All images by Dawn M. Wayand unless otherwise noted.
The Canon brand name has been known for producing a variety of products of great quality such as printers, photocopiers – even medical equipment – with Canon camera lenses being no exception. Not surprisingly, Canon glass has been recognized as having superior optical quality over many other brands lending to Canon being a top choice for professional photographers.
Image courtesy of the Adorama website.
The 50mm lens is typically an excellent lens for portraits and landscapes, and at wider apertures – it’s an excellent choice for low-light photography. While it is important for any photographer, especially a professional photographer, to have a 50mm lens in his or her bag, for Canon shooters: is the Canon 50mm f/1.4 the lens a good choice for your bag? Let’s find out.
The Canon 50mm f/1.4 can be found at Adorama for $349. This is a bit more expensive than the 50mm f/1.8 listed at $125 and less expensive than the 50mm f/1.2L listed at $1,349. What benefits would I get from the f/1.4? What would I be sacrificing? For the purposes of this review, I test drive the Canon 50mm f/1.4 on a Canon 7D Mark II camera body.
Compatibility
The Canon 50mm f/1.4 lens works on both full frame and crop sensor cameras, however with crop sensor, the focal length is the equivalent of a 80mm lens – which is a perfect focal distance for portrait work.
ISO 1000. Shot at f/9 at ⅕ of a sec.
Look and Feel
This particular version of the lens is as small as a baseball with a length of 73.8mm (2.9 inches) and a diameter of 50.5mm (2 inches).
ISO 1000. Shot at f/9 at ⅕ of a sec.
Even more surprising is how light the lens is – weighing in at 290g (10.2 oz), due in part to the construction of the lens from plastic and glass plus a metal mount ring.
Image courtesy of the Adorama website.
One of the highlights of this lens is that is has a Full Time Manual Focus, which means that after you have achieved focus with the autofocus and you feel you need a hair more focus, you can override the autofocus and focus manually from the autofocus point. The focus ring is smooth and well-dampened. The Canon 50mm f/1.4 focuses very quickly when there’s adequate contrast and it does so fairly quietly thanks to Canon building in an Ultrasonic Motor (USM).
Now…to get two elephants out of the room. There have been some user issues of focus problems where the beep would signal that the scene was in focus, but the image produced was out-of-focus, however, I did not find this the case with my images. A hit-or-miss issue that has come up with this lens is the autofocus motor not functioning as it should resulting in necessary repairs. Canon is aware of this issue and though it’s happened with some lenses, it doesn’t seem to be a consistent issue with all of the 50mm f/1.4 lenses.
The front element is a bit recessed from the edge of the barrel, which, intentionally or unintentionally, additionally aids in preventing stray light from intruding into the frame. A lens hood is also helpful. The lens does shift back and forth around 7cm during focusing. The front element doesn’t rotate during auto or manual focusing so the lens works with CPL filters, which aid in making landscape shots a tad richer in color. The lens utilizes 58mm thread size filters.
The lens barrel has painted markings for aperture stops from f/1.4 to f/22 as well as a switch for auto and manual focus. It also has the little red marker to help guide changing a lens. Also included are a distance scale (with meter and feet readings) under a window, an infrared focusing aid as well as for full-frame users, a depth of field scale.
Image Quality
Color and Contrast
I was very pleased with the color and contrast this lens helped to produce in my images, however, I noted that at its widest setting (f/1.4), the colors seems a hint softer than when stopped down to f/5.6, where the colors seemed richer.
Colors are a little bit softer here.
ISO 1000. Shot at f/1.4.
Colors appear more vibrant here.
ISO 1000. Shot at f/5.6.
In real-life shooting, I found the colors to be very accurate, especially in outdoor shots as shown here below. While these are not overly-contrasty images, they came out color for color, exactly how I saw these scenes.
Colors appear very spot on here.
ISO 320. Shot at f/4.0 at 1/125 of a sec.
Not terribly contrasty, but still a good rendition of what I saw.
ISO 250. Shot at f/9 at 1/400 of a sec.
I felt some of the images I produced with this lens had a cinematic, almost watercolor-like quality to them as seen in the image below.
Very cinematic/watercolor-like feel to this one.
