The Wild Photographer

Snapshot: Why Every Photographer Should Own a Nifty Fifty Lens

• Episode 79

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In this snapshot episode of The Wild Photographer, Court dives into one of the most beloved, affordable, and surprisingly powerful lenses in photography: the Nifty 50.

A “Nifty 50” is the nickname for a 50mm prime lens with a very fast aperture, often somewhere around f/1.8, f/1.4, or even f/1.2. These lenses are famous for being small, lightweight, relatively inexpensive, and capable of producing beautifully shallow depth of field. In other words, they can give your photos that dreamy background blur, strong subject separation, and low-light flexibility that usually comes with much more expensive gear.

While a 50mm lens may not seem like the obvious choice for nature and wildlife photography, Court makes the case that it deserves a permanent spot in just about every photographer’s kit. It may not be the lens you use all day, every day, but it can become your “X factor” lens — the one you pull out when you want a different look, a creative constraint, or a way to make images that feel a little more cinematic, intimate, or unexpected.

In this episode, Court explains what makes the Nifty 50 so useful, why it’s such a great lens for beginning photographers, how it can help you learn aperture faster, and where it fits into a travel, nature, portrait, cultural, or even video workflow.

Key Takeaways

  • A Nifty 50 is a 50mm prime lens with a fast aperture, often f/1.8 or f/1.4.
  • It is one of the most affordable ways to experience very shallow depth of field.
  • It is small, lightweight, and easy to keep in your camera kit.
  • It is not the perfect lens for classic landscapes or traditional wildlife close-ups, but it can create fantastic, creative nature images.
  • It excels at portraits, travel, culture, food, markets, low light, and video.
  • It is especially valuable because it teaches aperture through real-world use.
  • For many photographers, the inexpensive version is more than enough.

Court Whelan on YouTube
Court shares weekly photography videos, editing tutorials, on-site video lessons, and practical tips for growing as a photographer.
https://www.youtube.com/@courtwhelan

The Wild Photographer Podcast
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Court (00:01)
Hey friends, welcome back to The Wild Photographer. As you may have heard in my recent episodes, I am adding two more podcast episodes per month. So no longer is it bi-weekly, I'm doing weekly episodes, so four a month. And this is one of those new ones that I'm adding. So every other week, I am going to be doing a snapshot episode. These are shorter episodes on smaller topics.

Because let's be honest, not all topics in the world of photography are really robust or really detailed. Sometimes it just is helpful to get straight to the point about very specific bits of gear, very specific techniques that you might use once a trip, or even in the case of today's episode, a lens that I might use only once or twice on each photo trip. because today in this snapshot episode, I am talking about the Nifty 50 lens.

Court (00:45)
one of my favorite specialty lenses out there, and really probably one of my favorite lenses, especially for beginning photographers, all the way really to very advanced photographers. It's one of these lenses that I think should live in every photographer's camera kit. that goes for landscape photographers, wildlife photographers, cultural photographers, especially portrait photographers and people photographers.

but it has a really strong place in a nature photography kit as well. So let me explain. Well, let's step back and talk about what a nifty-50 lens is. So this is not a term that I've personally come up with. This is out there. I've I've got this from somewhere. It's basically a term to describe the whole suite of lenses that are 50 millimeter primes with essentially very, very fast apertures, like low F numbers.

It might be f1.4, 1.8, sometimes 1.2. There's there are many, many variations, not just between camera brands, but usually each camera manufacturer actually has their their own variations as well. So basically it's a 50 millimeter prime.

So as I mentioned, I I really think this is one of the first lenses anyone should buy, other than the normal kit lens that comes with your camera kit, for a few different reasons. One is this idea, this fact that they are extremely fast lenses, like again, f1.4, 1.8, but at a very, very easy to digest price level. Like if you were to try to buy F1.4 glass and really any other lens, it would cost so much money, but these lenses can be like

one or two hundred dollars for an extremely fast piece of glass. And as you may well know, this this aperture rating not only allows you to shoot in really low light, but it gives you that incredible background blur. So they're really amazing lenses. And I believe the reason that they're so inexpensive for such a fast aperture is because it's kind of easy to make that middle of the road.

50 millimeter from like an optical physics standpoint. so it's just a it's an amazing way to shoot with a crazy fast lens very early on in assembling your camera kit and your photography career, photography second career, or whatever it might be. ⁓ it just gives you uncanny abilities very early. And I think using a very fast lens, i.e. those small F numbers, really teaches you about aperture

In a way that you couldn't do in any other way other than just physically using a fast lens. So it's it's absolutely amazing.

So that's of course my recommendation. I have it in my camera kit at all times. I'll be totally honest, you know, I hinted at this idea of being a specialty lens. It is definitely my X factor lens in most cases. it doesn't live in my camera all the time. It probably doesn't live on even 20 or 30% of the time. It is it's something that I put on for a couple hours every trip, or less than an hour each day on a longer photo trip.

