Say you’re looking for a new lens for your Canon 5D Mark II camera and you’re currently using the Canon EF 24-105 f/4L IS USM lens with it. The 24-105 lens has a nice reach, is L build, has IS, but lacks speed in the dark. When photographing indoor with low lights and no flash, I noticed that this lens is not fast enough to freeze movement of people. Question is: what lens to pick?
Of course it should be a lot faster, but what else? Get a prime or a zoom?
And if you’re going for a prime, which focal length would be the best?
Looking at the range of Canon zoom lenses available, they seem to have a maximum aperture of f/2.8. As this is only one full stop faster, I wonder whether this would improve taking photographs in low light situations a lot. It seems to me that this one stop will not make a very big difference.
For this reason a prime would be a better solution as a lot of fast primes are available on the market. The idea is to look at lenses of f/2 and faster as that would give a full 2 stop improvement. Choosing a f/1.4 will even give a full 3 stop improvement. In contrary to the zoom lenses, there are suddenly a lot of options and they go up to f/1.2. Here are some of those lenses:
- EF 24 f/1.4L II USM
- EF 28 f/1.8 USM
- EF 35 f/1.4L USM
- EF 35 f/2
- EF 50 f/1.2L USM
- EF 50 f/1.4
- EF 50 f/1.8
- EF 85 f/1.2L II USM
- EF 85 f/1.8 USM
- EF 100 f/2 USM
- EF 135 f/2L USM
- EF 200 f/2L IS USM
Update October 30th, 2010:
Looking at the list of lenses, there are plenty to choose from. Some aspects to narrow down that list are: price of the lens, type of photographs that will be taken, looks of the lens, weight of the lens, size, build quality (water resistant), and probably some more.
For me, I don’t want to walk around carying a white lens. Such a lens will attract too much attention when trying to take pictures of people. This makes it harder to get a natural picture. No 12 can thus be removed from the list.
The build quality is important as I’ll be carying that lens around where it could be moisty. Such an environment shouldn’t brick my lens (or camera). Most L-lenses are properly built and, from what I read, some non-L’s. This would narrow down the list to something like this:
- EF 24 f/1.4L II USM
- EF 35 f/1.4L USM
- EF 50 f/1.2L USM
- EF 85 f/1.2L II USM
- EF 135 f/2L USM
The 85mm is way too expensive so I can leave that one out. I’m not sure about the 135mm. Reviews say that this is a remarkable lens, but I’m not so sure whether I like the 135mm on itself. Looking at the pictures I have taken with the 24-105mm, more of them are taken between 24 and 50 than above 50 so I’ll move this lense aside.
The resulting list now includes three lenses: 24, 35 and 50mm. Three to go… so let’s get back to the list of taken pictures. It says that most of the pictures are taken around 50mm which decides it for me. The other two are probably also a very good choice, though I’ll try the 50mm first.
