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Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM Lens Worth Getting?

Started Jun 1, 2013 | Discussions thread
Dan_168 Forum Pro • Posts: 11,061
Re: Canon EF 50mm f1.4 USM Lens Worth Getting?

I owned quite a few 50mm in the last twenty some years including this  EF 50 1.4 lens, currently has Sigma 50 F1.4, Zeiss 50 F2 and Nikon AIS 50 F1.2, the Canon EF 50 F1.4 is one of those lens I will never recommend it to any friends. I had that lens twice and sold it twice, the last copy i had I use it on my 1D2 and 1DS2 for a few years and was never happy with its built quality and optic quality, as soon as the Sigma 50 F1.4 arrived, I put that on the Craigslist the same day and never look back, the Sigma has so much better wider open performance, better Bokeh quality, not to mention the huge difference in built quality difference, it's two completely different class lens.

You mentioned you will be using it for video, would you consider manual focus? there is quite a few manual focus 50mm which give you much better optical performance than the EF 50 1.4. I personally only use the Sigma when I need to shoot large aperture, or anything other than landscape, because no matter how I  stop it down, the Sigma 50 never gives me super sharp edge, it's just as bad as the EF 50 1.4 in this regard, for landscape, I only use either my Nikon AIS 50 F1.2 or  Zeiss 50 2.0 because of their local contrast and amazing edge performance, I also use these two with video many times, but I hardly shoot video so I am not the expert on this topic.

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