Matt Botwood

Normally on any photographic outing and certainly for business I carry an array of lenses and other equipment with me and more often than not have my 24-105mm f4 IS lens attached to the camera as a default. However, over the last few days I have been going out with just a 50mm lens attached to the camera and it has been a bit of a revelation.

When I bought my first SLR in the early 1980s (a Praktica MTL 5 if you must ask!) a 50mm lens was what came as standard with all cameras and was generally what you used to take most pictures (especially if you were a cash-strapped teenager like me). Then zoom lenses became more common and by the time I bought my first Canon EOS everything came with a zoom as standard. Was this progress, or did it just encourage laziness?

The 50mm lens has a number of advantages: For a start it is infinitely lighter than my standard zoom and makes my 5D feel more like a large compact camera in weight. Then there’s the angle of view – pretty much the same as standard eyesight, so what you see is what you can photograph. But the best thing about the lens from my point of view is the maximum aperture – f1.8! – Great for low light images, but even better for very shallow depth of field (one of my favourite photographic tricks for abstract imagery).

So will I be ditching my zoom lenses? I don’t think so, they’re just too versatile and essential for most of my work. But I will certainly be making more use of this lens, which only cost me £40 second hand (and they’re only £80 brand new).