"I will admit that I am on the fence regarding this lens. I love shooting with 50 mm prime lenses, and this lens is a good compromise between price and performance. The image quality is excellent stopped down, but wide open I find it can be disappointing.

I bought this lens on a whim back when I owned my 400D. As soon as I put this piece of glass on to my camera I hardly took it off. It is fast, easy to use, has a wonderful build quality and an outstanding rang of depth of field.

Super-sharp images; Fast auto-focus

Although not pin-sharp at its widest apertures, Canon's EF 50mm f/1.4 USM remains a competent performer and its image quality between f/4 and f/8is excellent. Two issues should be considered when assessing this lens: the size of the sensor on that camera with which it will be mainly used and whether...

not the sharpest 50mm lens. Some says that the plastic 50/1.8 is even sharper than this one. I don't shoot test charts, but this lens is just fine with me. I get the fast-accurate AF, and it's still produce usable images wide open. Build quality is somewhat nice.

fast f/1.4; fast AF; USM; build quality

soft wide open

Great lens for the price. Sharp at f1.8 and greater. Light. Focus can be a little slow in darker environments. Much better than the Canon 50 f1.8. It can be hard to justify paying for the Canon 50L lens (f1.2) which is 4x more expensive over this lens.

Use in low light without using a flash (ex: an artist on stage, a kid blowing candles), night photographie....
This is one of the lenses to have absolutely !

Durable; Easy To Use; Lightweight; Powerful Output

This lens was acquired to be used with a 5Dmkii - both were purchased at almost close-out prices so I consider them to be bargains. Shooting mostly from f4-f8, the lens produces sharp images with very little distortion and nice colors.

sharp @ f4-f8; relatively low distortion; good focus

feels delicate

It's an excellent product. The images come out very clear, great for portraits and places where there is a lot of light (duh). All your body imperfections will appear in the pictures taken with this lens.

an essential lens, but less useful on APS-C

lightweight; good image quality; shallow depth of field

none really

Fantastic depth of field