In this blog post, I compare the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II to the Olympus Zuiko ED 50mm f/2.0.
But wait, you say. How can I write about the Canon lens if I don’t own it and don’t even own a Canon DSLR? Well luckily for me, both lenses were tested using the same criteria at dpreview.com, so I can use that as a basis for putting my own spin on the difference between these two lenses. Here are the links:
Canon 50mm review
Olympus 50mm review
Also, please refer to my previous blog post where I reviewed the Olympus lens.
PRICE
The Olympus lens sells for $450 while the Canon lens sells for only $110. That’s a huge price difference. Is the Olympus lens worth four times the price? Probably yes as a macro lens, and no as a portrait lens. But we’re just reviewing portrait lenses here.
IMAGE STABILIZATION
A big advantage of the Olympus lens is that it’s image stabilized. This is because all Olympus lenses automatically become image stabilized because Olympus builds image stabilization into the camera bodies. This can make a significant difference when shooting handheld in low light. For example, a shutter speed of 1/40 second is acceptable with respect to subject movement if you are photographing someone who is relatively still, but at this shutter speed you won’t be able to handhold a short telephoto lens without getting a lot of camera shake. But with image stabilization, 1/40 becomes a perfectly handholdable shutter speed.
FOCUSING
I can’t really do any tests because I don’t have a Canon system. Reports from various internet forums is that the Canon 50mm f/1.8 focuses slowly and noisily compared to more modern lenses which have “USM” focusing. But it only costs $110.
Unfortunately, the only Canon APS-C camera with micro focus adjustment is the 50D, so if you buy this for a Canon Rebel, and if for some reason the lens or the camera is out of alignment (in a way that’s correctable with micro focus adjustment), you won’t be able to fix the problem yourself. There's a good chance that Canon won't add this feature to future Rebel cameras because Canon purposely leaves stuff out of the Rebel cameras in order to incentivize people to buy the more expensive xxD cameras.
IMAGE SHARPNESS
When you put a lens designed for 35mm film on an APS-C digital camera, you normally expect to get a lens which doesn’t perform so well. This is because approximately 63% of the imaging circle is being wasted. However, this lens seems to be an exception. On 35mm-sized sensors, the corner softness of this lens is so bad, and affects such a large percentage of the imaging circle, that there is actually an overall improvement when this lens is placed on an APS-C camera because the center of the lens is very sharp.
Based on the dpreview test, wide open this lens gives an acceptable level of performance through most of the central part of the image. In fact, if you cropped the image into a square, the majority of the square would be pretty sharp except for the extreme corners. On the full 3:2 aspect ratio sensor, there is pretty bad corner softness outside the square area, but as long as you keep your main subject within the square, the important part of the image will be sharp enough. If you compose according to the Rule of Thirds, the subject will fall within the square.
In comparison, the Olympus 50mm lens is slightly sharper in the middle when wide open, and the sharpness is maintained through the entire area of the photo including the extreme corners. This is an impressive performance, but it’s not really that important in real life situations where the corner area of the photo will be out of focus anyway because of these lenses’ shallow depth of field when used wide open.
Dpreview also praised the Canon lens for having very little chromatic aberration, which is impressive for a $110 lens. The Olympus also has very little chromatic aberration in the focal plane, but of course that’s what you’d expect for four times the price.
BOKEH
The following image with this lens was taken with the Canon lens at f/1.8:
Source: Elliot Freeman
The main problem with the bokeh is that the circles of light in the out-of-focus areas have slightly hard edges.
The bokeh becomes much worse when the lens is stopped down:
Source: Gwen Harlow
The pentagon shapes are a result of this lens’ cheap 5 blade aperture. You don’t get this problem when the lens is fully open, because the aperture blades are fully retracted from the lens opening. Thus, you are better off using this lens wide open than stopped down a little bit.
A positive point about the Canon lens’ bokeh is that there is hardly any bokeh chromatic aberration, or spherochromatism if you prefer. These are the color fringes which show up on some fast lenses as magenta fringes on high contrast edges in front of the focal plane, and as green fringes on high contrast edges behind the focal plane. Below is a crop from a photo I took with the Olympus lens showing the green fringes:
In case you think this only happens on my camera, here’s a link to a sample photo from the dpreview review of the lens showing purple fringing caused by the spherochromatism in the bokeh: click here.
So my final bokeh conclusion is as follows:
(1) The Olympus lens has much better bokeh when the lenses are stopped down.
(2) Wide open, the Olympus lens has better black and white bokeh, but the Canon lens has better color photo bokeh.
(3) Neither lens has really great bokeh, but the Olympus lens has above average black and white bokeh.
WHICH LENS TO BUY?
If you own an Olympus system, you have to buy the Olympus lens because it doesn’t take Canon lenses. If you own the Canon system, you have a few more choices, but the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens is a pretty compelling bargain.
WHICH SYSTEM TO BUY?
The problem with the Olympus system and portrait photography is the lack of fast prime lenses. A Canon DSLR with the Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens is overall a better deal as a portrait camera, given the inexpensiveness of the lens, and the fact that you get a little bit more background blur on the Canon system because the Canon lens is 1/3 of an f-stop faster, and you can get closer to your subject given the slightly wider angle view (50mm is equivalent to an 80mm “full frame” lens on Canons with a 1.6x crop factor, and 100mm on Olympuses with a 2.0x crop factor). It's true that you'll have soft corners using the Canon camera with the 50mm f/1.8 lens, but wide open the corners are usually out of focus anyway so this is usually won't impact the image quality.
Although Canon lacks image stabilization, you do get an entire extra EV of high ISO ability with a Canon camera because Canon image sensors just do a lot better at high ISO, so this makes up for the lack of image stabilization.
If Olympus were to come out with a reasonably priced f/1.4 portrait lens, the advantage would probably go back to Olympus. It’s unlikely that Canon will come out with any new EF-S lenses that will help with portrait photography because, clearly, Canon’s marketing strategy is to make you move up to full frame cameras and “L” lenses so Canon can make a lot more money selling the more expensive equipment. If Canon made its Rebel almost-as-good as a full frame camera with an “L” lens, Canon would lose money! Olympus doesn’t have any other system for you to move up to, so I don’t fully understand why Olympus hasn’t come out with a better selection of fast prime lenses.
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