I owned 17-40 F4 L, Should I get 35mm or 50mm?

PaanJr wrote:

i have Canon 6D, and i love wide picture, with a nice bokeh for sure, but 17-40 with aperture maximum at F4, i will never have a creamy bokeh, i owned 50mm 1.8 before this, but i sold it due to hazy and very ugly bokeh, also the sound that it makes while focusing is quite disturbing, now im thinking to get a 50mm 1.4 or 35mm f2. i cant sleep for a week. i hope this will end. 

Have you used your 17-40 enough on FF to know whether you prefer 35mm or 50mm in shooting? If not, that is where you need to start.  35mm is better for group shots and environmental style portraits, while with 50mm you might not have the ability to get the whole scene you want but it allows you to do more classical portraits like an 85mm (not as well of course) but also have the ability to do more environmental people shots by foot zooming away from the subject(s).

A 50mm lens is going to give you better background separation and bokeh than a 35mm lens.  I have not seen a 35F1.4 lens mentioned, and that would give you a good combo of wider angle of view and still having the creative control to bur the background heavily.  The downside is its bigger and heavier than a 35F2.

I have the Sigma 35F1.4 Art and would recommend it.  Its very sharp wide open and focuses accurately and just as fast as my Canon lenses.  As far as negatives, my impression is that the colors I get from my Canon lenses are warmer and I just like the color rendition a bit better from Canon.  The Sigma 35F1.4 Art however has the rep of being sharper than any F1.4 lens out there currently, but it cannot equal the bokeh of a good 50mm lens.  I never owned the Canon 35L and cannot speak to that lens or the Canon 35F2's.

If you want to keep it light and still get great background separation and bokeh, I would say a 50F1.4 is the way to go - and Canon's 50F1.4 is pretty light at about 300g.  If you want the ultimate bokeh in a lens at 50mm or wider, the 50LF1.2 is the king.  At F2 or smaller the CanonF1.4 is great (soft wide open until F1.8/2), but if you want to shoot at F1.2 to F2 often then you might consider the 50L - but it's a lot heavier and cost at least 3X as much as the Canon 50F1.4.