Yongnuo announces new 50mm F1.8 'nifty fifty' autofocus lens for APS-C E-mount cameras

No where on the Yongnuo website or any of the press materials does it mention "nifty fifty". This has been added solely by dpreview. I agreed it is misleading and incorrect.

50mm is *ALWAYS* 50mm, no matter what sensor size you put it on.

Sony 50mm f1.8 can be found in mint condition for 100 eur. So this YN is a nonsense.

The Canon 50mm f/1.8 is cheaper than the Sony 50mm f/1.8 OSS and Yongnuo competed with that too.

Some people are too impatient to hunt down rarely advertised items of uncertain condition in the used market they want to press click on an ad and have a new product safely delivered to their door.

Despite all the oddly motivated protestations here these will sell like hotcakes.

Well I have tried it on an A7II (50mm f1.8) and it is sharp even completely open, the AF is a bit lazy, but nothing serious either, I would not change it for my OSS for the crop sensor of my A6500, but if the Price was a limiting factor I do not see any problem with it, at 140-150 it is a bargain.

Sony 50/1.8 FE has the slow and noisy focus motor. It should be priced like the Canon 50/1.8 STM at $125, but instead its $250. At that price point it should really be silent (Sony has no problems with even cheaper E-Mount lenses having silent motors).

It matters very much if it is on an APS-C or full frame camera. On APS-C it has an angle of view more like a portrait lens. That would make it less general in purpose, which is what the word "nifty" is referring to.

Yes, the "nifty fifty" tag is intended to refer to the primary operational characteristic of the lens which is the field of view. It's certainly different on APS-C. DOF may be a secondary factor but I'm not touching that one.

No, nifty fifty is not the correct term. No where on the Yongnuo does it mention it. It looks like its something dpreview has (incorrectly) added. I doubt this lens is intended to be used on FF bodies and will surely vignette enough to be unusable as a nifty fifty. Very misleading title.

@Flow Friday: would that include 1/2.33" sensor cameras and large-format cameras, too?

@Hubertus Bigend - well yes, it will still be a 50mm lens on a 1/2.33" and large-format.

Nifty fifty refers to focal length. Your "nifty fifty" is 35mm on APSC and 25mm on MFT. Unless you consider 100mm equivalent "nifty fifty."

„It matters very much if it is on an APS-C or full frame camera.“

No, concerning to the focal length, which i - very clearly - talked about, it does not matter; 50mm are always 50mm -> this is called laws of physics.

@Flow Friday, @tassienick: now please help me here, how would a 50mm on 1/2.33", or on large format, still be 'nifty' in the same sense that a FF 50mm is? (Oh and by the way, '50mm' is not even 'physics' – it's just a 'number', and '50mm = 50mm' is 'mathematics', not physics, and the simplest kind possible to boot – and by laws of logic as such completely meaningless.)

Nifty fifty refers to the specific characteristics of the 50mm field of view on 35mm format. This lens is designed to perform at 75mm equiv. This lens is not a nifty fifty.

@tassienick: 'Nifty' never meant 'cheap', nowhere. It means 'very good'. Yes, it rhymes with 'fifty' – but already in the analog days it was never used for a medium-format 50mm, for a 110 format 50mm, or for a Super-8 video format 50mm lens. It always was a 24x36 specific term, because that's the only format on which it has that specific 'standard prime' angle of view. 'Nifty' means two things – that the specific angle of view is a 'very good' one, which is what makes those lenses 'standard primes' to begin with, and that those lenses mostly used to be well-made, with good mechanical and optical quality.

A term like that would never have been coined for a lens that would have produced completely different images, like a 280mm tele (which is what 50mm does on 1/2.33") or a 22mm superwide lens (what 50mm does on 6x9), no matter how much it would have rhymed.

A 'nifty fifty' never was anything other than a standard prime lens for 35mm film or full-frame sensors, and it never will be.

@tassienick – yes indeed, that's "absolutely true", as if there would be even one individual here who would deny it, and just as absolutely irrelevant for anything at all, especially for the question what a 'nifty fifty' is and what isn't.

"It's always a 50mm lens" is just as nonsensical a statement as "a light bulb is always a light bulb" or "an idiot is always an idiot". A 'nifty fifty' is a lens for 35mm format, the lens in discussion is not such a lens, and so it is not a 'nifty fifty'. That's really all there is to say, and so I won't say anymore here, either. Nice day everyone!

@Flow Friday

"No, concerning to the focal length, which i - very clearly - talked about, it does not matter; 50mm are always 50mm"

Nobody ever said this 50mm lens is not a 50mm lens. What is very clearly being talked about here, per the OP, is whether or not the adjective "nifty" is appropriate, which has long been understood to refer to a general purpose normal lens.

@entoman
Understood (obviously), but should a 50mm "APS-C only", be called that ?

This is not a nifty fifty.

Ron - A lens should always be labelled with its *true* focal length.

What would you want to happen if a lens was designed to cover a full frame image circle but could also be used on APS cameras, which is the case for all Canon L lenses, all Nikon FX lenses, and all Sony FE lenses?

Surely you wouldn't expect the same lens to be marked with *two* focal lengths?

It's up to the user to learn what the effect of each focal length is on the relevant format. It isn't exactly difficult for work our that 50mm is equivalent to 75mm on APS or 100mm on M43.

@entoman
I'ld say it was time the nomenclature was dusted off.
This is not a FF lens, it's APS-C "only" and gives 75mm Focal Length pictures,
Why should any buyer have to know what happens in FF
(sorry, "35mm format") when they have an APS-C cam ?
One man's outdated phraseology is another's 100% error for mine.

Ron - So you want the 50mm Yongnuo to be labelled as a 75mm lens.

.... and how would you label the 50mm Sony lens, which *can* be used on either APS or FF models?

It would cause huge confusion, because that same lens would be a "50" on a Sony a7, but would be a "75" on a Sony a6500.

Is it really that difficult to apply a multiplication factor of 1.5x ?

Perhaps manufacturers should supply a calculator with every lens....

sportyaccordy: I have to disagree here. I actually got their cheap 50mm EF lens for some technical work using my 5DIV because it vignettes less than the Canon offerings. Like every other lens ever made, this will no doubt have some good attributes and some bad ones... but low price is a pretty good start. ;-)

Maybe they will introduce some tunability like Sigma lenses?

Samyang has a dock for their E-mount lenses. Yongnuo has been putting USB ports in their SLR lenses. Some Sony E-mount firmware updates can only be done on certain cameras. Some Zeiss E-mount lenses have to be sent to Zeiss for updating. It is nice when firmware updates can be done through the camera.

That term definitely gave me an irrational dislike of 50mm lenses, I've avoided shooting at that focal length just because of that rhyme haha. 35mm for life.

I hate the expression "3D rendering" of a lens. Come on, is it a lens or a video game?
Also "computational photography" is overrated. It's still (no pun intended) mostly a lot of noise to me.

Lightness.
Should have been strangled at birth.
As precise as a blunderbuss, which I guess is why some here continue to flog it, so they can rant on happily for another decade or so.

What about "colour science"? I really love this nonsense-phrasing...second just to the aforementioned "amputational photography".

Connor we're taking about apsc. Under 16mm there are only manual focus lenses such as cheap samyang and a costly laowa 9mm. At around 24mm there's almost nothing with AF. At 30mm Yes, there's sigma and sony, but they cost 400€ circa