Thirty year old Canon EF 50mm f/1.8

[TWX]

Found a 50mm f/1.8 Canon EF lens with a metal mount and a focus distance window at a pawn shop for forty bucks. Date of production puts it in 1988, so first-generation, "Mark I" version of the lens apparently.

Biggest issue, I shot an early afternoon outdoor party, most of my south and southwest facing shots have a fair amount of lens flare. Looks like despite the fairly deep recess before the first element, the winter angle Sun manages to light-up the front glass enough for some flaring.

The lens had come with a UV filter and a rubber fold-forward hood, the hood flat out looks silly and the way it folds back doesn't work well unless the UV filter is installed. It was a cheap filter, a prior bit of nighttime street shooting in a christmas-decorated shopping center immediately had ghosting so I'd removed both.

Shooting with such a physically small lens and no hood was much easier for candid shots at the party, people didn't get their backs up seeing a bigger lens like when I'd used my 17-55mm previously. Unfortunately I guess a hood of some form is needed if I use it outdoors during the day afterall. Any suggestions for a decent hood for a 50mm put on an APS-C camera? Unfortunately the lens requires a screw-on hood, so none of Canon's full-frame zoom lenses starting at 80mm on the wide-end are suitable.

 

[RowdyRay]

The Canon ES-65 is the proper hood for that lens.

 

[TWX]

The Canon ES-65 is the proper hood for that lens.

I know. It's designed for no vignetting on a full-frame EF camera though. I figure with a crop sensor something a little bit tighter would probably not suffer vignetting even if it were not suited to a FF application.

 

[Original katomi]

Er, this going to sound so simple...
I use the 50mm a lot and yes it has it problems, as I am old school I hold the lens with my left hand so that I can make adjustments.
Use thumb and first finger to adjust and use the rest of the hand as a lens hood. No faff, with threads, taking on or off
Just move your hand until it blocks the sun....

 

[TWX]

Er, this going to sound so simple...
I use the 50mm a lot and yes it has it problems, as I am old school I hold the lens with my left hand so that I can make adjustments.
Use thumb and first finger to adjust and use the rest of the hand as a lens hood. No faff, with threads, taking on or off
Just move your hand until it blocks the sun....

Heh. 25 years ago I took a high school semester class for an introduction to photography, on the Pentax K1000. It was fun enough but so much of the emphasis on the class was on developing film and on developing prints from the film that we really didn't have time to get into operating the camera itself effectively, and the teacher of the class was also the auto-shop teacher to boot, so the teacher wasn't as interested in photography as would have been helpful. Anyway, we never really got instruction on good techniques for operating the camera, and I'm sure what little I did get I've lost in the intervening years, and modern automatic or partially automatic cameras have further meant no particular techniques along these lines either.

I'll have to see if my grip can solve anything.

 

[Original katomi]

Have a play and let me know
I was thought to place one foot in front of the other and beand one knee to brace and make the body stable.
Tuck elbow into ribs,
To use the crook of the thumb and finger to hold the lens, shield with the fingers and to control breathing
Eg breath in hold, and release shutter .
Holding breath helps prevent body,camera movement.
This all before getting to the tech aspects

 

[TWX]

We were taught to breathe out before taking the shot. Less tension on the body that way.

I suppose this wouldn't work well for underwater photography while snorkel-diving

 

[Original katomi]

Lol
Maybe it could be a prob.
The 50 mm is a nice lens, I have ended up having three of them, saw two at a car boot sale, for stupid price.

 

[TWX]

Yeah, when I saw it for $40 I figured I needed to buy it even if I've wondered about how useful it is on a crop-body.

Funny thing, I didn't have my camera with me. I'd stopped in to that pawn shop on a lark. Ended up testing it on one of their cameras, after I finally found one that had enough battery life to power up. Just confirmed autofocus functionality and that the image on the screen didn't look abhorrent.

I'm attempting to put each lens I own through hundreds of shots, just to get a feel for how to use them. The 17-55mm f/2.8 is probably my go-to lens, but it's heavy and not surreptitious to use. The 50mm focal length is a bit long and made shooting that outdoor party a tad difficult since I kept having to back up from my subjects, but the bokeh is quite nice on those shots that came out. I took around 140 snaps, probably half were usable, and half of those were ultimately used. It was just a work party so nothing special except to those that were there, but a good opportunity to get some experience with the lens when I could operate as if it mattered even if it really didn't.

Ultimately I want to get that Sigma 18-35mm f/1.8, but I don't want to pay hundreds of dollars for it. I've debated getting a couple of additional fast primes like something in the 28-35mm range, but buying two of those would probably cost as much as that Sigma and I'd have to keep moving around or else would have to swap lenses.

 

[Derrel]

I think you could probably use a lens Hood for an older Nikon 85 mm f/2 manual focus lens with a step ring adapter, and not suffer from vignetting when using it on a crop sensor camera. You are correct, the original lens hood for your 50 mm lens was designed with the original uncropped 50mm field of view on a full-frame camera and that a smaller diameter lens hood opening would be fine if the lens were to be used on your crop sensor camera.

 

[Original katomi]

Just a word of caution.
Not all sigma lenses work on canon. Sigma put out a list at one time, I have been caught out.
I use a 17 85 as a walk around lens.
I use the 50 mm known here as nifty fifty for low light situations, the party after a wedding. Taking pics of the local fox at dusk, needed the shutter speed and low iso