Sony 50mm f/1.8 Full-Frame E-Mount Prime Lens – Ideal for Portraits, Bokeh, and Everyday Shooting

Ignore any reviews pre firmware v3 (or v2), this lens has been transformed. Its not as fast to focus as the Zeiss 55mm but its perfectly suited to day to day shooting and the optics are punching well above its weight price wise. I have found its most responsive in AFC but still good in AFS, ergonomics are excellent (better than the 55), weight is perfect and the focus motor is not as loud as reviews suggest, not noticeable at all really once you get going (unless you have some random OCD!!) The lens has character no doubt about that, images have a great quality especially paired with Sony's fine sensors. If money were no object I would pick the Zeiss 55mm but money is absolutely a factor for me so this is a great surprise to find the lens is nowhere near as bad as I expected. So in summary its got its limitations so don't expect to be blown away but for shooting this lens day to day you can't go wrong IMO, its a little beaut!

I've been a Pro Photographer for 40 years and recently transitioned to Sony from Nikon. I usually buy a cheap 50mm as standard but hesitated with this model after seeing the initial reviews. I purchased a Sigma 50mm 1.4 Art (too bulky/heavy), CZ 55mm 1.8 (Nervous Bokeh) and Samyang 50mm 1.4 (Terrible AF Performance) but wasn't happy with any of them so returned them. This wee lens was on a deal of the day offer recently so I thought I'd take a punt and buy one and try it. It was one of the best decisions I've made as this lens is brilliant value for money for £145.00. The lens came supplied with firmware version 3.0. VERDICT Exceptionally Sharp, and particularly so at centre Clean Bokeh, with exceptionally smooth focus transition and smooth overall rendering Low Chromatic Aberration Light weight and compact size The AF is a tad slow to acquire focus on AFS but is pretty good on AFC The focusing although somewhat noisy, does not hunt or misfocus at all on any of my bodies.

Firstly, the build quality of the lens is quite good. It generally looks quite nice, and looks much much better than most canon lenses, especially their 50mm II. The metal casing of the lens feels quite plasticy and the focus ring feels more like plastic than rubber, but it's much higher quality than canons rival 50mm. When shooting at F8, the optics on this lens are amazing! You get a very crisp and very nice image, however, this changes as you go lower. The main draw of this lens is that it is fast, with it's aperture being F1.8 at its widest. Whilst images which are shot at this are fairly sharp, the main problem is the chromatic abberation. It can be extremely noticeable, but is usually able to be hidden using the removal tool in Lightroom. This hasn't majorly impacted me, but I should've expected it from such a cheap lens. The autofocus is also very loud... Overall, I think this is a great lens, especially at its price point, but only giving it four stars, as the chromatic abberation is the worst which I have ever seen on any of my lenses.

The Sony 50mm f/1.8 is an excellent choice for those looking for a quality prime lens with beautiful bokeh and solid sharpness at an affordable price. Lightweight and compact, it’s perfect for everyday shooting and travel. Image quality impresses with natural color reproduction and smooth, pleasing background blur at f/1.8 — portraits look vibrant and three-dimensional. Sharpness in the center is very good, and stopping down to f/2.8–f/4 improves it across the entire frame. Autofocus is quiet and fast enough for most situations, though it can hunt slightly in low light. The body is made of plastic, but the build quality is solid with no noticeable play. For beginner photographers or anyone wanting a lightweight portrait lens for Sony mirrorless cameras, it offers excellent value for money.

Top product for the price, great prime lens for full frame sony

Very good first prime lens Not very good autofocus, solution: learn how to use M mode Noisy for video, solution: invest in external microphone. Not weatherproofed, solution: well, I guess there’s no solution but it’s only 165 new and 125 used so if it fails just buy another one, next better thing is 55mm 1,8 but it’s cost like 650 is it worth investment? Not for me, I’m not making money on photography Ive watched over and over YouTube reviews about this lens, 90 % of negative feedback, but then I thought why there are so many happy people on Amazon review, so I gave it a go and was pleasantly surprised, very good picture quality in low light conditions, very sharp, light, not in your face lens, will suits occasional photographer like me. Bare in mind I don’t use autofocus and shoot in M mode. Video, yes I agree autofocus is a bit slow and noisy

Seriously the best value lens for Sony mirrorless cameras you can buy. Sharp as a tack, great for portrait photography, compact and lightweight. To get a 50mm f1.8 for the price it's sold at is ridiculous especially as it has AF. For still photography you won't find better value anywhere but it's not built for videography. The AF motor us a little noisy and will be noticeable with the inbuilt mic. If you're using a separate mic you'll be grand but it's maybe a little too slow in the autofocus for some. (It's £160 at the time I bought it - stop complaining!)

I've had this lens for about a week now and have done a fair bit of shooting with it. I bought the lens in order to use it with my A7S ii - largely because I wanted something light and cheap to throw around (if it gets knocked it doesn't really matter). I use my A7 largely for video, but also as an 'every day carry' camera. I'll start by talking a little bit about the image quality. To give you some background on this, I've worked as a photographer for a number of years now and generally shoot with Canon gear. I was in no way expecting this lens to stack up to my multi-thousand pound L lenses, but I'll be honest; I'm really chuffed: Sharpness-wise, the lens isn't perfect - wide open it's not razor sharp. 1.8 does exhibit some haze but it's nothing that you can't easily correct in post with some mid-tone contrast adjustments. Stop down to 2.5 and most of that haze is gone. Beyond 2.8 the lens out resolves my sensor so I have literally no complaints. The edges of the frame do suffer quite a lot of blur on full frame, but it's almost a pleasing effect to be honest. Certainly not bad enough for me to be worried at this cost. The fall-off is nice wide open and when stepped down. Again, at this price you can't expect the world. That said, I'd happily shoot portraits with this and not worry about distracting backgrounds. As for other visual defects, there is some chromatic aberration, but I'd almost consider this a non-issue now, what with post-correction I never consider fringing to be worry-some at all. In terms of function the lens is decent; the first thing you'll notice when you get it out of the box is that it's incredibly light. I've been a Canon shooter for years and used to use Canon's 50 1.8ii which people always said felt very lightweight - this feels much the same to be honest. It's plastic on plastic as far as the eye can see. In my use case that's not necessarily a bad thing, but I dread to think what would happen if you dropped it, or regularly used it in professional environments. The weakest part of the lens is probably the AF. It's just not fast. That's not to say it's horrendously slow or anything. If this was your first experience of AF on a prime lens you'd probably be over the moon. But having come from the world of Canon's L lenses and their absolutely instant lock-on, this feels decidedly slow. It very very rarely misses its mark. But you're often left wondering whether it's quite sure of what it's looking at. There's a bit of momentary hunting backwards and forwards before it hits focus. Obviously we're talking about a fraction of a second here, it's nothing to be upset about in a sub-200 pound lens. That said, I find it a little annoying. I've listed some images above so you can get an idea - amazon isn't great with photos so my instagram and unsplash pages are both @benjiblobs if you want a better look.