50 mm lens and a Rebel T3I

RossJillian said:

Hi, I want to purchase a 50mm lens for my camera. I make YouTube videos and I've heard it's a good one to use for this purpose. My question is what is the exact lens I look for when buying online? Do I look for an Ef, Mf or what? Thanks!!

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I don't do much videography, but my suggestion would be to review if 50mm is a good video focal length for you.

The Canon 50 1.8 or 40 2.8 are both options that are in this range if you want to autofocus and want to get the lens for low cost. There are also alt lens options, but they aren't for everyone.

Dave

You look for EF mount 50mm 1.8. I would look somewhere else for video. The 50 is a decent cheap lens but the manual focus ring on it is really tough for video. You could go up to the 50mm 1.4 or could go with the 40mm pancake if you want to stay cheap. The 50 would work ok though if you can deal with the focus ring.

Depending on your creative intentions, you may or may not want to be able to focus your lens when video is being recorded.

And if you want to record video while the lens is focusing, you need a lens designed to be quiet.

The 50mm f1.8 is not one of these lenses.

I can't comment on other 50mm single focal length lens.

Canon make two zoom lenses that cover the 50mm focal length, and are designed for silent focus. There's an 18-55 with STM in the name, and an 18-135 STM, which obviously covers 50mm.

The 55-250 mm lens also comes in a STM silent focus version.

Canon makes a 40mm silent focus lens. Is that close enough?

BAK

RossJillian said:

Hi, I want to purchase a 50mm lens for my camera. I make YouTube videos and I've heard it's a good one to use for this purpose. My question is what is the exact lens I look for when buying online? Do I look for an Ef, Mf or what? Thanks!!

Click to expand...

50mm is in my opinion a little too long (too much telephoto) for doing general purpose video with a crop sensor DSLR like your T3I. You will find that you need to step back quite a bit to capture a scene. But it all depends on what kind of video you are shooting.

I would instead recommend the EF 40mm 2.8 STM pancake lens. It has a slightly wider viewing angle.

Or go for the new EF-S 24mm 2.8 STM pancake lens if you need to have a wider angle. (this would give you a field of view closer to what you see on a cell phone camera)

Both pancake lenses are available in the US for $150-200 each.

But for general video, the kit lens (18-55mm) really isn't that bad either. But the 50mm, 40mm, and 24mm lenses do allow you to shoot in darker situations.