As you are making a purchase decision, we suggest that you take the time to read some EF 50mm Canon Lens reviews in order to see what other consumers have to say about the product. Here are some user reviews to help you make your shopping decision:

5 star for value and picture quality.

With the money of 1.4 version, I can have 4 of this, you only lost half stop of aperture. It is cheapest Canon lens yet produce probably the best result. 80mm focal length on Digital Rebel and 10D means it is the best solution for portrait lens.

Yeah, plastic lens is not as good as metal one. But I really doubt if it will break any time.

for 75 bucks, every EOS owner should have one.
-Roy (EF 50mm Canon Lens user review from Amazon.com)

Unless you already have a top-quality fixed lens around this length (and Canon makes no L-series in 50mm) I can't understand why you don't own this. It's so cheap. It's fast and sharp.

Eventually, every photographer needs a fixed lens at somewhere around this focal range. I favor zooms for telephoto: it's hard to quickly shuffle on foot between a 70mm and 300mm focal range. I also like zooms for wide angle: you can grab a big landscape or group shot, then a person in close-up, all of which makes a wide-angle zoom a good "walkaround" lens, especially for travelers. The "middle range" between, say, 35mm and 100mm is portrait-range, and a great opportunity for the extra precision and handiness of a prime lens.

Prime lenses usually generate better images at every price point, and the EF 50mm f/1.8 II is no exception. In fact, on a ratio of image quality to price, this lens may be unmatched. Images are sharp and have nice contrast and color. At faster speed, indoor shots without flash are easily possible at reasonable lighting levels. This is crucial for those of us without high-end flashes and who rightly abhor built-in flashes, or flashes in general. The speed (and, again, the clarity) of this lens makes it an obscene bargain. See the peachfuzz on your baby's cheek? Get it; no flash. It's also disposable: you can take greater risks because replacement costs are relatively low.

Buy this, at least as a holdover, until you get L-series glass for your portrait range prime lens.
-E. Fama (EF 50mm Canon Lens user review from Amazon.com)

I LOVE THIS LENS. It is hands down the best value you can get. I am amazed at how sharp the images turn out with this, much sharper than the 18-55 Kit lens and for me was way better than the 28-105 3.5-4.5 USM II that I bought, and returned.

Colors are great, the 1.8 for indoor photography is awesome and the higher you set the aperture the better it gets. I love this lens. If you spent your $1000+ on a Canon Digital SLR you'd be nuts to not spend another $70 and pick this up. Going out and shooting pictures is a blast, but the icing on the cake is when you get home and they turned out how you imagined. This lens will do that for you. I shoot with a 20D.
-J. Jenkins (EF 50mm Canon Lens user review from Amazon.com)

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With this lens it is well known that you'll either get a great sharp copy or a problem copy that is either soft, back focuses or front focuses. Most people get a good copy but this lens seems to have a higher bad rate than others.
Anyways, just return it until you get a good one. Once you do get a good one this lens is never coming off your camera. Is has perfect sharpness, even at 1.8. Its a tad slow to focus and is noisy. It feels like a plastic toy from a snack box but dang, it has awesome glass and thats what matters.
You're not going to find a lens under $400 that can perform nearly as well as this one does. Its extremely sharp that your eyes will bleed, it has perfect contrast and color. No true canon fan would be without this lens.
Due to its awesome 1.8 fstop its great for low light. It can keep your shutter speeds nice and fast to stop motion in very low light. I don't know what I'd do without this lens.
-M. Lei (EF 50mm Canon Lens user review from Amazon.com)

I've been shooting seriously for about a year now and a friend of mine had been trying to get me to use his EF 50 1.8. I shoot quite often in low light conditions and my fastest lens before this purchase was Canon's discontinued EF 28-70 f2.8 L lens. It's a wonderful lens, albeit a bit heavy, but really sharp. Not quite fast enough for stage performance work, but it was the fastest lens in my bag. After borrowing his 50, I was shocked at the plastic housing construction and the tiny focus ring. All of that bias disappeared as soon as I took some test shots and examined them on my PC. This lens is a real jewel producing acceptable bokah and color depth. I find that I use it quite often and the featherweight allows me to keep it in my bag without adding much weight. In most low light situations, the slight light fall off toward the corners is unnoticeable. I highly recommend this lens, as on a price performance ratio, it certainly keeps up with the two L series lenses in my bag. Bravo Canon. You can view how this lens performs on my blog at http://photos.kitaoka.us/knife.htm
-M. Kitaoka (EF 50mm Canon Lens user review from Amazon.com)

Once upon a time the 50 mm lens was THE standard camera lens and was THE optical benchmark by which manufacturers were judged and compared. Although the basic lens focus has now shifted (at least at the low to mid amateur level) to zooms - you can still benefit from years of research and development that went into designing the 50 mm lens and this here lens may be the best lens, dollar for dollar, that you can ever buy. The question is can you afford not to own this lens?

Years of development have brought us a lens that has a fast aperture of 1.8 - far faster than any consumer zoom lens - and that is sharp as a filed tack. Be forewarned about the sharpness . . . if you are taking pictures of people, this lens is unyielding in its sharpness and may well surprise you and your subjects whose every blemish is captured. The lens has a fabulously shallow depth of field if you want to use the 1.8 aperture to blow out a background. This lens is also ridiculously inexpensive. It is not USM - so it is a little loud. It does not have a moving focus scale. For the money though - this is heaven.

As to the build quality - yes, it is plastic. No, it's not built like the Rock of Gibraltar. If you are going to give this lens extensive use as your everyday lens and you shoot a lot, it may not hold up all that well as one reviewer suggests. However, I've now had this lens and used it fairly regularly (although not as the primary lens) for about 8 years and it is still in great condition. In my mind, spend the $$ on this first before you go and drop $330 on the 50mm 1.4 USM lens and I think you'll find it gets the job done nicely and that the extra $250 on the 1.4 may not be worth the difference in build (major difference), speed (minor difference) and image quality (minor difference).
-R. Aubin (EF 50mm Canon Lens user review from Amazon.com)

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