Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM

Eric: I rented this as a surprise for my friend who was attending my wedding and shoots with a Canon T2i. He usually uses slow zoom lenses, so I picked this lens up for him and told him it would be great for night time shots at the reception. He got some wonderful low light shots with it wide open at f/1.4. 50mm was a little tough (hard to get group shots in close spaces) to work with on a 1.6x crop camera though, so in retrospect if I were to recommend a low light lens to him for wedding receptions again I might suggest the Canon f/1.8 28mm for his T2i.

Nissa: What can I say? If you are looking at renting the 50mm 1.4 instead of the 50mm 1.2, chances are it's a budget thing. And if the price is right, you can't go wrong with this lens. I have shot stills with the 50mm 1.4 on a 5D classic, and stills + video with a 5D MKII. Color quality and sharpness are excellent. I strongly believe that the Canon quality - the creamy skintones and soft light are completely exemplified through this lens. It is fabulous for portraits. At f2.0, it's dreamy. The major concern I have with the 50mm 1.4 is both a plus and minus - it can shoot usable images at 1.4. When shooting with super low light, I often had issues with the AF hunting and sometimes, not locking at all. Again, this is a plus and a minus. That's a very big aperture, and I am not surprised that this lens would have some problems with AF there. It feels like the big aperture might be a bit too much for the technical restrictions of this $350 lens. Deal breaker? Absolutely not, if you can work it. Keep in mind: the build quality on this little guy is not fabulous. It has a metal mount unlike the 50 1.8, but the rest of the body is plastic and it can feel a bit cheap, especially when you are using the manual focus ring, which I really find to be unpleasant. If you are shooting video, you're not going to get a super fluid motion. I don't find it to be a total drag, but it is something to consider.