The EF 50mm f / 1.8 II is a very compact and lightweight lens that provides a very good open aperture at an extremely low price. For available light shots and portraits, it is most appropriate but it can of course be used for all sorts of shots. It is made of a seemingly cheap plastic, has a tiny focus ring and - mainly because there is no ultrasonic motor - a little impressive autofocus performance. It's just a simple lens without extras such as an image stabilizer, but it has - although it is a very inexpensive lens - a really good picture quality. Except for very low f-numbers (= open aperture) lens from the center to the edge is sharp. The sharpness level has no curvature on (no "field curvature") and chromatic aberration ("Chromatic aberrations") occur at least in sharp image areas ("lateral chromatic aberration") not on. However occur in blurred image areas fringing unpleasant ("longitudinal chromatic aberration") and as the aperture shape, instead of being edged around, the beauty of the blur ('bokeh') could be significantly better. Distortion ("distortion") and edge shadows ("Vignette") occur at EF 50mm f / 1.8 II though, but in a more acceptable level.
The EF 50mm f / 1.8 II costs only one third of the EF 50mm f / 1.4 USM, although it provides a similar image quality. In some of the criteria I tested the EF 50mm f / 1.8 II has even outperformed. The weakest point of this lens is certainly worse autofocus and also the fact that you first need to switch to MF, before one can intervene in the focus setting (with lenses with USM which usually is not necessary). Those who so but can accept, will be very zufriden with the EF 50mm f / 1.8 II and maybe even feel the occasional burst of creativity due to the interesting open aperture.
On my homepage LensTests_de I published all test shots made for the objective test, and many many more info.
[By the way: please do not take the Amazon star ratings too seriously - each lens has its pros and cons, which should not be cast in a one-dimensional assessment ...]
