need help regarding buying a new lense for canon1000d

[neelam]

hi guy i was looking for some cheap lense that could attract more light than the 18-55 IS kit lense that came with my camera.

i came across the following

Amazon.com: Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens: Camera & Photo

what do u think.is this lense better than the kit lense in attracting light and will it be helpful in capturing the milkyway or is just a waste of money:icon_scratch:

[steve51450]

aahh the nifty 50, a fantastic lens once you stop it down a little and perfect for what you want it to do

[neelam]

^ok thanks mate.

[neelam]

hi i forgot to ask one thing.will this lense work for the high end canon cameras?cause i have planned an upgrade after a year.

my 1000d is only two weeks old and it already has around 1500 shutter clicks:D

[iamjulian]

neelam, I have the 50mm f/1.8 and it is indeed a great lens. Super sharp for the money. However, a word of caution as I know you do widefield shots. I have tried the same and have not yet been able to get a properly focused image. Setting my copy of this lens to infinity is really difficult (as you know most lenses allow you to focus beyond infinity). So much so that I have stopped trying and now always use my 30mm f/1.4 which is a hundred times easier.

The problem is, the 50mm doesn't have the infitinty point marked on the focus ring. Sure you can find it yourself and mark it, but the ring has so much play in it that once you start tipping it up at the sky it doesn't stay in the right place. I have heard other people talk about taping it in place - I have yet to try this.

As I say, this is just my experience, perhaps my copy has a particularly poor focus ring.

[neelam]

^thanks mate i will look into it.setting it to infinity is difficult or close to impossible.

can u recommend anyother lense with some what same properties and cheap too

[gataki]

stop it down a little

Sorry to ask a very silly question, but what does this mean - I keep reading it but have no idea ....

Thank you.

Liz =

[Adelie]

Hi Liz

If you stop down a lens you are just reducing the aperture available to collect light.

There is a ring on the barrel of most lenses which controls the opening and closing of an iris diaphram. Its called the f stop ring and its marked with a series of numbers. These tend to run from f 1.8 to f 22 - 1.8 is wide open and f 22 is effectively a pinhole.

Using a lens wide open will allow you to collect the maximum amount of light in the shortest exposure time but will cause stars at the edges of the field to become distorted through spherical abberation - the lens is not perfectly figured out to its edges and light passing through its centre will be brought to a different focus than light passing through the edges.

For this reason astronomers will sometimes stop down their lenses from f1.8 to f 2.8 to minimise these edge effects.

Regards,

Lorna.

[gataki]

f stop ring and its marked with a series of numbers ... f 1.8 to f 22

Hi Lorna,

Thanks for explaining that - it makes sense. The only lens I have is the 18-55mm kit one which came with my 1000d and it doesn't have such markings on it. When the summer holidays start I must do a bit of research into all of this!

Liz

[Milamber]

Liz - to get to your aperture settings you need to be in manual mode. Hold the exposure compensation button down and spin the index wheel... the one you would turn to adjust exposure settings otherwise. The standard lens though will start around 5.6 or so, giving some indication of the need for faster lenses!

Arthur

[gataki]

Excellent - thank you Arthur - I hadn't even noticed that little button. But it works! I find instruction booklets really difficult unless I know the name of what I am looking for - which I invariably don't! There's so much to learn - but it's fun isn't it and I'd be lost without the wealth of knowledge I can dip into on this forum!

Thank you all!

Liz

[Milamber]

No problem. I've found that the manual is OK, but ask somewhere like here and you get a wealth of other associated snippets too - much more satisfying, especially if you are not sure of the question in the first place.

Arthur

[jgs001]

Something to bear in mind with the Nifty, it's a cracking little lens, super sharp for the money, but.... Due to it's very very shallow DOF, for normal daytime use, don't use the technique of focus and adjust to frame. It will move the focus point off your subject. You need to get used to using the different focus points.

For Astro use, it's got an astonishing light gathering ability. I've been using mine for Iridium Flares, and, whereas with the kit lens, I have to use ISO800 with the lens wide open, I don't have to push the settings anywhere near as much. I've also found with mine, that infinity focus is actually on the stop, and I've not had my focus ring turn on me when in MF mode.

[minimalist]

To jump in, if you want an alternative to the nifty fifty (which I also love), take a look on ebay for manual focus lenses. There's a bucketload on there, pretty cheaply priced (compared to the autofocus ones, that is). The older manyal nifty fifty (also a 50mm f1.8) has a metal body, focus ring that's much less sloppier (unles the owner abused it), and has markings for infinity focus, aperture, etc. Oh yeah, you also change aperture manually, but that's a good thing imo. Now, you will have to buy a Canon FD adaptor, as the lens mount on the manual versions is diffierent. But the adaptor is fairly inexpensive as well. This will open up your world to many Canon manual lenses that are superb optically (and mechanically, often) for not a lot of money.

Incidentally, you can buy adaptors for other types of manual lenses, especially the M42 (screw mount) ones, which a lot of the old brands used. You can even find Zeiss/Jenna lenses, some of the best optics made, for reasonable prices.

The only slight drawback is that they are more difficult to use in daytime shooting (manual focus and aperture).