But even though it doesn't live on my camera very often, when I do get the shots, it might be my favorite shot of the trip or one of my favorite shots of the trip because it just gives you this really interesting look to your photos. Again, because of this incredibly shallow a depth of field. Is a 50 millimeter great for landscapes? ⁓ not really. Is it great for wildlife? not really. Is it great for people and cultural photography? Yes, absolutely. But even with those landscapes and wildlife, although 50 millimeters is very middle of the road, it's not superlative.

For either wide angle or telephoto. It's just that it's very much in the middle. What you can get with it kind of supersedes the lack of ability to shoot ultra wide or to shoot with a big telephoto. It just gives you this incredible power to shoot in extremely low light, shoot very fast shutter speeds if you need to, and get that beautiful background blur. So let's kind of move into how to use it. So it's really all about those big apertures, i.e. the shallow depth of field or the small f numbers.

So, of course, you know, you could shoot at F5.6 or F8 if that's on your camera and you're just, you know, using constraint as a mother of creativity, as I like to say often, and go out for a whole day and shoot your landscapes and photograph wildlife and people and all sorts of stuff. but really when I put on my camera, I'm using it at that smallest F number. So the model that I have is a an F1.8. As I mentioned, there are other models that are F1.4, F1.2. That means an even

shallower depth of field and even faster shutter speed you can get or a lower ISO. So of course the lower the F number, the more light it lets in. So mine's F1.8. It's still that's very, very good as far as cameras go. Usually most lenses top out at F2.8. So we're talking about, you know, almost a couple of stops greater than F2.8, which is pretty uncanny. So it's all about that shallow depth of field. I'm keeping it on F1.8 pretty much the whole time.

I should also say it's really great for indoor photography. So I mentioned low light, and if you're a nature photographer like me, you're probably thinking of sunrise, sunset, dawn, dusk, blue hour, that sort of stuff. But if you're doing indoor photography, like let's say you're in a safari lodge, you're in a campsite, you're in one of these places where you're actually indoors even in the middle of the day, and you want to get some great shots in that low light setting, great for that too. It's also excellent for street photography.

it's great for photographing food, cultures, markets, that sort of stuff. What it's probably most well known for is its ability to shoot portraits. And this is why so many wedding photographers use this probably almost exclusively, if not like one of their dominant lenses. I fully realize that people and wedding photography is very different from what you might be used to if you're in the nature and wildlife photography world like me. But

Portraits don't only have to be people. They can be portraits of wildlife. They can be portraits of wild flowers. But almost every time I'm on any sort of nature trip, I'm encountering amazing people. It might be fellow travelers, it might be my fellow guides, it might be amazing cultures that we're seeing. And having this as your prime portrait lens is a really nice thing to have in your kit. one thing I haven't mentioned yet, and this is a really important point, something I probably should have started out with.

Is that not only is it cheap, not only is it a really fast lens, but it's very small. It's it can like literally fit in your pocket. It's a very, very small lens. So it's one of those things that, like I mentioned, I don't use it all day, every day on a trip, but it's so easy to pack and it's so easy just to have in your pocket when you do want to throw something on your camera that gives you a really different look and really different abilities. Remember, constraint is a mother of creativity. I often like to put it on my camera and

Towards the end of the trip, once I think I got you know all the shots that I was hoping for, and then some, I will say, well, you know what? Let's use that constraint and let's do some creative shots. Let me photograph wildlife without telephoto, but very, very shallow depths of field. Let me photograph tree bark with you know shooting down the tree so I'm only getting a slice of focus and just weird wacky stuff. Like I said, it's it's great for just about everything, but it's extremely good for shooting at those shallow depths of field.

It's also excellent for video. You know, if you're a budding videographer, if you wish to get into some sort of video, it's really great because it gives you that very cinematic look of that shallow depth of field. I will give you a caveat that if you're shooting at a shallow depth of field with video in anything but extreme low light conditions, you'll want to buy what's called a graduated neutral density filter. And this is a thing that sits on the edge of your lens, it's just a normal filter.

And you can twist it and darken the amount of light or limit the amount getting into your camera. This is important because with videography, we're shooting at relatively slow shutters. We're shooting at like 1/50th of a second, one sixtieth, maybe one over one twenty. And believe it or not, at those very big apertures, i.e. small f numbers, one fiftieth of a second at f1.4 lets in so much light.

That you can already be at ISO 100, ISO 50, and you're still gonna have too much light because of those very, very slow shutter speeds by comparison. So, in other words, you're gonna need to put something in front of your lens to manually darken it for video. For photography, it doesn't really matter if we're shooting midday at ISO 100 and our camera tells us to get a quote unquote even exposure, we gotta be at one two thousandth of a second. For videography, you can't do that because it makes the video look very choppy.

So it's it's good for a lot of things, but there are a few things that it's not especially good for. And I've already mentioned like the key ones is that it's not very wide, so it's not super great for landscapes. There's not much telephoto, so you know you're you're really gonna have to be shooting a landscape shot with wildlife in it. You're not gonna be able to zoom into wildlife because you're fixed at that 50 millimeter.

