Today I'm going to give you some tips for using a 50mm F1.8 lens, whether that be the version from Canon or from Nikon (or for anyone else for that matter!)

Really, what we're talking about today is any entry level, inexpensive 50mm F1.8 lens, and how you can use it get the sharp, awesome images it's capable of.

I know that many of you will have either the Canon 50mm f 1.8 lens or the Nikon version, because it's probably the lens that most people go for when they're upgrading from their kit lens.

That’s mainly because it's relatively inexpensive compared to the price of other lenses, but also because that 50mm focal length is really useful on both a full frame or a crop frame camera.

Plus, the lens itself is small, it's lightweight, and most importantly, it’s a fantastic lens for the price!

But I know from experience there’s a bit of a learning curve with it!

In fact, the Canon 50mm F1.8 was the first lens that I bought - along with the Tamron 28 to 75mm zoom lens - because I had kept hearing about the quality of the lens for the price, how tack sharp my images were going to be compared to the kit lens…

…but unfortunately, it didn't quite work out like that! A lot of my images from that time just looked really soft, or the focus wasn't where I wanted it, and to be honest, I wasn’t entirely happy at wasting $125!

But once you have a few essential tips for using the 50mm 1.8 lens, I promise you’re images will be sharper and clearer, and MUCH more like the images you’d been hoping to get!

So, let’s go ahead and dive into the tips that will make this lens the tack sharp monster you hoped it would be…

#1 Don’t Shoot Everything at F1.8

When using a 50mm F1.8 lens, it's important to resist the temptation to shoot at the widest aperture.

I know how tempting it is, especially if you have come from using the kit lens where your maximum aperture might have been F5.6 or F4 or F3.5 and then you get this lens that can open all the way up to F1.8 🎉😀🎉😀

So what many photographers do, and myself included, is they tend to shoot EVERYTHING at f 1.8.

While using F1.8 can certainly create a beautiful bokeh effect, the problem is the depth of field can be so narrow at this aperture that it then becomes extremely difficult to get the area you want in focus, and all you'll end up with is a ton of unusable shots.

Let’s say, for example, you were taking a portrait image, and you used F1.8.

You will notice that you'll frequently get another area in focus rather than the eye - either the nose or the eyebrow or even the tip of the eyelashes.

(In other words you have something else sharp in the frame but not the eye that you were going for!)

Another common situation with a portrait is if you don't have your subject facing you directly (in other words they're turned slightly away from the camera) you will see that you'll get the eye closest to the camera to be razor sharp, but the eye behind is very soft even though it is only out of being on the same focal plane by a mere centimeter or two.

That’s certainly happened to me!

If you look back at my images from around that time, I have loads of images where we've got one eye sharp and the other one soft and that's because I was shooting everything at F1.8.

So my advice to you would be to use a slightly higher F number; I would suggest around F2.8.

You will still throw the background out of focus and get lots of nice creamy bokeh, but I guarantee you'll get more of your shots looking tack sharp, and most importantly, getting the right areas of the scene in focus.

One thing to note here is that if you are using F1.8 just to try to get a nice blurry background, you don't have to go down that low in order to do that!

You can definitely get background blur even at F4 or even F5.6 if you do the other steps right!

(Not sure what they are? Download this Free Guide to Shooting in Aperture Priority Mode and it will help you out!)

#2 There is a minimum focusing distance for this lens

Let's move on now to the second tip I have for you, which is to keep in mind the minimum focusing distance.

50mm lenses are not macro lenses, and they need a bit of distance between the camera lens and the subject - in fact, you want to be at least 45 CM away from the subject.

If you're too close and you try and focus, you'll hear the focus motor of the lens; it starts whirring and clunking about and it can't achieve focus.

So if you hear this, take a step back because it could simply be that you're too close to the subject to get focus!

#3 Everything will look closer than it really is

If you are using a cropped body camera (and I’m going to hedge a bet you most likely are if you're using this lens) remember that what you see through your viewfinder is going to look closer than it actually is.

