Most photographers would agree: a 50mm lens is a great addition to your lens collection. The 50mm focal length has always been popular, and 50mm lenses tend to be cheap, lightweight and small.

There are a couple of odd exceptions. Many lens makers use this focal length to create what are called “halo” products: large, flashy, expensive items that they don’t really expect to sell. Nikon, for example, introduced a 58mm f/0.95 “Noct,” (meaning “night”) in October 2019, with a retail price of $7999.95. Sure, this lens is exotic and can make wonderful images, but at that price, it seems doubtful any of us would ever buy one, and might not ever even see one in the field.

Those of us without private jets and yachts are left with more affordable options, and one I always recommend is one version or another of the 50mm lens. My photography students will sometimes ask me which one they should get, and my first answer is always “the one in the junk drawer.”

But if you are in a buying mood, I like a lot of the current offerings from Nikon, Canon, Sigma, Sony, and even some odd brands from the Pacific rim.

I have a number of 50mm lenses, and recently shot one of my favorite monthly events, Open Mic Night, with one of them, the AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G. The results were amazing, as always, from this diminutive workhorse.

I also decided to compare this lens with another 50mm in my collection, the AF-Nikkor 50mm f/1.4G. And yes, these two lenses are very similar in name and performance.

Why did I grab the f/1.8 instead of the f/1.4? Maybe it was looking a little forlorn on my bookshelf. Maybe I wanted something a little lighter? Smaller? Less showy?

The truth is that most lenses in this class are very capable of producing the results we need, and the differences between them is fairly insignificant. Is the f/1.8 lighter and cheaper? Yes. Is the f/1.4 brighter in the viewfinder and happier to be used at those very large apertures? Yes. Could I have made these same images with any lens in this class, from the 1969 Minolta 58mm f/1.4 to the 1985 Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 “pancake” lens to the $8000 “Eye of God” lens? Sure!

I often roll my eyes when someone on a web forum or social media site says they want to “upgrade” from the f/1.8 to the f/1.4, because I know there is almost nothing the f/1.4 can do that the f/1.8 can’t. You know when you should upgrade? When the f/1.8 falls apart in your hand because you’ve made 50,000 images with it.

In the end, I am always happy when I get out and and shoot with any of my lenses in this category, and I would urge you to do the same.

My readers know that among my favorite things in the world, not just in my photography, are lenses. I like old and new, heavy and light, complex and simple, and on and on. There are almost no lenses that don’t intrigue me.

One class of lenses I find the most satisfying to work with are prime lenses, so named because they have only one (“prime”) focal length, as opposed to zoom lenses, which let you “zoom” through a range of focal lengths. There are a lot of zoom lenses in this world, since their design has matured dramatically in the last 25 years.

I like prime lenses for several reasons. They tend to have larger maximum apertures, they tend to be lighter, and they tend to have great optics.

Flash forward to today, and an interesting collision of prime lenses. First, I brought my AF-S Nikkor 35mm f/1.8 to my Ada Sunrise Rotary meeting today, where our guest speaker was beekeeper Trudy Mills.

And second, PetaPixel posted a review of Nikon’s newest prime lens, their Nikkor 35mm f/1.2S.

Okay, since both these lenses are 35mm, they should be mostly the same, right? Well, yes, and no. They are both the 35mm focal length, which is a very popular focal length. In the years before zoom lenses began dominating the profession, news and sports photographers like me had this lens, often using it as our second-camera, everything-else lens at everything from the basketball court to the courthouse. It provides a slightly wide angle of view, and shows almost no foreshortening.

But my 35mm and the new 35mm from Nikon are two very different animals. My 35mm f/1.8 is very light and small, very easy to carry, and is remarkably affordable. I think I paid less than $200 for mine.

The new 35mm f/1.2, is none of that. It is huge, heavy, and – at about $2800 – is quite surprisingly expensive.

The obvious question is: what do I get for my $2800 that I don’t get for $200. The answer might be a little disappointing: not much.

The maximum aperture of f/1.2 is a real thing with real benefits, but those benefits  are on a very thin margin, especially compared to the 35mm f/1.8, which is, of course, only one f-stop smaller than the f/1.2. Yes, if you live in the low-light concert world, or the police surveillance world, or the theater world, and constantly required the gaping f/1.2, this new lens might be on your radar.

But even I, as a news and sports photographer, can’t see a huge advantage to this big-ticket lens. I’m sure reviews will say it is “sharp, even wide open,” but so is my 35mm, and, for that matter, every 50mm lens I own.

If you want one of these are think you will use it, and have the money, sure, why not? But I’ll continue to be happy with my honey of a lens.

I sometimes miss the days of Internet past, when a search yielded an interesting web page that had links in it to other links, which might have still more links. I loved clicking around to see everything from dancing hamsters to moon landing hoaxes.

Now, I say with a heavy sign, the Internet seems to be dead. Look it up if you want: use the phrase “Dead Internet Theory.” I know it’s a “conspiracy theory,” but it makes more sense every day.

With that said, I did a few obscure web searches recently, deliberately trying to find actual, real web content, and I went down one rabbit hole after another.

As a photographer, of course I’ll click on all things photographic. One of these led me to revisit an interesting topic: ultra-large-aperture lenses, especially, in this case, the Nikkor Z 58mm f/0.95.

This lens is what’s known as a “halo” product, something that shows the prestige of the camera maker, car maker, computer maker, fine winery, distillery, etc., but is expensive enough that they actually expect to sell very few of these items.

The 58mm f/0.95 sports a list price of $7999.95. Wow. What could this lens offer that sets it so far above and out of reach? Well, upon reading some reviews and looking at some sample images, the answer is: nothing. Reviews like to point out that the optics are just about perfect, as is the build quality, and that shooting this lens at f/0.95 should result in an impressive amount of selective focus.

Two of my photographer friends and I have occasionally talked about possible renting this lens, which appears to be $363 for seven days from one prominent lens rental place.

Then, of course, the practical photographer in me took over and said, “Can I create what this halo lens can do, with the equipment I already own?” I reached into my bag of tricks and pulled out a broken, 40-year-old Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 that someone had given me, and stepped out into my front yard.

The result, as I might have expected, was every bit as usefully good as the $8000 behemoth. It’s probably not quite as technically perfect, but right out of the camera, it delivered.

So I am completely unimpressed with the idea of an $8000 50mm or 58mm lens.

I always have fun with little “what if” projects like this, and they often remind me of a term I’ve been using in the last couple of years, “Shop your closet first.”