium lens check out this 50 millimeter 1.2 review or the comparison video i did with this 250 lens and that 2 000 sony lens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ihcx7JIPCz0