NIFTY FIFTIES
Standard zooms like a 24-70mm offer great convenience for everyday shooting, but a standard prime lens brings something extra to the table. On a full-frame camera you get an entirely natural viewing angle that equates to a lifelike perspective, while on a crop-sensor body these lenses make great short telephotos for portraiture and the like.
Standard primes also typically have a faster aperture rating. Compared with, say, an f/3.5-5.6 standard zoom, an f/1.8 prime is around three f-stops faster, enabling faster shutter speeds for freezing action handheld under dull lighting, and a much tighter depth of field for blurring the background, so you can really isolate the subject.
This class of lens has a fixed focal length, so it lacks the versatility of a zoom lens, but there’s a lot to be said for ‘zooming with your feet’ to attain the optimum shooting position. 50mm is the classic focal length for a standard prime, so let’s check out the best buys.