ISO 250. Shot at /5.6 at 1/800 of a sec.
Bokeh
Bokeh on the Canon 50mm f/1.4 is very dreamy at f/1.4, but beware: with this lens you may get decent bokeh, but the images opened up this wide are very, very soft. Bokeh chromatic aberrations is unfortunately common with this lens.
ISO 1000. Shot at f/1.4 at 1/1000 of a sec.
Sharpness
Like many other 50mm f/1.4 lenses, shooting the Canon 50mm f/1.4 wide open yields a softer image, softness which may turn off some photographers, but be a creative aid for others. Wide open, it’s dreamy quality and softer colors make this a perfect tool for baby photographers and those photographing younger children.
ISO 800. Shot at f/1.4 at 1/250 of a sec.
Sharpness already begins improving at f/2.0…
ISO 800. Shot at f/2.0 at 1/125 of a sec.
At f/2.8, the image is acceptably sharp while still yielding a nice bokeh…
ISO 800. Shot at f/2.8 at 1/60 of a sec.
By f/4.0, the image is pretty crisp, while still containing a nice background blur…
ISO 800. Shot at f/4.0 at 1/30 of a sec.
I found f/5.6 spot-on sharp for my taste…
ISO 800. Shot at f/5.6 at 1/30 of a sec.
…but I took it one step further to show that f/8, lens diffraction began during my test and my image started to become softer and slightly out-of-focus.
ISO 800. Shot at f/8 at 1/8 of a sec.
On a side note: the close focus range for this lens is 0.45 meters (1.5 feet), so unfortunately for macro users, this lens would not work well for that particular genre of work.
Chromatic Aberrations
The Canon 50mm f/1.4 has virtually no lateral chromatic aberrations, however, as mentioned previously, this lens is noted to have some bokeh chromatic aberrations.
Flare
While I shot mostly outdoors with this lens (and without a lens hood), I found it to be surprisingly good at dealing with lens flare due to the front element being recessed from the lens barrel.
Distortion
I found almost no distortion in using this lens, at least while using it in a portrait capacity, which would be where one would notice it the most.
ISO 200. Shot at f/5.0 at 1/80 of a sec.
Vignetting
On the full frame camera I was using, I found quite a bit of vignetting at f/1.4, but it goes away when stopped down. This issue is nearly non-existent on crop sensor cameras.
While the top corners are a little dark due to less light in that area, vignetting in the shape of an almond is still obvious here.
ISO 800. Shot at f/1.4 at 1/250 of a sec.
Vignetting begins to disappear at f/2.0…
Vignetting is still seen here, but it is an improvement over f/1.4.
ISO 800. Shot at f/2.0 at 1/125 of a sec.
By f/2.8, vignetting has nearly vanished.
Vignetting has nearly disappeared.
ISO 800. Shot at f/2.8 at 1/60 of a sec.
Vignetting is non-existent at f/5.6.
No vignetting at f/5.6!
ISO 800. Shot at f/5.6 at 1/15 of a sec.
Who It’s For and Recommended Uses
While a 50mm is nice to have in a camera bag and a must in the professional photographer’s camera bag, the Canon 50mm f/1.4 is a good lens to have for the available and low light shooter due to its wide aperture and fast speed. It also makes for a great portrait lens since it provides a nice bokeh – so long as if you decide to shoot wide open, that you are definitely focused on the eyes and not the nose! Last, this lens would work well for shooting while traveling due to its lightweight, compact size.
Conclusion and Recommendation
Having shot with a variety of 50mm f/1.4 lenses in the past, I would say this would not be my first choice if money were no object. The Rokinon 50mm f/1.4 for Canon is a great choice for a little more ($399) and even better, the Zeiss 50mm f/1.4 for $625 would be my first choice under $700 – but both of these are manual lenses. However, if I were on a budget, while still demanding good quality, if I can find creative use for super soft images wide open and if I had a full frame Canon and could deal with vignetting at f/1.4 – then this would be my go-to lens as it does quietly and quickly yield some spectacularly sharp images at good apertures and has the cool feature of a full time manual focus override. Whatever brand works for you, a 50mm a definite “must” to either have in or to work toward getting into your camera bag.
