In Praise of the 50mm Lens

I have a love and hate relationship to the 50mm lens. I now had the excellent Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S-line lens for years. It is my main lens for shooting people, especially the kids. I love its quality and the option to open up if needed for object isolation or faster shutter speeds. I hate that it is a prime and keeps me from being flexible. 

But is it really a useful lens? Let us discuss 50mm from a photographic perspective. What can it achieve and where does it really shine the best?

We first need to talk about the artistic point of using the 50mm focal length and its associated 40° angle of view (measured horizontally). 

Some claim that it is the natural view of the human eye. That is only correct if you don't account for head movements. The small angle of the 50mm mimics an eye, scanning the immediate surrounding of a subject. It is more the kind of impression you get without moving your eye at all.

The 50mm kit lens is mainly for details plus their immediate surrounding.

Even if the objects are further away, the 50mm angle feels more like a concentrated crop of the view, but not a tight one. Compare it to a wide angle picture where you need foreground, middle ground, and background to work properly, composing a scene in all breadth and full glory. The 50mm cannot achieve that. It is more a telephoto lens, but with the additional ability to show the surrounding of the subject. 

Consequently, the look is not liked by every viewer. The most frequent comment I get is that a photo shows only a small part of reality. They want to see more. In the complete scene the viewer can indeed search for the things that interest him the most. The narrower 50mm angle shows my view only, blending off anything I did not want to show.

The 50mm shows the personal view of the photographer and crops off distractions.

If you understand the fact that you have to select the part of the scene you want to show, the 50mm becomes incredibly versatile. And clearly, you have to compose anyway with any focal range.

If you look around the pictures on this page, you see many different kinds of shots, from portraits to landscapes, and to group shots. They are all done at 50mm. One of the reasons for this diversity is that the angle of view is not too narrow, so that the things around a subject get into the frame too. 

To achieve the same on a 85mm lens is more difficult. As much as I love the 85mm due to its noble kind of showing subjects and smooth backgrounds, it will not allow a wider perspective. The 35mm, on the other hand, will always show the surrounding, and you cannot really narrow the view without getting close and distorting the proportions. 

The 50mm prime lens has the additional property of being fast. That means that it can open up to isolate subjects. A kit toom at f/4 cannot achieve the same. 

You can compensate with a longer focal range, and this is often a good solution. E.g., a 100mm at f/4 will have the same background blur as a 50mm at f/2. When shooting the same subject, the same size in the frame, it will also have more depth of field. But a telephoto lens will show less background, and you will have to back off your subject. 

The point of the 50mm is that it will show more of the scene around and behind the subject.

In low light, the 50mm prime also allows shorter shutter speeds. This helps a lot, but one needs to keep in mind that the depth of field can get rather small. You will need precise focusing. The results can be very nice. 

Nowadays, we have technical tricks to help with low light. For one, noise reduction has become rather advanced. It is surprising, how much can be achieved by the new algorithms. Admittedly, those AI tricks often invent details. But, unless you pixel peep into your night scene, everything will look good. Smartphone photography relies heavily on this fact.

Then, we have image stabilization. If nothing moves in your scene or you are okay with showing the movement, you can still use f/5.6 to get more depth of field. The traditional way was to use a tripod.

These facts show that you can often just pick your travel zoom in low light. The only thing it cannot do is to isolate objects as well as the 50mm.

What separates the 50mm f/1.8 prime lens from a kit zoom, say the 24-70mm f/4? There are actually only two points to mention.

• The travel zoom contains the wider angle.
• The 50mm prime has f/1.8 for less DOF to isolate the subject.

Everything else can be worked around, more or less. 

If your kit zoom goes to 120mm, you have a bit more of a telephoto lens too. But this is rarely a deal breaker. 50mm is already a telephoto lens, and you can often substitute by getting closer. 120mm will have more background blur, but your 50mm is faster to compensate for that. 

If you need fast action in low light, you can very often use the kit zoom as well. Today's ISO handling is good. I know that there are limits. If you need to shoot kids in bad light, f/2 helps a lot. But maybe it is the better idea to get better light to start with near a window or using a flash. Anyway, I admit that the faster prime can sometimes be the only solution. For real action photography, you will need a fast telephoto lens anyway.

There is one issue which I have not mentioned yet. And that is image quality, especially the sharpness. Unfortunately, I have to disappoint in this regard.

Yes, the 50mm f/1.8 is sharper everywhere at f/4, compared to the 24-70 f/4. The difference is much less than we assume, unless we measure it on a brick wall. And at f/8 it is completely gone.

But the 50mm f/1.8 prime is not much sharper than the Nikon Z 24-70 f/2.8. That lens is in another class than the standard travel kit. I recommend this expensive and heavy lens for professional wedding shooters. The Nikon Z 50mm f/1.2 is also in another class, with regard to sharpness, price and weight. If we are talking about a small nifty-fifty, these options are over the top anyway. 

I would argue that the main value of the 50mm f/1.8 lies in the wider aperture. The lens is already very sharp in the center at f/1.8, and crispy at f/2.8. But the compositional value of the faster lens outweighs the benefits in sharpness.

Do I love and recommend the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.8? Yes, I do. The lens is versatile enough and offers a good solution in many, many situations. It is also not too expensive. For other cameras, there are similar options, often even a bit more compact.

But for traveling around, it is a restriction. We can put it positively by saying that it helps to develop a style and keeps the portfolio more consistent. But I could also say, that it can become boring. What applies to you, I do not know. 

My current point is that the 50mm offers almost everything in most cases. Whenever it does not work, you better take a special lens anyway, like a 20mm wide angle or a telephoto zoom. Special lenses can produce special pictures. Which puts us back to bringing more than one lens.

In summary, the 50mm will remain with me. I'd rather sell other lenses which I need only rarely and which collect dust on the shelf. 

I hope to have convinced the reader that the 50mm range is useful. 

Together with a camera that has IBIS it is the most useful and versatile tool you can have in your photographic bag.