Cheap creative lenses
One of the quickest shortcuts to kick-start your creativity is to buy a new lens. Acquiring an optic that can do something distinctly different from your existing kit – zoom wider or longer, focus closer or more selectively, or simply apply a different look to your images – can help you see and interpret the world differently. The only problem is, such lenses are often expensive to buy new.
Venture onto Amazon and eBay, however, and you’ll find plenty of options at low prices, including some brand-new lenses coming out of China. Indeed, now, there are quite a few companies making inexpensive manual-focus primes for mirrorless cameras, with more designs showing up all the time from emerging brands such as 7artisans, Kamlan, Meike, Neewer and Zhongyi Mitakon. For those willing to spend a bit more money on fast optics, the latter even makes a range of f/0.95 and f/1.2 lenses.
DSLR users aren’t quite so well served, not least because they don’t work well with manual lenses. However Yongnuo makes some very cheap autofocus lenses for Canon and Nikon users, and having started off by cloning existing lenses, has recently started to produce some intriguing homegrown designs.
There are also some creative optics around from the likes of Lensbaby, and they can be worth considering too. I tried out a selection of budget options to find out which are any good, and those that are better left well alone.
The Yongnuo YN 50mm f/1.8 gives sharp images at a very low price
Yongnuo YN 50mm f/1.8
Chinese firm Yongnuo may not be the most familiar name to photographers, but it produces a range of inexpensive autofocus primes for DSLRs. Its YN 50mm f/1.8 costs less than £50 on eBay, including postage. Its bargain price can be explained by the fact that it's pretty much a direct clone of the old Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II (although the F-mount variant has more Nikon-esque styling).
The YN 50mm f/1.8's build quality is super-cheap, with an all-plastic barrel and lens mount, while its autofocus is slow and noisy by current standards. But optically it's a good old-fashioned double-Gauss design, using 6 elements in 5 groups, which means it's
