Need some group therapy on lens selection

Terrence

The 50/1.4 is my favorite lens. The 50/1.8 was my favorite before that. The 50/1.2 will be my favorite, if I can ever afford it! I want to go FF just so I can use it as a true 50.

jmphotocraft

kdog wrote:

I'm not convinced that's true from my experience, or by this: http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=115&FLI=0&API=4&LensComp=398&FLIComp=4&APIComp=0&Camera=453&CameraComp=474&Sample=0&SampleComp=0
You can play around with different apertures too. Looks like the 50 1.4 wins across the board. It's not an entirely fair test of course because they're tested against two different bodies. However, I've fallen in love with my 50 1.4 again since picking up the 5DMKII. It's really superb on this body.

-joel

Those test results don't jive with my experience, nor those of many I've read online. I've looked at several of those tests at that site for many different lenses, and that 17-55 shows some of the poorest results I've ever seen there. One might even think it was a bad lens. They must have had a bad copy. My 17-55 was razor sharp at all apertures on my 40D, and yes, sharper and more consistent than my 50/1.4. Maybe I had a bad 50, but it did perform well often enough that I'm not sure that could be true. But not often enough to keep it next to my 17-55.

ChatKat

Terrence wrote:

The 50/1.4 is my favorite lens. The 50/1.8 was my favorite before that. The 50/1.2 will be my favorite, if I can ever afford it! I want to go FF just so I can use it as a true 50.

This is why I bought the 5d originally. I was using the 50 2.5 Macro as my favorite lens when I was using film. On the 10d and 20d I really misssed the length/space I was shooting at. I have not regretted going full frame.