Focus with a Canon 50mm f1.8 lens

Now the 50mm f1.8 prime lens is truly one of the best value lenses on the market today. The price and performance combination makes this ‘nifty fifty’ really good value and is a great starter lens. Having used the kit 18-55mm lens for the inital few months of owning a DSLR and realising it’s limitations, the nifty fifty was my first choice for a first prime lens.

Now this offers super sharp images with an extremely narrow depth of field, f1.8. Due to these attributes a key lesson when shooting with primes is to ensure that you watch your focus point(s). As below, you will see that when the camera is left to auto focus it can select the most logical point but not necessarily the correct point desired by the photographer. When using aperture values in this range the chances of this happening are high.

The best way to ensure accurate focus and sharpness where required is to use manual focus points. If I were to shoot the below again I would use the centre focus point and aim for the middle of the eyes, ensuring both eyes are sharp and in focus.

Keeping the focus point in the centre is a good starting point and when dealing with primes or any lens with a large aperture make sure you get the exact shot you want.