My 2nd Favorite Food Photography Lens – 50mm Fixed is my 2nd pick lens for my food photography. It’s versatile, takes crystal clear photos, is lightweight and rapid fast. I love everything about this lens – including the price!
Picking between my 1st favorite lens and my 2nd favorite lens was almost like picking one of my children over another favorite one. It was excrutiatingly hard! But, there is no doubt that the 105mm lens that I rated as my favorite lens, is worlds apart in how I use it, from my 2nd favorite.
Hitting my list as my 2nd go-to lens for food photography, the 50mm fixed lens is the darling of them all. Most commonly known as the “nifty-fifty”, this lens will produce phenomenal results at a fraction of the cost of nearly every other lens.
If you have to pick one lens for your bag, this should be one of the top two contenders. The second contender being the 24-120mm that I will talk about in my My 4th Favorite Food Photography Lens post that will publish in a few weeks.
What I use:
50mm Fixed Lens. This exact lens is the Nikon AF-S FX NIKKOR 50mm f/1.4G Lens with Auto Focus.
The cost of this lens is roughly $450, and you can get it at Amazon, B&H Photo and Adorama, and possibly your local camera store. I’ve owned this lens since January 2013. To buy it, you can also click on the Amazon affiliate link that I have listed above.
When I use it:
In my food photography, I use this lens when I need to get a lot of scene in a photo. This includes a large tablescape, many place settings, a party post, or a guest hosting scene.
This lens is great for capturing a lot of elements and lot of detail! So, if I have a post that needs to tell a story beyond a single recipe that is the focal point, this is the lens to do it.
How I use it:
This lens for me has multiple purposes, and that is why I struggled whether to list it as my 1st or 2nd favorite lens in my bag. However, as I mentioned in my Free Food Photography How To Series Starts Now kick-off post to this series, if I stay true to my readers in focusing on my favorite food photography lenses, this lens easily fell to the #2 spot.
I love this lens so much, I feel like I owe it an apology, for not being my #1 baby. Trust me, when I write about my favorite walking around lens, I’ll give you a spoiler alert! This is it! 🙂
Put simply, I love this lens as an “everything” lens, but it doesn’t top my list for food photography, because quite frankly it’s a bit stand-offish (i.e. it doesn’t get close enough to the food, for my tastes!).
Why I use it:
The primary reason I use this lens in food photography is that I can capture so much tablescape and story-telling in the scene. I can show that there are multiple place-settings, have props in the background, show the “experience” that is happening around the food, instead of just focusing on the recipe, or the single dish itself. It helps me complete the novel, and not just a chapter or a character, so to speak. To further my capabilities when it comes to photographing food and place-settings I’m also thinking of looking on getting something such as this Osmo Mobile 4 which could enable me to take striking pictures with my mobile phone. Using something such as the Osmo could improve my “on-the-fly” food photography. This also leads to my second point as to why I use the 50mm fixed…
The other reason I use this lens is, it is EXTREMELY light, compact and portable! It makes it a DREAM to carry, use and travel with.
In addition to that (and most importantly), this is a low-light loving machine! A true DREAM LENS where there is darkness. It loves low light situations and it brings bright light to dark scenes. Which is perfect when you’re indoors where lighting is poor!
PROs:
- extremely lightweight and portable
- incredible walking around lens that easily fits in your purse
- can capture a scene, including an entire tablescape to tell a story
- LOVES low light situations and brings bright light to dark spaces and scenes
- is very inexpensive, and has great glass that produces phenomenal photos
- is crystal clear and sharp, catches minute details with razor sharp focus
- is low cost, coming in at roughly $450 offering great value far below it’s capabilities
CONs:
- it’s fixed length limits how close you can get to the food
Did you notice how I can only identify ONE con with this lens?
Me loves me my low light loving baby! 🙂
SUGGESTION: If you can, BUY IT!!! IMO, you can’t help but not love nearly everything about this lens. Click the below link to buy this lens right now!
My 2nd Favorite Food Photography Lens – 50mm Fixed
Renee@Two in the Kitchen says
Waiting anxiously for your next photography post. Your food photography always inspires me and you always have great advice!!
Kristi says
Thank you Renee! That is so kind of you to say. I’m blushing!