The Nifty Fifty

The Nifty Fifty

Hello all! Thank you for the kind comments on here and social media about our guest room. :) I’m so happy with it!

Yesterday was an exciting one for our family because my sister went into labor a little early – my newest niece is here and is so lovely! Both her and my sis are healthy and beautiful. :)

My sister asked me months ago to take her pregnancy photos and I was honored she would want me to do so. Photography has been a hobby of mine long before the blog, but blogging kind of helps that along since it’s a constant doing what I do. I don’t share many of my personal photos here but I’m really proud of these – and it gives me an opportunity to share one of my favorite photography tips!

We went out last week and used my favorite lens for the entire shoot:

pregnancy shoot 50 mm lens

The Canon 50 millimeter lens is such a fun one – I’d use it for every photo if I could:

Canon 50 mm lens

(source)

It creates the most beautiful shots! The difference with this lens is that you can’t manually adjust it. You have to use it in the auto focus setting and it does most of the work for you.

With the “nifty fifty” you have to be able to get way back from your subject, which can be hard when shooting in the house. Where you would need about five feet of space with your regular lens, you’ll need about double that (or more) with this lens.

But it is so fun to use! It allows you to create more depth in the photos. You can focus on anything in the picture – just push down on the shutter button and it will focus on the part of your photo that you want. Sometimes you have to play around with it a bit but I can usually get the area I’m aiming for.

It puts the subject in focus and the rest fades away:

pregnancy photos

Isn’t she the prettiest mama ever?

I find I get the clearest shots with this lens, which is funny because at least half of the photo is usually blurry:

pregnancy photo ideas

I don’t have a lot of camera lenses – just this one, my basic one that came with the camera (I use a Canon Rebel) and a wide angle lens. This one is known as the nifty fifty because you can photograph so many different ways with it.

You can use it for wider shots too – it still does a nice job. I took this photo from last week with my 50 mm: outdoor fireplace

It’s also a great one to use in low light which is nice for interior shots like these:

nifty fifty shots

With this lens I could have focused on the basket, the plates or the wreath. Everything else would be blurry. The photos I like best are sometimes those that focus on something in the background, not the foreground. Usually those are taken by accident. :)

It’s especially fun to use for nature shots – but your subject needs to be able to hold fairly still. It’s not great for action shots (at least that I’ve found). I love it for babies, nature and beautiful pregnant sisters who can stay still on command. ;)

If you’re looking to change up your photography, this would be a great investment.The great part is, it’s incredibly affordable (by lens standards). Have any of your tried this one? I highly recommend it to fellow bloggers!

By the way, I still haven’t been able to fix the Blogger issue with my photos being slightly blurry. Some of these I loaded through a hosting site, so that helps. But it takes a lot of extra time so I’m not able to do it for each one. So if you are seeing that it’s not the fault of the lens or the photographer, I swear. ;)

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