All right, after my “ask me” post, one of the questions I was asked was about lenses. Because when you buy yourself an expensive camera, once you kind of get settled in with it, your thoughts turn to upgrading your lenses, which gets very expensive very quickly. Really good lenses will cost more than your camera body (unless you bought a 5D to start with), but I’m going to tell you about one of my favorite lenses which gives great results at a bargain basement price.
It’s a Canon lens, because I own a Canon camera, but if you shoot Nikon, they have a very similar lens. It’s Canon’s 50mm f/1.8 prime, a portrait lens affectionately known as a “nifty fifty”. Notice that it’s under $100, which is kind of incredible. It’s plastic, which is part of the reason for the price, so it’s not indestructible, but unless you destroy it within a week you can’t not get your money out of it (Sorry for all the double negatives there!). Now, what do those numbers mean?
50mm means that it’s a fixed focal length. There is no zooming action on this baby. If you want to get in tighter or out farther, you, the photographer, have to move; there is nothing to turn. It makes shooting a little more active, but that’s not a bad thing. Also, not having a zoom capability in the body of the lens means that there are less parts inside to worry about and prime lenses (non zooming ones like this one) generally will give you sharper images.
f/1.8 is a harder concept to wrap your brain around, especially since we’ve not discussed fun words like aperture and depth of field on here, but in a nutshell, what this means is that your lens will open up wider inside to allow more light in, and when it does, the amount of picture that is actually in focus goes down. This is something you just have to experiment with and play with to start understanding, and you can certainly read pages about aperture (also known as f-stop) and depth of field, but in the interest of brevity, for now I will just tell you that I love low f-stops.
Now, what does that mean in your pictures? I’ve got some examples here of what a low f-stop will do for your pictures. All of these were taken with my “nifty fifty” at low low low apertures.
Just Bailey’s left eye, cheek, and the line of her nose is in focus. This was at f2.2, caught in a quick instant while we were laying in the grass. Everything else is blurred, which I like.
I really wanted to catch Sam’s eyes here (f1.8). See how quickly the focus falls off, so that even his mouth is starting to blur. Because so much of the picture is Sam, you can’t even see the dock he’s sitting on.
Here’s Marissa’s hands at 3 months, shot at 1.8. Now, part of the reason for the 1.8 here is to work with the low light (we were inside). If I’m shooting inside, my preference is always to compensate for the lower light by opening the camera up to a low aperture (this way I don’t have to use the flash). See how just her fingers are in focus, and the card right next to her hands is blurred?
This is shot at f2.0, another low aperture. Heidi’s blowing bubbles, which are generally really neat when they’re in focus, but here the focus is on her face. If I’d wanted the bubbles in focus, I could have raised my aperture and gotten both her and the bubbles in focus, or I could have focused on them and let her face blur (which would have been fun, but probably not what our aim is in a portrait session).
Here’s Marissa again, the color version of the same picture I showed you in black & white last time. It’s also at f1.8. Her face is in focus, but look at her right hand–it’s not. That is how little depth of field you have to work with at these low apertures. The grass falls off into a pretty, light filled blur, and the added bonus is that you can’t tell it’s the neighbor’s house behind the trees.
Now, I have to warn you: you can’t just buy one of these lenses and throw it on your camera and automatically get the low aperture numbers without knowing what you’re doing with your other settings, so I’ll talk about settings in general next time. The lens is a great start, and the low aperture is just one fun way to play with it. I love this lens for many reasons; the aperture is just one of them. To compare, your kit lens will open up to about 5.6, maybe a little lower, and that doesn’t give you much room to play. If you’ve got a DSLR and are wanting a “next step” lens to experiment with, this is a great one, especially with children.
