Why the Sony 55 mm f1.8 is never leaving my kit
The nifty fifty (plus 5). The Sony 55 mm 1.8 has been one lens that almost never leaves my bag. I bring it everywhere with me. On the street, for cityscapes, portraits, night photography, long exposure shots, rainy shots you name it.
This lens can literally do it all. This lens is actually the lens that I've had the longest so I've had all the time in the world to judge this lens and shoot with it in real life conditions.
1) Size: Coming in at 281 g, this lens is barely even noticeable whenever I bring it along in my bag. Couple that with how small this lens is, it really is effortless to bring everywhere. This means I don't have to worry about bringing the lens with me for shoots. I just throw it in my bag and I'm set. With my bigger lens like the 16-35 gm, I think about the weight, the bulkiness of the lens, how it'll fit with the other gear in my bag, then I gotta start playing tetris and fitting everything in my bag. The easier I can make my life with smaller and lighter gear, the less it gets in the actual photography process. Along with the effortlessness, the small size comes in handy in another aspect of photography: blending in more when it comes to street photography. I'm able to comfortable capture moments without having to worry too much about being confronted by people. Though does it still happen to me? Of course it does. You can't help it, but I can definitely argue that it would happen to me more if I were to go out with let's say a 70-200.
2) My favorite focal length 55mm: Being a prime lens, this lens is not able to zoom in or out. That is all done with your feet and your movement. So if I were to say a focal length that I'm most comfortable with, it would definitely be the 50 mm area. Just a word of caution, any lens can be used for any genre of photography. You can use whatever tool at your disposal to create what you want. Don't be boxed in into certain classifications for lens. Like one of my favorite photographers Professor Hines says, when you are buying a lens and see the box, nowhere on the box will it say portrait lens, landscape lens, etc.
With that being said, the reason why I love this focal length is for multiple reasons. To go more in depth with those reasons, I must explain: I love capturing details and being able to include the area I'm photographing in into the photo. I think this adds a great deal of story into the photo. However, I don't like being too intrusive of people's space and would rather not bother someone just to get a photo. Along with these thoughts, I like having "tighter" photos that are more close up to avoid having anything extra that might distract the viewer from the main subject of the photo. The 55 mm focal length checks all of these boxes for me.
But on the other hand, if I'm able to comfortably get closer to a subject such as for portrait sessions, this lens allows me to do that as well.
It isn't as tight as the 85 mm, but at the same time, I don't have to include certain elements of the environment that I might think would be distracting. And if I do find myself needing to zoom in more, but physically aren't able to? Then I just crop in post.
3) SHARP AF: I don't know if it's just my copy or something, but I've heard similar comments from others who have used this lens so I think I can safely say it. THIS. LENS. IS. SHARP. LIKE. REALLY SHARP. I'm not a pixel peeper by any means. But sometimes I'll be zoomed in like 400% when doing some masking work and I'll just think to myself like damn, this is sharp as hell goddamn.
4) Being a 1.8 lens: Being that this lens is f1.8, this means whenever I'm going out at night for some night photography, I'm able to gather more light, allowing me to lower my ISO to a certain extent for a cleaner image although with great glass, you can easily boost your ISO up higher than usual and still end up with a clean image. I love photographing at night so having a fast lens is a necessity. Of course, a f1.4 or 1.2 would be even better and ideal, but that comes with a tradeoff: a heavier setup which I've discussed previously in this video and a more expensive lens which actually brings me to my next point.
5) Well Priced (Used, not new): I love buying lens used. I think out of all the lens I have, only 2 have actually been purchased new and that's just because they were on sale for a good price. I almost always buy used as you can save so much money that way. The two sites I always use are KEH and MPB. Again, not sponsored by them. I just really trust them and their service. More often than not, what they say on their site is actually an understatement of the actual quality of the lens. Their excellent rated lens can easily be confused for something thats "Like New". This Sony 55 mm 1.8 on KEH with an Excellent + rating is priced at $549. On MPB, with a like new condition rating, it is priced at $524. With tax, that's probably around $600 for a lens like this. At that price? I'd say that a steal. When I first bought this lens used, I paid around $730 and even at that price, I thought it was a pretty good deal. Especially since the retail price of this lens is $998.
At the end of the day, we all have our favorite focal lengths and what we're comfortable shooting with. We all have that one lens we can look to where we know we can get something we like regardless of the conditions or where we're at. For me, that lens is the Sony 55mm 1.8 If you haven't tried it, I highly recommend you do for all the reasons I mentioned earlier. Whatever lens you have, just go out there and shoot as much as you can. Until next time...