Lens question: good next-step-up or unnecessary?

[Giselle]

Would this 50mm lens only be good for close-up shots and portraits? I want another lens still

[Catlady711]

Would this 50mm lens only be good for close-up shots and portraits? I want another lens still

Sorry I didn't see your question until now.

Don't know if I'm too late to answer the question, but I'll put it here in case someone else wonders the same thing and searches for it.

I find my 50mm 1.8 to be GREAT for portraits it's sharp crisp focus is wonderful. The experts/pro's don't agree as there is some distortion and they prefer to use nothing less than a 70mm up to even a 100 mm to keep the perspective of a person's size more natural. Although if you're not doing alot of shooting straight down on kids/pets or having someone holding something out towards the camera I don't know that most people would even see the distorton even if you pointed it out to them.

As far as for close up you can see how close I was to Bear. I'm pretty sure that was the closest I could get and still have the camera focus. I think the specs say 1 1/2 feet is the closest you can get to something and still focus on it.

To be fair though, on a DSLR a regular lens has a magnification factor of about 1.6 I think, so my 50mm film lens on a DSLR acts more like a 70mm anyways.