The Nifty Fifty - Canon EF 50mm f1.8 STM Lens

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Contents: Intro | Autofocus | Characteristics | Use Case | Conclusion

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The nifty fifty. The plastic fantastic. My first big boy lens when i started photography 15 years ago. Well, not the STM version, but the original metal-mount version of the lens that was released in 1987.

Much like the original ‘87 version of this lens–and unlike the version ii–the STM version has a plastic body and metal mount. It strikes a perfect balance of price to performance to build quality. Aside from the metal mount and glass, the lens is fully plastic. The body being made of a fairly durable-feeling (and by all accounts durable, full stop) ABS plastic, with an airy focus-by-wire focusing ring. The lens elements protrude from the body, and might by my least favorite aspect of the design of the lens. No aperture ring, but it's a Canon EF lens and I don’t think they ever made one with an aperture ring. No matter, that’s where the Fringer Pro II EF to FX adapter comes in.

Optically this lens isn’t perfect. The first version of this lens was a departure from Canon’s typical 6 elements in 4 groups optical design of their 50mm f/1.8 lenses that dated back to the late 50s, to a 6 elements in 5 groups design. Being a design that’s approaching 40 years since its last major redesign, the lens does have some flaws here and there. Wide open it is somewhat soft, although contrast doesn’t suffer like some vintage lenses do when shot wide open. There’s quite a lot of magenta and green fringing wide open when shot under a variety of conditions. These optical flaws are, however, the main attraction for me. The softness wide open combined with the decent contrast from more modern coatings is a kind of perfect blend for my style of shooting and tastes.

Autofocus is decent enough. It’s largely comparable to my trusty old Fujifilm 35mm f/1.4. It's slow, it's not exactly silent, it's mostly accurate. Even adapted to a different manufacturer’s camera body it performs pretty much as expected.

Even on an adapter, the size and weight of this lens isn’t terrible. Yes, there are smaller, technically superior alternatives to the kludgy setup that is adapted DSLR lenses, but it’s way inside my boundaries of acceptable. For example, it's just a tiny smidge heavier and a bit longer than my native Fujifilm XF23mm f/1.4 (old version). Handling is adequate. The focus ring is loose and unpleasant, but it is an autofocus lens at the end of the day, and besides Fuji and Olympus pull-back clutch focus ring setups I categorize it as on par with most other autofocus rings: it’s there when you need it, and it works good enough, but I generally don’t need it that often, so it’s fine. I’m adapting it with a Fringer EF to FX Pro II adapter, which has an aperture ring, so my need for an external aperture ring is satisfied.

Notable shooting characteristics, This lens focuses decently close, especially for an old-timey optical design 50mm lens. Even the version i and ii of this lens focused at the standard 50mm 0.45m distance. This bad boy focuses down to 0.35m, ramping up the maximum magnification from 0.15x to 0.21x. A macro lens this is not, but that extra few inches of close focusing definitely gives the lens even more utility than a solid walkaround lens in this focal range already has.

Bokeh character: The bokeh is nice. It's not on the level of smooth, painterly, poetic-adjective’d bokeh rendition of some of the much-lauded vintage lenses, but it is extremely usable and pleasant in most use cases. Occasionally it does get busy and hard-edged, sometimes it can produce nearly soap bubble specular highlights. Like any lens, it's about finding the sweet spot of distances and making happy accidents with what you have to work with.

My use cases One of the primary reasons I got this lens was to have a 50mm focal length lens, with autofocus, that I could ideally adapt to both my Fujifilm and Olympus bodies. Adapted lenses generally aren’t ideal, but I’m quite happy if I can get the utility of an effectively universal lens for the mirrorless cameras that I have now (as well as those that I’ll have in the future). The other use case I had in mind for this lens was to use it with a Raynox DCR-250 close-focusing diopter. While it doesn’t provide true 1:1 macro on this lens, the setup offers me an extremely usable, versatile, light weight, and low-space setup that covers a huge range of my macro/closeup/botanical photography while hiking. The setup is very obviously not as tack-sharp as my Laowa 65mm f/2.8, but what it doesn’t require is a lens change or speedlight and diffuser combo. This setup is highly utilitarian which always makes gear acquisition a bit more palatable for me.

Overall, this lens is one of the few true personal nostalgia trips I’ve indulged in within the confines of photography and gear. I saw the world through this lens as a young photographer in the late 2000s on an APS-C crop sensor Canon DSLR body. The combination of the familiarity I have with this lens and the colors of Fujifilm’s film simulations is just superb. It's a great synthesis of where I started as a photographer and where I am now. It’s self-indulgent, and I don’t care. I’m absolutely loving this lens and feel a rare sense of gear-contentment with it in my camera bag.

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