Which Lens for Canon eos 1000D?
 

Hi - first post here.

I was wondering if anyone could give me some advice - I recently bought the Canon EOS 1000D with the 18-55mm lens with it - which is great but one of the things I really want to start doing is taking photos at gigs.

Most of the ones I will be doing will be in small venues, low level lighting and the like.

I have been advised to buy the Canon 50mm f1.8 mk 11 lens and was wondering if anyone had any experience of this with the 1000d - I dont really want to buy it if its not going to be right for the job and would welcome any recommendations/suggestions or pointers to previous threads regarding this - I have searched but not really come up with anything!

Thanks

Hello miranda, welcome to WPF. The 50mm f/1.8 is certainly as fast a lens you are likely to find at a reasonable cost. My question would be, how far away from the performers are you going to be, and how tightly framed do you want your pictures to be?

It might be worth going to a typical venue when a gig isn't on and, with a friend, seeing if the framing is going to be as you want it. You can use the 18-55 set to 50mm for this experiment. If it's not possible to access a venue, you could still do this experiment somewhere else with a friend posing at the kind of distance you expect to be from the artists.

If you find that 50mm is rather wider angle than you want your pictures to be, then you're looking at spending rather more money for a fast long lens.

Duncan

i would 2nd the 50m 1.8 mk 2 ive had one of these for the past 3 years great lens for portraits, build quality is a bit crap but has nice sharp optics for the price picked mine up for 60 quid on ebay new with a uv filter

I'd agree that the 50 f1.8 is a nice, cheap low light lens, but agree with Duncan that it's worth using your kit lens to work out with 50mm will be the right focal length. If so then there's a 50 f1.8 up for sale on another forum for a good price - http://www.ukbirdphotographers.net/f...hp?f=27&t=2756

The 50 f/1.8 is certainly a "fast" lens, I have one, but it does sometimes struggle to focus in low light. Might be worth spending the extra on the 50mm f/1.4 if you can afford it.