Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 "Plastic Fantastic"

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II

The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens is also known as the "Plastic Fantastic" or the "Nifty Fifty". It is a 50 mm prime lens, which means that it's 50 mm and that's it. There is no zoom or whatsoever.

The lens is very light, as its body is mainly made out of plastic and that's what makes this lens so cheap. It's available for around 100 Euro.

The best part is the light sensitivity. It's an f/1.8 lens so you get an enourmous amount of value for your money (Normaly, the more light sensitive a lens is, the more expensive it gets). This lens simply should be in every camera bag containing a Canon DSLR (Nikon also has an equivalent, which is just a bit more expensive if I'm not mistaken.)

Because of this light sensitivity factor, this lens can be used to shoot great photo's when there's not a lot of light to work with. But what's even better: you can make photo's with a very shallow depth of field. What this means is that you can make a photo of which only a very small area is in focus. Personally, I love these kind of images. It is a great way to draw the viewers attention to a certain part of the photo.

I could write much more about this fantastic piece of plastic, but a few examples probably say a lot more :-)

f/2.0

f/2.0

f/2.0

f/2.0