So you did it. Ready to try the advanced options and features of a high-end digital camera, you sprung for a Digital SLR like the Canon Rebel XTi or the Nikon D40x. And who can blame you? Right now, digital SLRs are dirt cheap and offer a feature set that the point-and-shooter can only dream of. By all accounts, you made a good decision.

But life for the Digital SLR owner, at least out of the box, isn’t all peaches and cream. While some digital SLRs don’t include a lens at all, others come with what is known as a kit lens. This is typically an entry-level lens, designed to give the digital-SLR owner a basic option for taking photos. It doesn’t do a whole lot well. Typically, this is a wide-angle lens, making sports or distance shots difficult. The kit lens is usually quite dark as well, with a maximum aperture in the 3-4 range. This becomes frustrating quickly, as it’s difficult to take pictures indoors or to freeze any sort of movement with an aperture so high. Before long, the frustrated digital-SLR owner is already ready to upgrade.

One of the best things about a digital SLR is the ability to interchange lenses. To get rid of the kit lens, it’s as simple as pressing a button and taking it off the camera. But what should you put in its place? Some lenses easily cost upwards of a thousand dollars, making finding a replacement for the kit lens a pricey proposition. Fortunately, there is one class of lens that offers excellent optics and options at a dirt-cheap price: the 50mm prime lens.

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What is a prime lens? A prime lens is a lens that operates only at a single focal length. Unlike the kit lens and many lenses on consumer digital cameras, there is no zoom involved on a prime lens — what you see is what you get. Not having the flexibility of a zoom lens forces the photographer to move around to frame his or her shot better, a definite minus for the prime lens. But this is offset by a cheaper price tag and sharper optics.

In the era of film cameras, a 50mm lens is what is known as a normal lens. This means that it approximated the field of fiew of a photographer’s eye - a pretty boring perspective. But film cameras had what was known as a full-frame sensor, while digital SLRs today largely have a cropped sensor. The reasons behind this are unimportant, but it does have an effect. Because of the cropped sensor, the focal length of a lens on most digital SLRs is multiplied by a factor of 1.3x or 1.6x on most digital SLRs. On the Canon Rebel XTi, for example, a 50mm lens becomes the equivalent of an 80mm lens - a good, midrange telephoto option. This makes a 50mm lens that much more valuable on a digital SLR.

Portrait by Roslan Tangah taken by the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 Lens

Because lens manufacturers had been making 50mm lenses for film cameras for so long, they got the design down pretty well. It isn’t a hard focal length to manufacturer optics for, meaning these lenses make sharp images and have low apertures while remaining expensive. Both Canon and Nikon make 50mm consumer primes for their digital SLRs -and both cost only around $100. This is an absolute steal. Both the Canon and Nikon 50mm lenses have an aperture of f/1.8, which is incredibly low. This makes the 50mm prime lens well-suited for indoor and low-light photography, as the lens will be capable of handling much lower shutter speeds. The 50mm lens also makes a fantastic portrait lens, as the low aperture allows a photographer control over the depth-of-field in an image, creating nicely blurred backgrounds.

Is there any downside? Not any major ones. The build quality on these lenses aren’t fantastic, as most are made of plastic. The optics aren’t top of the line, either, but even professionals would have no problem using these lenses in a pinch. Neither of those changes the fact that every beginning digital SLR owner should own a 50mm prime. In terms of value, you won’t find a better deal than these lenses. You’ll notice an immediate advantage over the kit lens and will be able to practice and master different forms of photography that otherwise wouldn’t be possible. Plus, you’ll just feel like a pro as you swap out lenses back and forth.

Here are links for the Canon and Nikon versions of the 50mm prime:

Canon 50mm Prime
Nikon 50mm Prime

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