Which lens is best for night shooting with t4i

[Wayneis56]

I want to do some night shooting, of the following lens which would work the best. Ef-s 18-55 f3.5 5.6 is,
Ef-s 55 250 f 4 5.6 IS II, 50mm f 1.8 II, ef 40mm f2.8 STM. I'm looking at fireworks, and a bridge that is lit
Up with colored lights.

[Skirball]

50 1.8, or better, 50 1.4 if you want to spend a bit more.

Edit: Sorry, I should have read your question a bit better.  Actually the zoom lenses might be better for those specific situations: fireworks and the bridge.  Though the 50mm and 40mm primes offer higher image quality than those kit lenses.

Fireworks are surprisingly bright and don’t require wide open apertures; I actually recommend stopping down a bit.  The zoom lens will offer you more flexibility.

For the bridge, or any static object, you can just use long shutter speeds so again, you don’t have to stop down a lot.  Of course, a faster lens will allow more possibility in case you wanted to use shorter shutter speeds (because you didn’t have a tripod, or didn’t like how the long shutter looked)…  but again, the zooms will offer you more flexibility in framing.

Which lens is up to you.  The primes are sharper, the zooms offer more flexibility.  Both the zooms are about the same quality, which one depends on how you want to compose the shot.   

[hsbn]

Since you are going to shoot landscapes and firework (assuming using tripod also), wide aperture lens is not really needed because you will most likely shooting at small aperture anyway.  So any of those lens is fine. I'm more favor toward the 18-55mm.

[ebiggs1]

Actually fireworks are easy to capture. If you want full bloom you will need a tripod but you probably need it for the bridge any way. Of your suggested lenses, i would choose the  Ef-s 18-55 f3.5 5.6 IS you listed.

Below is just a quick snapshot I took of the Banner being played at the local football game. It caught the fireworks being shot off.

I had my 7D with a 24-105mm f4 lens on it. Almost normal daylight settings.

Obviously you will need a longer shutter to catch the entire display because it takes time for the firework to do it's thing!

[cicopo]

The lens isn't critical since you're shooting bright lights against the dark sky but for the bridge the tripod idea sounds important to me.

Now I'm going to make a suggestion to anyone with a zoom who gets to play around while watching fireworks & it's not something I've had the opportuntity to try. There is a very big fireworks competition held every summer in Gatineau Quebec & last summer a local photographer became quite famous when his brother had borrowed the prime he intended to use (unknown to him until too late). Forced to use a zoom he decided to zoom while taking the photos & the results were pretty amazing. I have no idea of his settings or whether he zoomed in or out or both but if you get a chance it's worth trying.

[Medic427]

I may be new to digital SLRs but I have shot Fireworks at least 16 times with a Sony DCR-VX2000 and I used a Wide Angle fish eye lens if you get really close and that was about 250 feet away and that lens too was a 85mm and for the time I thought the camera's video quality was amazing 9 years ago in 480 lines progressive and I had no 29.90 time limit either.

[Wayneis56]

I would like to thank everyone for your responses. I do have a tripod and I've shot
A lot of pics but this is a new camera for me and I'm not familiar with the lens. I should
Have been more clear.