My Canon 50mm f/1.8 lens, the “Nifty Fifty,” fell apart for no apparent reason a week or two ago. The rigors of sitting in my bag, unmoved, were apparently too much. For the price, it was hard to beat. 50mm is the “standard lens,” something in the bag of most any photographer. The wide f/1.8 aperture lets in tons of light, allowing a pleasantly shallow depth of field and use in dim light when other lenses won’t get the shot. 18 months of use out of a $100 lens, so I feel like I got value.

But it had a few cons against it. One is that it always felt cheaply made. I shoot a “prosumer” plastic camera, so a lens with a flimsy-plastic exterior didn’t bother me too much, but it didn’t feel like anything top-of-the-line. This is something that a lot of reviewers complain about. And it turns out that the “the front of my lens just fell right out and can’t be reattached” problem is fairly common on the f/1.8 lens. By contrast, the f/1.4 feels a lot nicer. It’s still plastic, but I suspect that if I were to, say, bang it into my knee, I might injure my knee, not break the lens in half.

The other thing the f/1.8 had was that it wasn’t perfect. For someone who’s used to a budget zoom lens, a prime lens with an f/1.8 aperture is amazing. But the f/1.4 has a “special something” that the f/1.8 doesn’t. I think bokeh is part of it. I always thought the people who talked about the quality of bokeh were like the people who pretend they can “hear” the difference in audio that you get if you upgrade to pure-silver cables, or who are connoiseurs of various commodities. But there’s something special about this.

One thing that throws me is that the lens has an ultrasonic motor, so focus is essentially silent. There’s a very faint noise caused by the lens moving, but you don’t hear a motor whirring. It’s taking me some getting used to, because I’m used to hearing the motor focusing the lens and knowing that it’s still trying to focus.