One important consideration for how you use this lens and whether it does have a little bit more telephoto than you might expect, or maybe it is a little bit wider than you might expect, is if you're shooting with a crop frame sensor. So remember, a lot of the introductory cameras out there, whether it's DSLR or mirrorless, they are typically adding like a 1.6 or a 1.4 multiplier onto any lens that you have. And the reason this is important is that if you have a

Let's say, like a Canon 7D or an R7, which has that crop factor, you have to multiply 50 by 1.6 to get its actual focal length. So that's actually kind of good for wildlife because you are able to get in a little bit further. You have more telephoto capability. Now, on the other hand, if you have a full-frame camera and that 50 millimeters is truly a 50 millimeter, you're not having any sort of multiplier, a 50 millimeter is not.

terrible for landscapes. It's not as wide as we might often like, especially to include some really interesting foreground as well as a lot of sky maybe. so I really like using it on my full frame and I like the fact that I have a full frame for it because it becomes kind of like a relative wide angle shot. Again, this flies in the face of using it for anything wildlife or anything I would need to quote unquote zoom in on.

But 50 millimeters, pretty good in a full-frame camera.

also for travel photography, it's a great travel photography lens because you can get those interesting street scenes and food and marketplaces. But you know, in those settings you generally want to have something a bit more on the wide end of the spectrum. So if you are multiplying 50 by 1.6 and you're getting something that is actually quite telephoto,

know doing the math here it's like I think 80 basically maybe a little bit less if you have a 1.4 crop factor then you might find that it is a little bit more limiting but remember constraint is a mother of creativity so it's still very very good to use force yourself to use even if you are photographing tight markets if you're photographing food etc etc it can be a lot a lot of fun

I want to also mention that there are indeed differences in the variations and you'll find with a lot of camera manufacturers

That they have an intro nifty-50, they have a pro nifty-50. And I generally think of nifty-50s I think the reason that they're so nifty is that they're just such a low price point. but you will often find that they basically have the same specs, you know, there's not much difference between 1.4 and 1.2, but one might be $200 and one might be $2,000.

it is not because of that slight difference in aperture rating that goes into it. You know, sometimes with indoor photography and wedding photography, that half a stop or that one full stop difference can be kind of make or break for great photography. But generally it's the build quality, it's the image quality, the sharpness, the optics that go into it. ⁓ I gotta be honest, like I've played around with expensive nifty fifties, like the $2,000 kind.

Because I like these lenses so much, I was thinking, well, gosh, should I just invest in a really high quality one to get me even better photos? And you know, this is just my two cents. I don't notice a huge difference, to be totally frank. now if you're really into videography and you need that ultra quiet motor or you need a little bit faster focusing speed, they can be great to spend that extra money. But really, I think the the niftiness here is the fact that for a couple hundred dollars, you can break into this.

1.4, 1.8 aperture rating on again, give me whatever focal length that is, it just happens to be 50. I'm in it for the aperture.

So just keep in mind that there are a difference in prices. It's really up to you as to which one you want to go for, but I do think the intro models are extremely valuable. Like there's a lot of value in those low ones, where it's probably not quite as much value in the very expensive ones unless you're really, really into indoor photography.

So then there's a question, are there are there like similar lenses out there? We talked about the Nifty 50, and for a while there was not. Like the 50 millimeter fast aperture class of lenses sort of stood out on its own.

However, I'm seeing a lot of camera manufacturers come out with a lot of other nifty lenses. There are 40 millimeters that are like F2 or F2.8. I'm seeing 16 millimeters at F2.8 that are again very low cost of entry, relatively fast lenses, and differences in focal length. So that might be something you consider as well. However, I still to this day have not seen anything as fast, meaning that super small F number, as a good old Nifty 50.

Remember, the key differentiator here is that incredible aperture. So if you're looking to expand your kit, I highly recommend it if you are trying to push your threshold for photography, learn about aperture fast, get some amazing photos, get a really interesting X factor lens that does not weigh your kit down, that does not weigh your wallet down, or lighten your wallet up, I guess would be more appropriate. The Nifty50 class is just a great lens to consider for your next purchase. At that $200 range,

Gosh, what a what a great birthday or holiday present. I I do recommend them. It always lives in my kit, and I think it should live in yours as well.

So, folks, Thanks for tuning in.

Before we go, I wanted to turn you on to a couple of other photo resources. One is my YouTube channel. If you want to grow even more, learn even more things, Broach topics like photo editing and on-site video tutorials, go to my YouTube channel. I'll have the notes in the description, but it's just search @courtwhelan and you'll find my channel there. And I'm publishing new videos weekly on all sorts of photography things.

Also, if you are enjoying the wild photographer, consider sharing this with a friend. and even better yet, if you are enjoying it and would like to leave a review, it does a lot of good for me. So review on the platform of your choice, whether that's Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or something else. It helps me get the word out there, helps me teach photography to more people and enjoy the beauty of our wild planet.

So thanks so much folks and looking forward to talking to you next time.


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Court Whelan

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