Looking for a new Lens: 50mm?

Sil3ntp8nd8

Hello!

This will be my first post here and won't possibly be my last.

I have a little long history about what I wanted to do with my life. Now I started college and have no specific background I want to go in. I'll save the story and get on what I wanted to say.

Partial story:

I picked up a d90 from my friend who was having car trouble, sold me his 20 day old d90 with 100 clicks, sb600 flash, 2x 4gb sticks, 18-105 kit lens, 3 year extended warranty, cleaning etc etc. He paid nearly 2 grand and I paid well less than half.

I have had a point and shoot for the longest time and finally been able to buy a DSLR that I wanted. I am looking to get the most out of video. I'm building a steadicam currently as well. Sure the kit lens is great, but I would like to do more. I haven't really used the camera as much. But I seem to get the concept.

I am looking to do macros and portraits, car photography and landscape. I was looking at the 50mm for portraits but then I saw people used it to do some landscapes. Why would you use a 50mm prime lens for landscape anyway? Sharper than the 18-105? Wide angle lens for car shoots, possible fish eye...

Hope I gave you enough info to help me out. Thanks! :lust

Cygnus Studios

Sil3ntp8nd8 wrote:

I was looking at the 50mm for portraits but then I saw people used it to do some landscapes. Why would you use a 50mm prime lens for landscape anyway?

It depends on the landscape and where you are standing. There is no perfect lens for all situations.
Personally for portraits I like the Nikkor 85mm F1.8

ziggy53

Cygnus Studios wrote:

It depends on the landscape and where you are standing. There is no perfect lens for all situations.
Personally for portraits I like the Nikkor 85mm F1.8

Steve's right, there is no specific lens for landscapes and I've seen any manner of lens used to obtain a specific perspective.

You may be thinking about "vista" landscapes which often use a wide-angle lens to encompass a wide field-of-view (FOV).

Another technique would be to use a stitched panorama technique which allows you to combine multiple images from a narrower FOV lens, like a standard/normal lens, and create a wider FOV with much more detail than a single image recorded on your camera.

Sil3ntp8nd8

why the 85 over the 50mm?

edit: just looked that the price of the 85mm and it was 400-1000 :O

ziggy53

Sil3ntp8nd8 wrote:

why the 85 over the 50mm?

edit: just looked that the price of the 85mm and it was 400-1000 :O

First, Sil3ntp8nd8, welcome to the Digital Grin.

I will use and recommend either a 50mm or an 85-100mm lens for portraiture on a crop 1.5x/1.6x body. The 50mm does a pretty good job with full length and 3/4 length shots and the longer lens does better at head shots (HS) and head-and-shoulder (H&S) portraits.

The difference is how the perspective is affected by both distance to subject and subject size. With a smaller subject, like the HS and H&S you need a bit more distance to keep the facial features looking "correct". Much closer and some features might appear a little exagerrated.

Taken to the extreme, a fisheye lens is used to purposefully distort features and it can look caricaturish:

http://www.thegassers.com/GIFs/Morrie_fisheye.GIF

Some folks go even longer to avoid the effects of perspective distortion (and provide some wonderful bokeh). Check out some examples of 200mm portraits here:

http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/eos/EF-lenses/EF200mmf18LUSM/index.htm