ebiggs1 wrote:
You did not say what camera you have? You did say how many or what other lenses you have? This makes it difficult for me to advise.
First I would not wait for a supposed "latest greatest" lens to be released. If you want a 50mil get it now! And, secondly I had the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM Lens. I sold mine. Why, a 50mm is hard to use. It does make a nice portrait lens for a cropper but just seems too long or too short most of the time on a FF. Actually it does on a cropper, too. Just hard to use.
I had the Sigma 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Lens, too. The sharpest lensmade. It also got sold when I bought the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM Lens. Now, that lens is a true jewel of a lens and it is unique. It produces marvelous photographs. It is what I call a specialized lens, however. Just for special situations.
IMHO, if I were you I would buy the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM Lens for a $125 bucks to see it a 50mil is really what you want. Use it. Live with it. If it is the cat's meow sell it on and buy the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM Lens. That's 'almost' what I did !
As Ernie says, lenses with very wide apertures exist for a specialized purpose. Ten or twelve years ago, that purpose was low-light photography. But today's cameras have such good low-light performance that that specialization has pretty much morphed into just situations where you want a very shallow depth of field. Such situations do come up, of course, but in the general scheme of things they're comparatively rare. So I think it's fair to say that if you need such a lens, you'll know it, and it's not a lens you'd buy just to have it around.
Back in 2007 I bought a 30mm f/1.4 lens for my XTi, because I thought I ought to have a low-light lens (and because I'd always had a 50mm f/1.4 on my Nikon film cameras). I used it a few times, and it's sat on a shelf ever since. In effect, it's a relic of a different era of photography.
Bob
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA
