How to get the best out of a nifty fifty?

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Mattfeliks

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Hi all,

I got hold of a nifty fifty last week to use on my 450d. So far I've had some reasonable results, but I'm not getting the amazing sharpness everyone keeps going on about. Are there any tricks to getting the best out of this lens? I know closing the aperture down will help with sharpness, but I've heard loads about this lens being sharp at 1.8...

Any help much appreciated.

Below is one I took in richmond... at 100% crop it looks pretty soft imo.:thinking:

img1903kq6.jpg
 
Did you shoot in raw and did you sharpen it in Post processing?

Using F1.8 will obviously not be as sharp as F8 for instance.
 
At f/1.8, the depth of field isn't that great, so the point of focus is critical (eg, in portraits, if the eyes are in perfect focus, the tip of the nose and the ears won't be). As foodpoison has just said, stop it down a little (it'll still be faster than your standard zoom) and the DoF will improve. By f/4, you'll be in the sweet spot of apertures and at f/8 you'll bleed if you look too closely at the results!
 
I've been amazed at the sharpness of mine even at 1.8. But thats in comparison to my kit lens! Also the photos I took with mine were in excellent light and I was very careful about focusing on eyes!
 
Thanks very much for your replies everyone.

Janice: I've been shooting in RAW for a while now, but I hardly ever bother with post-prod because I'm lazy. Will give it a shot!

FP: great idea. I'll give that a try, I'm probably just being too picky, :D

Nod and Nixtoo: stopping down seems to be the answer. I'm already impressed with the colours over my kit lens (which was fantastic when I knew nothing about photography, but I am gradually learning the limitations of) and I really hope I can improve the sharpness.
 
Apologies for double post- but it's just occurred to me that my other two lenses are IS. So maybe it's my shaky hands that are the problem!
 
I'm in Richmond all the time but haven't been to the park with the camera in ages! really must get down there again!

What were the settings of the shot? Maybe you just need that shutter speed a little bit higher to counter your possible shaky hands :)
 
Richard Peters said:
I'm in Richmond all the time but haven't been to the park with the camera in ages! really must get down there again!

What were the settings of the shot? Maybe you just need that shutter speed a little bit higher to counter your possible shaky hands :)
Click to expand...

Aye, I can't remember the settings exactly (external HD is upstairs!) but I was on 1.8 and it was a cloudy day, so I was probably ISO 200 and 1/80. Richmond pk is a lot of fun, we rented bikes the last time we were there.

hillwalkinggirl: thanks: I wasn't aware RAW needed sharpening, though I know little about the format anyway. I suppose when I save it as JPG to upload to TP I'm softening it as well!
 
Looks sharp to me - but the issue is not sharpness but depth of field. You've focused on the antlers and, given the f/1.8 aperture you were using, not much else will be in focus. That's a feature, not a bug.

For this type of shot, I'd have used a higher f/stop - f/8 maybe.

If you want to have real fun with the nifty at f/1.8, then take portraits, close up and focus on the subject's eyes. Then you'll see how sharp it is.
 
I've always found with the mega narrow DOF that you're sometimes better shooting in AI Servo mode. For instance with my 85mm, even at a distance of 5 meters away leaves me with a tiddly 16cm's to play with before being out of focus (probably less actually)... those 16cms can easily be lost by a moving subject subject or movement (such as rocking) by the photographer. So far AI Servo has been much more reliable than One Shot at wide open.

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adsayer said:
I've always found with the mega narrow DOF that you're sometimes better shooting in AI Servo mode. For instance with my 85mm, even at a distance of 5 meters away leaves me with a tiddly 16cm's to play with before being out of focus (probably less actually)... those 16cms can easily be lost by a moving subject subject or movement (such as rocking) by the photographer. So far AI Servo has been much more reliable than One Shot at wide open.

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Click to expand...

Being a Nikon person I wondered what AI servo mode was. I've just looked it up and the equivalent in Nikon is "Continuos Focus". I shall try the above and see how it works.
 
the antlers look pretty sharp to me. I love my 50mm i get some brilliant results!!
i guess the focus point would of been the antlers as they are pretty sharp
 
i had the same thing photographing an Owl & an Eagle on saturday, they did'nt appear as sharp as i'd hoped, although used 1.8 all the time, gonna try a smaller f stop next time i think.
 
Great thread. I've had the nifty fifty in my kit for a while and hardly used it. Looks like I'll be dusting it down again after reading the tips here. :)
 
hillwalkinggirl said:
Being a Nikon person I wondered what AI servo mode was. I've just looked it up and the equivalent in Nikon is "Continuos Focus". I shall try the above and see how it works.
Click to expand...

whoops! sorry I forgot about the Nikon stuff... but I'll remember the AF mode for that one as it's quite useful for a few types of photography I'm interested in.
Thanks! :D
 
I keep my cameras on CF all the time - you have focus lock for those times that you want to focus and lock...or just use the focus ring and manually over ride in M/A on the lens (which is also standard setting for me).
 
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