Why should you have a 50mm Prime Lens in your Bag

Why should you have a 50mm Prime Lens in your camera bag. You’ve just purchased your first DSLR camera with kit lens and you’re feeling really good about your first step into photography. Unless you have a decent prime lens you may not understand the potential your photography could have!

One of the cheapest lenses you can buy for your collection is a 50mm f/1.8 prime. Most of us when buying our first DSLR will shoot using the kit lens that came with the camera. Many camera retailers today give you the option to purchase the camera without the kit lens which means you could invest into better glass.

Perhaps a kit lens is a great way to start but, as your experience grows you should start to look for something else, perhaps a little better. As a prime lens cannot zoom why would you even consider having one!

Without a zoom lens you have to move around a lot more to get that composition. Sometimes using a zoom lens and staying at one location, can make you a ‘lazy photographer’.

50mm Prime Lens Quality

A 50mm prime lens may look and feel cheap, but when stopped down it’s as sharp as any top grade zoom! In the past many professional photographers would only use prime lenses because of their superior image quality.

Although this has changed today due to the high quality zooms available today, a 50mm prime should still be in your kit bag!

50mm Prime Lens – Bokeh

Another advantage of having a lens with a wide aperture is of course ‘Depth of Field’. Setting a high aperture e.g. f1.8 will give you amazing results.

This enables you to easily blur the background and especially useful for portraits enhancing your creativity.

Bokeh (blurring the background of images) transforms the overall look of a simple photo to give it more depth, eliminating a cluttered background and isolating your subject.

Good bokeh is especially important in portrait photography (creating a natural perspective), as most photographers usually want a shallow depth of field so that the subject stands out sharply against a blurred background.

They are also great for low light photography meaning you are able to take shots in lower light settings without the need for a flash.

If you don’t have a 50mm prime lens in your collection; go and get one now. This is the first lens I purchased towards my optics collection and a must have!