My Go-To Lens for all Portrait Photography

Aamer Seth
3 min readMay 1, 2020
Canon 50mm f/1.8

When investing in your camera gear, it's important to have a good camera body, but it's the lenses that are magical. There are many different lens options from prime, telephoto, wide-angle, macro, etc. All the different kinds of lenses exist because they all give you a different photo and are used for different things. If you are someone who is just starting out into photography, got your first DSLR camera, then the next lens I would recommend getting is the 50mm f/1.8 by Canon (Sony and Nikon have similar options, but I am a Canon user). I have been using it for almost two years consistently and it is easily my most used lens. Here are a few reasons why this should be your next lens.

  1. It's inexpensive. When you look at some of the top lenses out there, they are easily over a grand. In fact, I find it interesting that most lenses are more expensive than the camera body itself. Generally, lenses that have a lower f-stop have a higher price. To see a lens that has an f-stop below two and priced at less than $200, it is rare but beautiful. This is easily one of the most affordable camera lenses on the market and without a doubt. The best bang for the buck.
  2. Bokeh-licious. Due to the low f-stop of f/1.8 and the seven aperture blades, the background of the shots that you get from this lens is blurry and smooth. This is the reason why this is considered a must-have lens, especially if you are using it to shoot portraits. To add, with it having a low f-stop, this allows the lens to let in a lot of light. I find that this is particularly useful when shooting in lower light conditions such as golden hour. It was the main reason why I bought this lens and I have been using it on almost every single photoshoot in the last year.
  3. Portraits. This is an amazing lens for portraits because of its focal length. With certain focal lengths of a camera, it can distort the way the model looks creating an unnatural and unflattering image. With the fixed 50mm focal length, the models look accurate to what they do in real life and do not ruin the image. It's very true to life.
  4. Easy to travel with. This lens is small. Really small. It fits in all bags easily and I even carry it in my jacket pocket if I don’t feel like carrying my camera bag. It is extremely light so it doesn’t add a lot of weight to…
Aamer Seth

A young University student very curious about many things and here to share his thinking. Interested in Photography, Technology and sharing stories.

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