When you plan to get a new lens, you always think about quality and price. With a limited budget, you may spend many hours on the market to find the proper one. After some investigation, you will find Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 and HELIOS 44-2 58mm f/2. Both lenses can impress you in their own way. Therefore, let us look closer at each of them.
With new technologies, it is easier to get better image quality, you also pay more. Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 is a popular prime lens from Canon. It is based on a double Gauss lens that allows to produce qualitative pictures. Colors have nice saturation and Canon EF 50mm transmits contrast of shades even at without good lighting around. Speaking about focusing, it may be a complicated task when you need to adjust it manually. Focus works a little bit faster than other lenses and you may need to practice with it. Speaking about moving objects it would be better if they stand still while you shooting wide open.
Helios 44-2 is a vintage lens that bases on Biotar formula of good quality and it is not very expensive. This lens copes well with backgrounds of pictures. While adjusting the focus at the front, objects that are out of focus receive a special swirly effect. The focus control is manual. It means that while recording a video you constantly need to adjust the focus while taking moving objects. However, you do not need to worry about clicking aperture adjustment sound that often appears with some photo lenses. In Helios, the aperture works smoothly and without any clicks which is perfect for subtle exposure adjustments while recording. Color rendition matches Soviet standards and you receive rather muted and cooled color shades. The same goes for contrast. You may not achieve saturated colors but this actually what a lot of cinematographers prefer when choosing vintage lenses.
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