The First Canon Lenses You Should Buy
Top pick
A great everyday lens for all sorts of situations, this “thrifty fifty” is amazing in low light and can create lovely blurred backgrounds.
Your first new lens should be affordable, small, and capable of taking outstanding images in low light. You can’t go wrong with the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 STM (80mm equivalent focal length on your APS-C sensor). It’s the most economical tool we can recommend for dramatically improving your low-light photography and producing images sharper than your kit lens can capture. At 5.6 ounces, or a little lighter than a hockey puck, this lens is so easy to bring with you that we’re willing to bet it will become your go-to lens for everyday shooting.
Have you ever seen a picture where the background is out of focus, making the subject pop? Photographers attain that shallow depth of field (only a thin slice of what you’re looking at is in focus, so everything else is blurred) by using a large aperture. A wide-aperture prime lens or “fixed” lens (meaning it doesn’t zoom) like the Canon f/1.8 offers just about the cheapest way to achieve that effect. That wide aperture means that such lenses also do an impressive job of taking photos in low light, and they’re great for shooting indoors or in other challenging lighting situations like concert photography.
On a full-frame DSLR camera, the “nifty fifty” mimics the same natural angle of view as the human eye, making it an ideal focal length for everyday shooting, landscapes, and wider environmental portraits. On a crop-sensor camera, the same lens equates to an even more flattering 80mm focal length, so you’ll capture your subjects without the sort of barrel distortion that wide-angle lenses may cause or the flattening effect of a long focal length.
The newest version of the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 offers a metal mount rather than its predecessor’s plastic one, additional diaphragm blades for smoother out-of-focus areas, and a new STM focusing motor, which makes for faster, quieter autofocus (something that can be especially useful when you’re recording video).
If you’re willing to spend a bit more, the Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM is of higher quality—and capable of gathering even more light—but costs three times as much as our top pick. Of the company’s two 50mm offerings, the f/1.4 version is a better lens, but if you’re just starting out and you aren’t sure what you want out of a lens, the f/1.8 version is supremely affordable and worth getting as you feel your way around.
