A (birthday) gift that keeps on giving

My wonderful husband has once again proved that he knows me so well. How? By getting me a birthday gift that I absolutely love.

Want to know what Marlon's gift was? I'll give you three clues. These three pictures all have something to do with it.

Any guesses? See if you're right after the jump!

Nope, Marlon's birthday gift was not an evil eye pendant, a paisley shawl or a juicer. What those three photos have in common is that they were taken with my awesome new toy... a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens!

The 50mm f/1.8 II lens is a fixed focus lens, also known as a prime lens. Fixed focus means exactly what it says on the tin: you can't change the focus, i.e. zoom in or out. That's not what this lens is about. What it is about, is a low f-stop number (1.8), which translates to a larger aperture and shallower depth of field.

To put it in four simple words: blurry background, sharp subject. Those four words make all the difference in a portrait or detail (macro) shot.

Prime lenses are also also sharper than variable focus (or zoom) lenses, making that contrast between blurry background and sharp subject even better. 

Take this photo, for example. I was caught not by the woman, but by the gooeyness of the sweets she was serving up. The sharpness of this prime lens plus its shallow depth of field are great for blurring her (and the other servers) into the background and highlighting the sticky, shiny drips of syrup.

I do have to get used to carrying more than one lens, and quickly switching lenses on the go. But that's part of the package and I'm happy to do it. Though I love my current wide-angle lens to bits, achieving shallow depth of field was definitely one of its weaknesses. 

Now that I have this new lens, a whole new world has opened up to me. Surprisingly, it's not shooting photos of food... but of people.

As I've mentioned before, I'm terribly shy about shooting photos of people. I always felt as if taking out my camera with its big-ass wide-angle lens was like switching on a glaring red neon sign and activating a loud warning siren. ALERT! ALERT! YOU ARE BEING PHOTOGRAPHED!

This new lens enables me to be more discreet. For one thing, it's a lot smaller, so it's much less obtrusive. The fixed 50mm focus length allows me to stand a comfortable distance away from my subject and still get a good shot... without getting in someone's face.

As you can probably tell, I'm loving my birthday gift. And you can see from these photos, Turkey was the perfect place to take my new baby for our first ride.


Interested in learning more about fixed focus/prime lenses? Here's a helpful article on zoom vs. prime lenses. Happy reading!