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B+W
MICRO FOUR-THIRDS
Olympus 25mm f/1.8 M Zuiko £300
Panasonic 25mm f/1.4 Leica DG Summilux £430
Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 Nokton II £660What about you lot who have abandoned digital SLRs in favour of micro four-thirds systems?
Well, to achieve an effective focal length of 50mm, you’ll need to buy a 25mm prime lens
as the crop factor is 2x. There aren’t many to choose from, though if money’s no object,
the super fast Voigtlander 25mm f/0.95 takes some beating. Man, that’s fast!the same focal length. For comparison, my
Canon 24-70mm f/4 IS USM zoom tips the
scales at 600g, whereas the Canon 50mm
f/1.8 almost floats above it at just 130g. OK,
the zoom does have image stabilisation, but
it’s still almost 5x the weight of the 50mm
prime. The 50mm is also tiny compared to
your average zoom and takes up minimal
space in a backpack so you need never
leave home without one.4 FOCAL LENGTH
The 50mm focal length may at first appear
rather pedestrian, but once you get used
to it you’ll realise that it’s highly versatile
and can be used to shoot a wide range
of subjects. I regularly use my 50mm for
handheld, low-light portraiture. It’s a little
wide and distorting for head shots, but if
you don’t get too close to your subject you
can produce superb results. ArchitectureHAVANA, CUBA
I was really pushing my luck with this shot.
The lens was wide open, the ISO as high as I’d
want it to be without image quality taking a
tumble and the shutter speed close to the limit
of being hand-holdable. But I managed to bag
a decent shot thanks to my nifty 50!
Canon EOS 1Ds MKIII with 50mm f/1.8 lens,
1/25sec at f/1.8, ISO 3200and landscape are well suited to the 46°
angle of view and the perspective is very
natural, similar to the human eye. It’s also
great for detail shots and with a minimum
focus of 35-50cm, depending on the lens,
allows you to get reasonably close.5 DEPTH OF FIELD
The maximum aperture of a 50mm
standard is handy for reducing depth of
field so that distracting backgrounds are
thrown well out of focus to isolate your
main subject. If you’re currently shooting
with a standard kit zoom that has a‘When I travel, my Canon
50mm travels with me.
I wouldn’t contemplate
leaving Blighty without it.’
KASBAH AMRIDIL, SKOURA, MOROCCO
It’s situations like this where the 50mm
prime comes into its own. I didn’t have
a tripod, there was barely any light in the
room, but I still managed to produce
a very pleasing image.
Canon EOS 5D MKIII with 50mm f/1.8 lens,
1/50sec at f/2.8, ISO 320060-65_LEE_FROST_180 ER/MB.indd 6460-65_LEE_FROST_180 ER/MB.indd 64 09/07/2015 10:4809/07/2015 10:48