I am borrowing a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens from a friend, so I took it outside this morning with my tripod to see what the depth of field (how much of the total photo is in focus) would look like at some of the lower f-stop numbers. My kit lens that I usually use, really starts at f/5.6. For these shots, I had my camera set to Av, so I was changing the f-stop, but letting the camera pick the shutter speed. I used my tripod for these.
f/1.8
f/2.5
f/3.2
f/5.6
What I am hoping to show here, is the amount of background blur that the lower f-stop numbers can provide. This is one of the reasons that this lens would be good for portraits. The lower the f-stop number, the more background blur, so the photo with the least blur is the last one inserted in the post that is f/5.6
There are two other things that I noticed about this lens right away. One is that it is noisy when using auto focus, that would make it hard to sneak up on bugs. I will be attempting to sneak up on bugs, just to see if I can with this lens. The second is that it is not image stabilized, which could mean some blur if you were holding the camera instead of using a tripod. However, because it is a small lens, there is not a lot of weight, so I am curious to see how much hand-held shake is going to be an issue as I use the lens.
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