This image is proof that if you are a Canon owner you don’t need to spend $1,400+ on a 50mm 1.2 lens, or $1,400+ on a 35mm 1.4 lens or $1,600+ on a 24mm 1.4 lens, to get really beautiful bokeh. This shot was taken with the $100 50mm 1.8 lens. That’s right, one hundred dollars. Go buy it here.
50mm 1.8 200 ISO 1/400 sec
I stumbled on this image a few days ago while cleaning off my hard drive on my macbook pro, freeing up about 30GB of space (yay for me!). I didn’t even know I had this shot, and in fact don’t ever remember seeing it before, or doing the black and white conversion on it. I have a lot of these types of files, shots I’ve taken that get filed away in some random spot, never to be seen again. I was thrilled to discover this, because I absolutely love it. Now if only I could remember what the B/W conversion was I did on it. 
i have this lens.. i love it!
I have this lens too, and my love for it cannot be expressed in mere words. Ha ha! I got it for even less than $100, too — I think it was like $80 when I bought it. Wish I had bought 2.
I am seriously thinking about buying this lens. I have been looking for one with a wider aperture and this sounds great! The price is amazing…I have bookmarked it so hopefully there will be one left when I am ready to buy it.
Fun shot! It’s so hard not to focus on their sweet noses though. 
How is the quality of the actual lens? One reviewer mentioned it fell apart after a few months. But a $100 sounds so appealing!
I just recently shot some cute doxies with this lens with wonderful results. I’ve had it for a couple of years but not used it much up until the last few months. Love the bokeh. They don’t call it the “nifty fifty” for nothing! The noisy focus mechanism on it scares one of my cats silly though!
Gorgeous image! Yes, that lens can produce some nice stuff… I have the 1.4 four and love it! I think it’s worth the $300 extra for the auto focus.
@katherine- mine is also the $80. I think they upgraded the USM on this lens, hence the ‘whopping’ $20 price increase, lol. ;-). @rinalia- the casing is plastic, so I guess if you are being really hard on it and banging it around all over the place or keep it in an unpadded camera bag it might break. given that lenses are glass, I, and I imagine most people, are pretty careful not to do that. I’ve had mine for about 3 years. it’s still in the same shape as when I got it. @deborah- yeah that autofocus is noisy! I use the manual focus on this lens about 75% of the time, which obviously kills the weird mechanical hunting noise of the autofocus. you might want to try that on your kitty.
@alexa- this lens also has autofocus, but I’ll bet the 50mm 1.4 produces even better sharpness and bokeh.
I only recently upgraded to the 50 1.4 back in January.. I used the 50mm 1.8 for two years and rocked it. It was just pretty much used up so I decided to upgrade!
I love it….i have the 1.4 and i like it…!!!
I thought the discussion comparing the f/1.8 to the f/1.4 in the photo net forum link below was informative. After reading some of that, I’m not sure I’d shell out the extra few hundred dollars for the f/1.4. I’m ok with my f/1.8 for now.
If you really want a creative blur, are shooting an animal that isn’t moving and you have time to manual focus, try a lens baby composer with the dual-optic. That’s a 50mm and it comes with aperture rings for f/2 to f/22.
Oops, sorry, the link I included combined the last sentence of my comment. Didn’t mean to do that.
Oops- left out the “faster” before autofocus- I’ve heard the 1.8 is really slow.
“Now if only I could remember what the B/W conversion was I did on it.” Have you ever thought of or heard of Gridiron Flow? I know Scott Kelby talked about it a while ago. It tracks what you have done with your files, pretty incredible really.
Love it! I need to use mine more…thanks for the inspiration!
I agree, you dont need a super expensive lens to get beautiful bokeh. I got my 50mm f1.4 for $250 and it rarely comes off my camera. It produces amazing bokeh.
Beautiful picture!
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