It’s true. There is only 50mm separating you from the photos you always wanted to take. Of course it is a 50mm prime lens that is between you and your goal. All the happy owners of this wonderful lens will testify on its behalf as to how their skill where strengthened by this marvel.

You’re only 50mm Away from Becoming a Better Photographer

Lens testing is fun and informative. While it won’t turn you into a Cartier-Bresson, it will have a visible impact on your photography too: if you understand the way your lenses behave, you’ll be able to make the most of them under all circumstances. For example, you might have one lens that you know to work well across the entire aperture range, and another that’s otherwise OK but starts to break down wide-open at maximum tele. Knowing this, you could make the intelligent decision to use the first lens wide-open for a shorter shutter speed, to minimize camera shake — but stop down the second lens, risking camera shake to get rid of the lens softness, or bumping up the ISO a notch, knowing that the added noise will hurt less than the lens softness.

When most of us talk digital cameras, we talk megapixels, ISO, image noise, shot-per-second speed and image processing. We’re tech geeks. But really, none of that stuff matters as much as your camera’s lens.