Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

BUILD QUALITY: Let’s first talk about the build quality of this new lens. The 50 STM has had a massive upgrade in this area, and feels absolutely fantastic. From the moment I picked up the lens, I knew that it was a complete redesign from the old model, and it sure needed it. On the rear of the lens we now have a metallic mount, something I’m so glad to see. Moving up from the plastic mount has increased it’s weight slightly, but also hugely increases the longevity of this lens. On the front we’ve now got a 49mm filter thread, which is even smaller than the old 52mm thread.And even the little things like the AF/MF switch has gotten an upgrade. It’s no longer a little button that seems like it could break easily. Which is just great to see. FOCUS RING: One of the old nifty fifty’s worst parts was it’s focus ring. It was small, fiddly and in the wrong posititon at the end of the lens. And fortunately on the new 50 stm it’s all been changed. The new focus ring is fantastic. The new focus ring is very similar to the ones used in the 24mm STM and the 40mm STM, and is wider now making it very easy to pull focus with. Something that was almost impossible to do on the old version. It’s still a focus by wire system, but I quite enjoy that these days. Not only that, but it’s now also full time focus which means no more breaking the lens when you forget to take it out of Autofocus. MACRO: Now this is definitely not a macro specific lens, but one area in which they did upgrade this lens is it’s minimum focus distance, which means you can get a little closer to your subject. Where as on the old nifty fifty the closest you could get was 45cm away, now the new model you can take photos from around 35cm. And paired up with a crop sensor body like the Canon 70d, you can really get some nice close up shots with lens before investing in a dedicated macro solution. BOKEH: Now even though the nifty fifty was a cheap lens, it still produced some fantastic images with a very shallow depth of field. It’s bokeh was a little funny though because it only had 5 aperture blade. On the new 50 stm this has now been upgraded to 7 rounded aperture blade and I’ve found that it produces some lovely bokeh. It’s very smooth and very creamy, and because it’s not a funny shape, it’s also not so distracting. Now to me it’s not a huge deal because I didn’t mind the old 50’s bokeh shapes, but I guess it is a nice upgrade. AUTOFOCUS: Of course one of the biggest new changes to this lens is the inclusion of an STM or stepping motor. Now I’ve used the 24 stm, 40 stm, 18-135 stm and I’ve been impressed with them all. And I can safely say the 50mm STM is just as good, it's very fast and snappy and a massive upgrade from the old version. IMAGE QUALITY AND SAMPLES: So it’s all well and good to talk about the lens, but I always think it’s good to take a look at a few sample images to see just how good it is. Please take a look at the attached images on this review to see. From my testing I’ve got to say I’ve been so impressed with this lens. Especially for $125. The bokeh looks fantastic, chromatic aberation has been greatly reduced compared to the old version, and vignetting if almost no existent. Once you knock it down to around f2.8 this lens is about as sharp as you’d get for any lens around this price range. Colours are handled very well as well and can really pop if you get them in the right conditions. So overall I've loved the new 50 STM, what a brilliant lens.