Agree, what are your other lenses Marie? I can't remember.

for the money an 85 1.8 canon is pretty hot

I dont have a canon but i have two 50s one is minolta f1.4 other is sigma f1.4 (sigma is my wife prime lense) dunno if it will be any help but you just cant beat minoltas colors ! thats why sigma is for girls

I have a photo assignment this week-end where I must take pictures of horses jumping indoors..... and I don't think my 50 1.8 will be up for the task...
So I'll rent a 50 1.4 (I'll be inside the ring so the distance will be fine) and some other pictures will be taken outside, and I'll rent the 85 1.8 for that.
I just sold my kit lens cause I wasn't satisfied with the image quality of it...

I might be wrong, and if so I suggest someone else to correct me but...
...taking pictures at 1.4 isn't easy at all, you get a lot of chromatic aberrations which might ruin your pictures very easily. Particularly if you have parasite lights like in a stadium.
You need a very soft and diffused light, and you will also loose details at 1.4... IMHO you'd better take pictures at 2.8 and raise your ISO up to 800, you could get better results like that.
If you already own the 1.8 I wouldn't recoment to spend those money to buy the 1.4, I'd save them for something else depending on your needs.
Give me a sec and I'll upload a couple of examples for my theory

OK here is the test.
I took pictures from a tripod, so be aware of that and consider the importance of shutter speed for action shoots.
Left part is a center crop, right part is top right corner.

The image is quite big (1.7 MB). Remember to click on it once it's open so you can see 100% of its size.

http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/9422/74465692.jpg

Notice the chromatic aberration or purple fringing at 1.4 which is still barely visible at 2.8 (and still a little bit at 5.6 anyway).

Now you know



This post was edited by AlPi on Sep 7 2011 02:45am

true, but you could easily raise the so above 800