This threw me for a little while because I would always end up a little bit too close to my subject because I wasn't prepared for just how zoomed in everything would look!

Plus, bear in mind that because it’s a prime, if you want to get closer or further away from your subject, you have to physically do it, so it’s easier to try to get your positioning right from the get go, or like me, you’ll end up with lots of shots where you accidentally “chop” off the fingers and toes in your shots.

I would recommend standing a little bit farther back than you would when taking in the scene with the naked eye, and that will give you enough room around your subject.

As a side note to this, the 50mm focal length on a crop frame camera body makes an excellent portrait lens!

You'll get really pleasing background blur and it will slim the face ever so slightly, so it really is a fantastic focal length for portraits on a crop frame camera.

#4 Make Sure You Use A High Enough Shutter Speed

One of the benefits of being able to use low aperture numbers (such as F2.0 or F2.8) is that it enables you to use faster shutter speeds.

I rarely drop below 1/100 when hand holding my camera, and when it comes to photographing people, I use at least 1/125 and for children, I go much higher than that - around 1/200 if they are reasonable still, 1/500 or more if they are active.

(Not sure about shutter speeds? Grab our free camera settings cheat sheet and get suggested settings for Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO!)

Another side note here: you'll be much better cranking up the ISO to get the shutter speed you need, rather than being tempted to use F1.8, unless you're really, really sure of your focusing skills, and working out your depth of field.

I understand that you might be worried about introducing noise by using a higher ISO number, but don't be too concerned. It's much, much, much better to have an in focus image with a little noise - that is fixable in processing - than have a soft image due to motion blur which isn't.

(Want to read more about how to keep noise down in your photos? Give this a read!)

#5 - Choose Your Own Focus Point.

This tip actually goes back a little bit to depth of field.

Remember that I said the depth of field can be so narrow when using your aperture wide, or nearly wide, open. That’s why it’s SO much better to know exactly where the focus point is going, instead of letting the camera choose the focus point for you. (In fact, it's actually always better to do it yourself, it just becomes even more crucial the shallower your depth of field is!)

By choosing your own focus point, you will get much sharper images overall, because you’ll get exactly the right area of the scene in focus.

Getting sharp focus is one of the things we talk about in my Beginners Bootcamp, so if you are new to photography, be sure to check that out too!

#6 - F1.8 is the SOFTEST aperture of the lens.

Most lenses, including the 50mm f 1.8 (regardless of whether it's Canon or Nikon or someone else's) are always slightly sharper when not used at their widest aperture. In other words, when you DON’T use them at F1.8.

The sweet spot of these lenses can vary from lens to lens, but generally the sharpest point of your lens will be when you use an aperture of around F8.

But that doesn’t mean that we need to use F8 to get a sharp shot, because we don't need for everything in the frame from the centre to the outermost edges to be tack sharp all of the time, but it does mean that we want to shoot at least two stops down from the widest aperture.

So on a Canon or Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens, shooting at around f 2.8 or F3.5 will be enough to give you a really excellent level of sharpness, but still let you get enough light into your camera via the aperture for low light scenes, AND give you that blurry background.

The lens sharpness is another reason why I recommend shooting at f 2.8 rather than f 1.8! (Remember, you can grab that camera settings cheat sheet if you need it too)

So let's move on now to the final tip I have for you, which is arguably the most important one out of all of these….

#7 - The photographer is more important than the gear!

Honestly, it's not the the gear that matters, it's the person holding it!

You absolutely can take stunning images with your 50mm F1.8 - you just need to learn how to use it. Learning about light, how to expose correctly, using interesting compositions and knowing how to get tack sharp images will all have a much bigger impact on how your final images turn out, regardless of which lens or camera they were taken with.

So spend some time learning about these things - exposure, light, colour, focus and composition - so that you can create images with that wow factor with whatever gear you have.

We have loads of free and paid resources for you here at Live Snap Love to help you with that - in fact, here’s a few you might want to check out (or skip to the Beginners Bootcamp to get a lovely step by step guide!)