Good old lens

It's a good lens with "character", nice bokeh and outstanding color rendition.

It's terribly soft at 1.4, usable at 1.8 and very good at 2 and on.

Af works very quickly in live view mode, which makes it vey useful addition to my eos-m

The construction fairly solid.

I've had the lens for a month or so and I'm very pleased by the quality of images I'm gettin from it. That said, it's not all good.

1. The AF is bad - it's inconsistent and slow and hunts in low light. It's also prone to breaking the AF mechanism from what I've heard but I'm taking care of not bumping the front and use a bayonet hood all the time

2. The Image quality on my cropped sensor cameras drops significantly at faster than F 2.0

3. Manual focus is a pain - it's fiddly and uneven and it's practically unusable.

4. Relatively prone to flare and loss of contrast, but nothing too bad.

I got mine at a very good price and I can't complain, but I wouldn't get it new. Canon needs to update this lens - it's a gem in their lineup and if they don't make some stupid trick by adding IS and tripling the price, I'd get the updated 1.4 in a hartbeat.

Dan_168 wrote:

axlastro wrote:

It's a good lens with "character", nice bokeh and outstanding color rendition.

It's terribly soft at 1.4, usable at 1.8 and very good at 2 and on.

Af works very quickly in live view mode, which makes it vey useful addition to my eos-m

The construction fairly solid.

I've had the lens for a month or so and I'm very pleased by the quality of images I'm gettin from it. That said, it's not all good.

1. The AF is bad - it's inconsistent and slow and hunts in low light. It's also prone to breaking the AF mechanism from what I've heard but I'm taking care of not bumping the front and use a bayonet hood all the time

2. The Image quality on my cropped sensor cameras drops significantly at faster than F 2.0

3. Manual focus is a pain - it's fiddly and uneven and it's practically unusable.

4. Relatively prone to flare and loss of contrast, but nothing too bad.

I got mine at a very good price and I can't complain, but I wouldn't get it new. Canon needs to update this lens - it's a gem in their lineup and if they don't make some stupid trick by adding IS and tripling the price, I'd get the updated 1.4 in a hartbeat.

Not sure about the 'good' part, it's sure a "old lens". I have no love on this one and sold it long time ago and replaced it with a Sigma 50 HSM and now also own a Zeiss 50 and Nikon AIS 50 1.2, I am a 50mm fan but just never missed that particular lens for a second.

The sigma is much better, but I can't find a copy with accurate AF. The 50 1.4 is the first lens that I wouod sell if I have to, but I still think it's a good and underrated lens. For the price it's not that bad.