Recently I've been giving my (borrowed) 50mm 1.4 lens heavy use. It's amazing in low-light situations and has really nice looking bokeh to name just a couple of things. I'm enjoying it much more than my 18-200mm zoom lens, actually. Fast prime lenses make you work a little harder to get your shot because you're zooming with your feet instead of with your hands, but you can get crazy with super shallow depth of field. I would never have been able to make this shot with my 18-200mm lens:
Coincidentally my friend Abe just sent me this article by Gary Voth called "The Forgotten Lens", that espouses the virtues of the 50mm prime lens. Gary does a nice job of laying out all the benefits of using fast prime lenses that are very good at what they do as opposed to some zoom lenses which are often more like jacks of all trades but masters of none.
"If you are considering a new camera purchase or already have a camera and would like to make pictures of your family that don't look like snapshots, consider buying a classic 50mm "normal" lens instead of (or in addition to) that "consumer" zoom. This 50mm lens will allow you to make pictures in natural light without flash that share at least some of the qualities of the very finest photographs ever made. As with any new equipment, you will have a learning curve as you figure out how to use the focal length compositionally and achieve good focus. But you may find that pictures of your friends and family begin to exhibit a much more natural and evocative quality."
Link: http://vothphoto.com/spotlight/articles/forgotten_lens/forgotten-lens.htm
