canon 1.8/50mm "plastic fantastic"
Referred to alternatively
as the "Plastic Fantastic" or "Throwaway 50", this
lightweight, dirt cheap lens is actually very good indeed. It's my second
most frequently used lens, after the 16-35mm zoom.
It's a non-USM lens, which means it hisses like a snake
while focusing. If that's likely to annoy you, don't buy this lens.
Knowing now how much use I get out of this focal length, when this lens
inevitably falls apart on me, I'll definitely replace it with Canon's
more robust f/1.4 50mm.
A strange bug I have found using this lens - and only
this lens - is that after mounting it on my D60, the first shot I take
with it is hugely overexposed. Subsequent shots are fine. This seems
to happen about 75% of the time immediately after mounting the lens.
If I were using this lens on a film body, I wouldn't be able to live
with that at all, but as it is, it doesn't really bother me enough to
seek a fix for it.
I find bokeh (smoothness quality of the out-of-focus
areas closer than/beyond depth of field in an image) can be a little
"harsh" or angular if backgrounds are brightly lit, but it's
not something that crops up in every situation. I understand that Canon's
50mm f/1.4 is better in this respect.
This lens recently fell neatly apart into two pieces in my hands. It gave me a good chance to see just how little there is to this lens inside. For a fleeting moment, I thought I was finally going to be able to make this lens live up to its "throw-away" nickname, but it's a testiment to the simplicity of this lens that I was able to repair the lens myself in less than 10 minutes (and I'm no repairman). Try doing that with any of your other EOS lenses that break into two pieces! Although it still works, I no longer trust it enough to take it away with me on trips.
Sample Images
(Click to enlarge)
This
image shows a bit of that harsh quality of bokeh I mention
above.
On
the other hand, this image,
with a darker background, does not.
Nor
does this one.
For macro photography
using extension tubes, this is the only lens in my bag up to the task.
