I’ve been overseas in Canada for a month with my partner visiting my family over the Christmas/New Years holidays, and a couple of days ago we made the lonnnnnnnnng trip back to New Zealand (via an 8-hour layover in Sydney – yikes!).

We had a new Canon 50mm 1.4 lens with us that so far is proving a ton of fun. Here’s a quick snap of my partner sitting at our gate in Sydney airport waiting to board the plane, shot at f1.6. The huge apertures on this lens make for great low light captures and they turn the most humdrum or messy of backgrounds into a thing of beauty. I have to say that at apertures larger than f2 there is a certain softness in the image, rather like the gauziness of a lensbaby, but it’s totally acceptable if you add some snap back in post (the post-pro on this pic took less than 5 minutes using 3 standard Photoshop actions and some very rough masking).

I’m really looking forward to using this lens a lot more in future to really see what it’s capable of.

About the Author

I'm a freelance photographer in Christchurch, New Zealand who does promotional & editorial portraiture, and commercial & advertising photography.