Canon 50mm f1.2L bokeh time!

Fresh from B&H Photo NY

Finally picked up a lens I had been lusting after for several years. The ultra fast bokeh beast Canon 50mm f1.2L prime lens. I already had the 50mm f1.4 and 40mm f2.8 pancake lens and love both but needed one more fast prime as Haruna and myself will be both shooting some night events coming up. 

It's not a cheap bit of glass at around $1600US but once you get it in your hands and feel the weight and build quality you can understand the steep price tag. Then of course is that Canon L glass and super wide aperture of f1.2 for super shallow depth of field and creamy smooth bokeh (those out of focus areas). 

The new Canon 5DmkIII with 50mm f1.2, next to it is my 

old 50mm f1.4 for size comparison. 

Gave it a quick try out at a wedding today. 

It really makes things pop when the focus is this shallow. 

Shooting wide open on prime lens`s requires some very careful focusing skills. Usually I always just use the center focus, recompose and shoot method. But with these lenses I find that you should always manually select the focus point closest to the subject you want in focus because even a slight movement in the lens after focus and recomposing could result in an unusable image. 

I also picked up a B+W protective filter to keep on the 50. I never used UV or protective filters much in the past but then I dropped my 17-40mm f4L body and all from the top of my tripod just as the golden hour light was peaking one afternoon and bent up the front filter thread on the lens. It could have been a lot worse. So now I generally keep a UV or protective filter on most of my lenses. Id heard lots of good things about B+W but never used one of their filters before so thought I would give one a try. 

Another iPhone shot of the fat 50 with hood attached sitting on my mouse pad.

Will be posting more examples from this bokeh monster in the next few days as I have more of a chance to play with it. 

One other thing that showed up in the mail I bought from an Ebay seller in China are these great and cheap AAA battery cases. I had been looking around for something like these for ages with no luck. After a quick search online I found them selling in packs of 4 for 98cents, bargain! Before I had these my batteries were always getting lost and charged ones mixed with dead ones etc.. Just little things that can make your photography life a little easier 8)