3 ms·

I loved the pictures I could take with my f1.4 - particularly macro photography, insects, flowers, etc.. but also low-light portrait photography. The f1.4 lets

• foldr 12y ago
  Bokeh is kind of subjective, so I won't argue that. If you're not using full frame then maybe having some wider apertures is useful for that, but I would think you'd almost always want more depth of field than f1.4 would give you. Apart from that, you're only letting in around three more stops of light than a kit lens and half a stop more than a cheap 50mm prime. You can almost always work around that with some combination of (i) underexposing, (ii) using a slower shutter speed and (iii) bumping up the ISO. People used to say the same things about f1.4 lenses before digital, but the fact is that shooting at ISO 800 you can get the same overall sensitivity/quality balance at f4 with a digital camera that you could at f1.4 with a film camera. If you spend all your time trying to shoot fast moving completely-flat things in the dark -- and you can somehow focus fast enough at f1.4 -- then maybe f1.4 is useful, but that isn't representative of most photography.