Tips for blog photography: Using a 50mm lens

Today I have such a treat for you guys. One of my best friends, Madison of The Wetherills Say I do is here to share some of her super valuable tips for blog photography and how to use a 50mm lens to get some amazing photos! Madison has such an eye for staging pictures, as well as professional portrait photography (see the photos she took of my family here and here), so I hope you all find this post as helpful as I did!

Hello, friends! I’m so excited to be here today sharing with you guys while Hayley enjoys her maternity leave with sweet Selah. My name is Madison and I blog at The Wetherills Say I Do. You can learn more about me at the end of this post! I’m lucky enough to live in the same city as Hayley so I’ve been able to meet and hold sweet Selah as well as take photos for Hayley from her pregnancy announcement to maternity photos to Selah’s birth and newborn photos. So it’s an honor to be a part of this blog today as Hayley’s a special friend to me

Long before I started blogging, I had a huge passion for both graphic design and photography. These skills have been so valuable for me as a blogger now and blogging has really become an outlet for me to use those two skills! When I got into blogging, I started to see a trend in “blog photography.” If you have a DSLR camera or you’ve thought about buying one, you’ve probably seen tons of posts recommending the highly revered 50mm lens.

Maybe you’ve even gone out and purchased one of these magic lenses. Two things could have happened after buying it. One, you love the lens and notice a huge difference in the quality of your photos. Or maybe two, you got the lens and suddenly feel overwhelmed with the differences between your kit lens and 50mm lens. Either way, I want to share some tips that can help you learn to use your 50mm lens effectively for blogging.

If you’re just now hearing about a 50mm lens from this post, let me tell you a little bit about why these are probably the most talked about lenses for bloggers. First of all, they’re very inexpensive. To give you some frame of reference, one of my favorite lenses (the 35mm f/1.4) is $1500 brand new. The 50mm f/1.8 is $115 new. So as you can see, it’s a really inexpensive first lens which is great if you’re just starting as a blogger or don’t have a huge budget to invest in photo equipment.

Secondly, the 50mm lens has a low aperture of f/1.8. The aperture controls how open or closed your lens gets to allow light in. The lower the number the more open the lens is. This also controls what’s called depth of field, and the reason this lens is a great one is because low apertures give that “bokeh” effect that everyone loves, where the subject is crisp but the background is blurred. This is a great style for food photography and other types of common blog photos.

One of the things I have started to see all around the blog world is people using this lens, but unfortunately, a lot of the pictures end up being too blurry and don’t achieve the best 50mm-esque photo. It’s typical for bloggers or anyone with this lens to think that shooting at the lowest aperture is always going to result in the best photo. However, that’s often not true. Even with my 35mm lens that goes all the way down to 1.4, I rarely shoot that low because the photos don’t end up being crisp like I like them to be. Every once in a while a super blurred background is nice for an artsy photo, but most of the time, it’s better to have just a bit more detail.

To show you the drastic change that aperture can make, here are two photos at the lowest aperture and a high aperture.

Canon 50mm f/1.8, 1/1000 sec

Canon 50mm f/8, 1/200 sec

You can probably tell the drastic difference in the two. In most cases, the top example at 1.8 is going to be preferable. But if you look closely at the flower, you lose all of the detail in the petals and the area that is slightly crisp is very small.

Canon 50mm f/2.2, 1/1600 sec

I prefer shooting around the f/2.2 mark. The photo still has the gorgeous blurred background that we all love, but you maintain a lot more of the detail in the flowers and the photo still looks crisp.

Another potential issue you may find with your 50mm lens is that you cannot get as close to an object as you might have been able to with another lens. It takes some getting used to, but you’ll find that if you just move your camera back slightly as you keep trying to focus your camera, it will work once you get a distance that works with the focal length of the lens. This is especially applicable when you’re shooting food photographs but remember this isn’t a macro lens, so you’re not going to be able to get super close detail shots with this particular lens.

One final thing to get used to with this lens is that there is no zoom! It’s referred to as a prime lens, which means there are no moving parts in the lens and if you have to zoom in, you have to physically move your feet to make that happen. I personally love prime lenses and have no intentions of using zoom lenses ever again. But it’s certainly a bit of a learning curve when you start using a 50mm lens and realize you can’t just zoom in to get closer to a subject.

So to recap, here are some tips for shooting with a 50mm lens:

-Don’t always shoot at the lowest aperture, shoot one or two stops up (f/2.2) and get comfortable using the camera there before moving to a lower aperture.

-Don’t be afraid to move your feet to get the shot you want!

-If you’re photos are turning out grainy, turn down your ISO. Especially the entry level DSLRs (Canon Rebel series or the Nikon D3000’s) don’t handle really high ISO’s very well. So if you’re noticing your photos having a lot of graininess in the background, turn your ISO to the 400-800 range and only up to 1000 if you’re really having a dark photo.

-Practice, practice, practice! A lens like the 50mm takes a lot of time to get used to, and there is no shame in that! Take a walk and practice taking pictures of flowers or leaves and learn to feel comfortable shooting with your new lens!