GrillMouster
Mouster of the Grill
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2005
- Messages
- 1,236
I never take the aperture of my 50 f/1.8 larger than f/2.8 if I can avoid it, because it gets too soft beyond that, as you've discovered. The fact that it's not sharp at f/1.8 doesn't make the lens worthless to me, because as you see it's okay at f/2.8, giving a whole two stops (4x light) than f/5.6, which is the max aperture at 50mm with the 18-55 kit lens.
Some would respond, "Yeah, but the kit lens has Image Stabilization, so I can just slow down the shutter speed two stops". Sure, but Image Stabilization only combats camera shake, not subject movement. Additionally, the ability to go to a useable f/2.8 gives you shallower depth of field, which is useful for isolating a subject and blurring out distracting background/foreground objects. Also, being able to use a lower aperture comes in handy for increasing the ratio of flash-to-ambient light.
And even at f/1.8, at 100% you notice how soft the focus is, but that lack of sharpness becomes less noticeable when the image is viewed or printed at normal sizes.
With photography it's all about compromise.
Some would respond, "Yeah, but the kit lens has Image Stabilization, so I can just slow down the shutter speed two stops". Sure, but Image Stabilization only combats camera shake, not subject movement. Additionally, the ability to go to a useable f/2.8 gives you shallower depth of field, which is useful for isolating a subject and blurring out distracting background/foreground objects. Also, being able to use a lower aperture comes in handy for increasing the ratio of flash-to-ambient light.
And even at f/1.8, at 100% you notice how soft the focus is, but that lack of sharpness becomes less noticeable when the image is viewed or printed at normal sizes.
With photography it's all about compromise.
