Will 50mm lens AUTOFocus on my Canon 60D? Please Help.

[stephaniemong]

Hi there, I need some help. I'm looking to buy a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens for my Canon EOS 60D but I'm concerned about it not being able to auto focus. Will it?
I want to make sure it will auto focus because I had a 50mm lens for my Nikon (D5000) I always had to shoot with a manual focus because the camera itself did not have a interal auto focus motor or something. I learned my lesson there but I don't want to make the same mistake. I'm new to Canon cameras and would enjoy any input. Thanks!
~Stephanie

 

[lambertpix]

Yup. No problem. I've used that lens on a 30D, 40D and 7D. Canons don't have the same issue you saw with the Nikon -- all Canon EF and EF-S lenses have their own focus motors, though they vary in speed & quality. There are some third-party lenses, I believe, that won't auto-focus at all on Canon bodies, but this is a quality of the lens -- not the body.

 

[KmH]

Your Canon 60D doesn't have an auto focus motor either, but no Canon camera has since 1987.

Nikon left the AF motor out of the D40, D40x, D60, D3000, D3100, D3200, D5000, D5100, D5200, and D5300 to make them more compact, so the camera size would appeal more to women.

Note that Canon EF-S lenses cannot be used on Canon EF camera bodies. Your 60D is an EF-S camera body, so you can use both EF-S and EF lenses on your camera.

 

[scorpion_tyr]

As the above people have said, it will autofocus as long as you have the lens in auto focus mode

 

[stephaniemong]

Just ordered! Thanks so much for your help everyone! It was a little confusing picking lenses for Nikon, too many options for a newbie. I was a Nikon girl but now I believe I'm a Canon girl.

 

[TCampbell]

Just to sum up: ALL Canon auto-focusing lenses have their own focusing motor (in the lens.) Canon does not have any camera bodies (and never did) that put the focus motors in the body.

This is different from Nikon, where some camera bodies have focusing motors in the body -- and some do not. Nikon has "AF" lenses which can only auto-focus if connected to a camera with an in-body focus motor vs "AF-S" lenses which do not require the camera have an in-body focus motor because the lens has it's own focusing motor.

With all that said, Canon makes three different 50mm lenses. The f/1.8 is specifically designed to be the most affordable lens in the line-up. While optically very good, you will notice the build quality is on the low end (it feels like "cheap plastic" because it is "cheap plastic" -- just remember it's the lens body that's cheap... the actual optics in that lens are quite good. It only has a 5-bladed aperture which means if you're going for a nice quality blur in the out-of-focus areas, objects "blur" in the shape of the aperture opening, and the opening on that lens is a pentagon. This makes for an odd quality out-of-focus blur that some refer to as "nervous" or "jittery".)

The f/1.4 version uses a much faster and quieter auto-focus motor and uses an 8-blade aperture. The physical construction of the lens body is also much higher quality. The quality of the out-of-focus blur is also much better. This is *the* 50mm lens that everyone prefers. However... when simply testing the lens for how finely it can resolve detail in the image, the 50mm f/1.8 and 50mm f/1.4 are about the same. The f/1.4 version is about $300.

There's also an f/1.2L ("L" series is Canon's premium glass -- which comes with a premium price tag to match).

 

[lambertpix]

Just to sum up: ALL Canon auto-focusing lenses have their own focusing motor (in the lens.) Canon does not have any camera bodies (and never did) that put the focus motors in the body.

Absolutely true for Canon-made lenses. I don't think you're in any imminent danger of running into this, but Zeiss, among others (ex: many mirror lenses), makes lenses that fit the Canon EF mount, but have no focus motor, so they're manual-focus only. Like Canon, the two most popular third-party lens makers (Sigma and Tamron) put focus motors their Canon-mount lenses, so you'd have to be pretty far in the weeds to find a lens that won't autofocus on a Canon, but it's possible.

 

[vimwiz]

All (Canon) EOS type (EF) lenses have autofocus in the lens (Not the body) and will work.

For example, I just baught a brand new 50mm EF lens and it fits on my 1990s film EOS.

I think the only exception is AF-S lenses, which are only for cameras with crop sensors, right?

Btw, cheap "plastic" f/1.8 50mm lens is fine, it gives me identical image quality on the EOS i mentioned, as the more expensive looking manual focus (FD mount) lens did on the body that it replaced.