How I Use a 50mm for Travel Photography _ Busan South Korea 2021

What's going on hybrid shooters? It's Jason Vong and here's a guide on how I use a 50 millimeter lens. This video topic is mainly for full frame camera users, so if you're using an APS-C crop sensor camera, get a 30 or a 35 millimeter lens. That will give you a 50 millimeter equivalent look that we'll be talking about in this video with your setup. We're currently in Busan, South Korea right now in Gamcheon Cultural Village. Look at this beautiful landscape right here. Now, I don't have a wide lens mounted. All I got is a 50 millimeter, so let's see what we can still get with this landscape right here. If you've never shot with a 50 millimeter lens before, then be prepared. It can feel pretty limiting at first, especially if this is your first prime lens. You'll find that you have to move around a lot just to get the shot, but I promise you, it'll be worth it if you put in the work. However, most people would default this to be a portrait lens, and I don't blame them. It's much easier to do portrait with a 50 than any other genres of photography, but the reason why I wanna make this video is because the 50 is capable of so much more than that. Try 50 on landscape, try it on street, try it on things especially you'll think will work, and you might be surprised what you might end up with because the 50 is quite a versatile lens. Moving on to tip number two, pay attention to details. The great thing about the 50 millimeter is that it narrows your view to what's important. When we're seeking out shots with a 50 millimeter lens, we can create images of something normal non-photographers can easily miss in our everyday lives. So look up, look down, get deeper into the woods, and try to find something unique to your eyes. But hey, sometimes we might find a view that will take our breath away. But uh-oh, aw crap, we only have the 50 on us. Don't worry, no wide angle lens, no problem. Just pull out your iPhone used to point 5X lens. Just kidding. Let me show you how to fake a wide shot with a 50. Don't believe me? Well, you're actually looking at a photo right now taken on a 50 millimeter lens. Okay, maybe not a photo exactly, but multiple photos taken on a 50 millimeter stitched together. Now, not a lot of people know this, but making panoramic edits has become ridiculously easy in Adobe Lightroom. All you have to do is when you're on the spot, simply take as much overlapping photos as you can across the scene. So when you right click on all the photos in Lightroom and do a photo merge, it will have enough data to put everything together. So let's go ahead and pull up a photo that was taken on a proper wide angle lens versus the fold wide angle 50 millimeter lens. Not too shabby, eh? And in case you're wondering, yes, you can do this panoramic trick with any lens. All right, so we're gonna take a quick coffee break and talk about this video's sponsor, Canva. You guys know me. I love taking photos and videos myself, but at times I struggle with creating a design element to present them in my videos and social media. But recently I used Canva to design my Instagram story highlights, like the little icons you see on the front page, my bio, and to house resources to my free filmmaking course. I'm also using their presentation elements to work on my next camera and lens buying guides to make it more presentable and clean. And since their platform is browser and app based, it's easy to upload and access my assets anywhere and work on it anytime. The templates and tools are incredibly easy to use. Just simply browse, drag and drop, and edit to your taste. Since I really enjoyed the design and process, I partnered up with Canva to give you guys an extended 45 day trial period so you guys can test it out to see how it can help you in your branding and presentation. Link is down below. Thanks for listening. It really does help the channel create more helpful videos like this. Now back to some photography. So what makes the 50 really nice is sort of like it's in the middle of things, right? With a wider perspective, it tends to push things out a little bit further, but compression lens, a telephoto lens, it tends to bring things closer to you. So the 50 is like a nice in between and I can get a shot like this, a staircase right there, get them really closer to the frame and make it look a lot more interesting. You can see it right now with the 20 millimeter is kind of pushing this a little bit further away. It looks nice too, but with the 50, that minor bit of compression looks money. There's a reason why people tend to fall in love with a 50 millimeter lens right away. This is usually their second lens after their starter kit lens and maybe their first prime lens ever because it's so affordable. So when they take their first shots and see the results, they go, wow, oh my God, so pro, so artsy, rude. Now we briefly hinted at this concept back in tip number two. The compression helps narrows the viewer's attention on something specific in the shot, which is why it makes it a great lens to focus on details. Especially if you use fast aperture lenses like F 1.8, 1.4 or even 1.2, those faster aperture will help enhance that background blur or bokeh to create even more attention on the subject. Which leads me to a very important PSA. The 50 millimeter lens is the gateway lens to an unhealthy bokeh obsession. Now, I don't know what it is about creamy background blur that gets us photographers uber excited, but I have a theory and we can blame the 50 millimeter F 1.8 for that. Again, it's because I believe most photographer's second lens is the 50 millimeter F 1.8. And once we got a taste of that greatness, we need to constantly satisfy it. So after a while, we either move up in lens range to get even more bokeh, like the 85, 135 or the 70-200 lens, or go into debt getting an F 1.4 lens, or worse, F 1.2. So here comes the PSA. Don't go down this rabbit hole unless you know you absolutely need the faster aperture lenses. 1.2 lenses are magical, but there's a time and place for it. They can get pretty troublesome to bring around because of how big and heavy they are. But again, if you're willing to put in the work, you'll definitely be rewarded creatively. On top of that, F 1.2 lenses are extremely helpful in low light situations because you can allow in more light into your sensor. So if you're shooting in a dimly lit situation, this can come in pretty clutch. However, most people, I'd say, will likely be satisfied with the blur at F 1.8. Truth of the matter is, sometimes too much creamy goodness can be a bad thing. You can lose out on a lot of context if you blur things out too much. Most of the shots that you've been seeing in this video aren't even shot at F 1.2, despite me using an F 1.2 lens. Most are F4 or even more. So don't fret if you don't have a 1.2 lens. If you have an F 2.8, F4, you can still get some amazing shots and decent amount of bokeh, especially close-up shots of flowers or any objects that you're shooting. What'd he do? I don't know. Oh, it's got booger on me. What is that? I think it's got booger on me. Like sneezed on me. What the hell? Now, I know I mentioned at the beginning of the video that this is much more than a portrait lens, but I don't think my longtime subscribers will forgive me if I don't at least talk about its portrait capability at some capacity. So yes, do use this as a portrait lens. Combining everything that we've learned about compression and bokeh, there's a reason why most portrait photographers love using a 50 millimeter. The beauty of it is that it doesn't have to be a human subject. It can be a pet subject or even objects as well. Regardless of whatever it is you're shooting, you can actually force any backgrounds to be a great backdrop for your subjects. And if the background doesn't look that great, you can blur it out with a wider aperture. On that note, if your background is really ugly, here's where the F1.2 will come in handy. It will literally melt that background into oblivion. So if you've watched this far and you still haven't owned a 50 millimeter prime lens yet, here's the good news for you. The 50 millimeter has the lowest cost of entry. The good and bad thing about the 50 millimeter lens is that it's super saturated. And I don't mean the color. I mean, there are so many different options to choose from at various price points. And it's often the cheapest focal length to get out of the rest of the lineup. Again, that is why it's generally most photographers' second lens. It's affordable and you can take amazing shots right out of the gate. Regardless if you're shooting Sony, Canon, or Nikon, most camera systems have plastic, fantastic, nifty 50 in their ecosystems for about $100 to $200. So if you're budget conscious but itching to get a different look for your photography, you can't go wrong with a 50 1.8. Now, while most photographers will have this lens, it doesn't mean you can't stand out. Your audience is not gonna care what you shoot with. They'll know a good photo when they see one. At the very least, you can impress your friends with your 50 millimeter shots and, hey, make them even feel like they're supermodels. At the end of the day, it's all about having fun, so just have fun with it. Hope this video has helped you guys out. Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you guys in the next video. Peace.