Shortly before picking up my Sony cameras, I bought a cheap Yongnuo 50mm F1.8 lens off of Amazon. Having read a lot of the benefits of using fast prime lenses, I wanted to experiment with a cheap one before investing too much in a Sony E-mount-compatible prime lens which are much more expensive. At only about $65 USD, I had little to lose in the purchase.

If you’re interested in checking it out, you can find it here on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.jp

Design
For the price, I definitely had low expectations. The housing is fully plastic, but seems otherwise durable enough. The ring is a bit on the rough side, but is still more than acceptable for minor adjustments. The end of the lens is also 58mm threaded for covers and filters.

The AF / MF slider on the side makes it easy to decide when you need to switch between manual focus and autofocus...

Features
...which is one of the most surprising features about this lens: it really, seriously has autofocus! At this price, I would only expect manual adjustments, so this was a huge bonus. In reality, though, the autofocus is not actually very fast and definitely is not as accurate at focusing on subjects as the kit lenses. At times, it even seems to get confused and refuses to focus unless the shutter button is released and re-engaged. However, for ease-of-use in many situations, it does the job adequately.

The biggest drawback of the lens is that at any wide aperture opening, the infinity focus is miserable and cannot focus well at all, even manually. Mildly close objects more than a dozen meters away are blurry and uncrisp.

For such a cheap lens, the focused images actually look great. Here are a sample of some photos I took last fall with the lens.

At full F1.8 aperture opening, there is some chromatic aberration.

Stepped down to 2.8, though, and the results are still quite stunning.

The amount of light the camera gathers is pretty amazing, creating a gorgeous depth of field.

The background boke is quite lovely.

Conclusion
As expected at this price, this is not a serious lens for a serious photographer. For my amateurish needs, however, this $65 lens is a steal. It is a great addition for any beginner to play around with and get gorgeous shots with little effort.

After using the lens for a few weeks last fall, I found that the 50mm, while acceptable for portraits, was way too close for other work such as my food porn shots. This solidified my decision to pick up a 35mm as my next prime for my Sony bodies, look forward to a review next time.

This was my last accessory purchase for my Nikon, as just recently my old beast finally gave up the ghost. RIP…

For nearly 9 years, I used two kit lenses for all my photography needs, as they provide enough focal ranges for all the pictures I needed. In the past year or so, I’ve started to slowly realize that my pictures lacked a certain quality that separates great photos from my mediocre ones. My photos, while not terrible IMO, weren’t “special.” Not to mention numerous photos taken inside dark gyms always were a little noisy, dark, or blurry, tripod or not. I don’t know how I used my camera for so many years strictly on “automatic” without knowing more about what other dial options, ISO, shutter speed, or f-stop meant.

When my Nikon started to have shutter issues a bit longer than a year ago (has it been that long already?), I did a bit of research on cameras and fell deep (...so deep…) into the rabbit hole of photography. I essentially had to start from scratch, trying to make sense of all these terms and most importantly, how I can take better pictures.

The world of photography is quite vast. Even with months of reading, researching, and a bit of experimentation, I realize I am an absolute amateur and I still know nothing. It is exactly the Dunning-Kruger Effect; the more you know the more you realize you don’t.

Wading through this information, time and time again, I heard an oft repeated recommendation to start off with a “prime lens” in order to truly learn how to take great pictures. Prime lenses only have one focal length, forcing the user to move closer or further to reframe the shot. This might help in understanding positioning, getting better angles and more interesting shots. Though honestly, this sounds like more work to me.

So why would one bother? Prime lenses can capture that elusive, beautiful blurred boke / bokeh.

This also means it lets in a lot of light allowing for brighter pictures with lower ISO, generating less noise and sharper images. Who knew that f-stop meant so much?

So all these benefits of prime lenses are great to be sure, but the lower cost APS-C ones, around $200 USD or less, are often manual focus, manual aperture, and often lack electronic sensors for file data. From there, lenses around $200 and up may have auto-focus, but sadly, often lack any lens built-in stabilization with cheaper third-party lenses. For hand-held shots, this can make a big difference, worth a couple of stops. And, again, they only have one focal length!

But when shots are this beautiful…

…nothing else matters.

[ Nikon D40x ] Yongnuo 50mm F1.8 F-Mount Prime Lens Review

[ Photography ] Prime Lens