SEL50F18 Test

[Dmitri Zigany]

The way I usually work is that I have the camera in full manual, but with face detection activated. Then when I need to I hit the 'push focus' to let the camera do the work. With the stock lens that works really well. The 50mm seems considerably slower at both auto focus and face detection though.
I'm curious if any improvement were made to the new black 50mm/1.8 or if it was a purely cosmetical change (want the new black anyway!).
The Sony lenses are almost impossible to use manually, but I like them for the auto focus, optical stabilisation and their light weight.

Tom, the stock lens is a 18mm-200mm lens. But it's f3.5 to f6.3.

[Tom Van den Berghe]

Dmitri,

Thx for the reply. With a manual lens face detection doesn't work (I thought )
black is a pure cosmetical change I think.I read avalable since october 2013 I read somewhere.

I was wrong, the stocklens is 18mm on his widest.(63mm is filderdiameter)

SEL50F18 has autofocus, sharp image (I read alot), lightweight, now in black, optical stabilisation, not to expensive.

[Dmitri Zigany]

That is correct, face detection only work with Sony e-mount lenses.

I have the old silver version of the 50mm. It's a decent lens. But I wish it was black! ;)

[Chris Harding]

Hi Tom

I had the 50mm F1.8 and really didn't find it very useful at weddings. You need to be too far away and I also find a prime very limited at weddings as at our weddings you often have space issues. For me a fast zoom works much better. I use a Tamron 17-50 F2.8 or when I need to get even closer, a Tokina 11-16 F2.8 (both are constant aperture)

These are both manual focus lenses but it really is so easy to focus using peaking if you on the run. I tend to set the colour to yellow and the level to medium and I keep it on ALL the time (even with auto focus!) Quite often the camera with the stock lens might be slow to focus or might focus on something other than the subject and peaking will tell you this immediately!!

Also bear in mind that if you can get in close then rather use a wide lens as your DOF increases dramatically! (With the Tokina at 11mm F2.8 .. I can actually just leave the lens preset at say, 2' and it will be sharp as a tack from 12" right up to about 30' or more) This is great for doing quick guest interviews.

I tend to use wider angles a LOT more than tighter angles at weddings anyway so for me primes just don't work.

Chris

[Tom Van den Berghe]

Chris,

I tested peaking but I don't understand what this does? I see yellow lines in the LCD screen. What does that mean? Sometimes I see no yellow lines?

When filming a face there are no yellow lines,

[Chris Harding]

Hi Tom

All focus peaking does is outline the edges of your subject in the colour you have chosen when that part of the subject is actually in focus. Some of the E-Mount lenses are very slow to autofocus (I found the 50mm was slow! ) so peaking will tell you whether the lens has actually found focus or not ...faces don't react well to peaking hard edge objects will work better so you may just get peaking on a lady's earring for instance but not on her face. Hard edge objects are the best that have straight vertical edges (like doors)

Peaking is still very useful for checking you are in focus even if the face itself doesn't peak something near it will always peak so if someone is standing next to a doorframe and the doorframe highlights in yellow then you can be fairly sure the person leaning against the same frame will also be in focus!

As already mentioned, I have mine on all the time and it's quite amazing to see actually how long the stock lens takes to focus in some cases.

Chris