I’ve been looking to expand my set of lenses recently, but before taking the plunge on such a large expense I looked into lens rentals. After looking at the various websites, I decided to try out LensRentals. I went with them for a few reasons. First, they had one of the nicer websites which was fairly simple to use. Second, they had a very enlightning blog that spoke about interesting topics.

Once I picked the website, I rented the Canon 50mm f1.2 L lens. I’m trying to decide between a 35mm, 50mm, 85mm lens. The 50mm was just the one I thought I might like best. The lens arrived a couple days after ordering so I promptly got it on my body and started taking shots.

I’ve gotta say, shooting with this lens was tough. If you regularly shoot on automatic modes, you’re going to have to change. The low f-stop produces one of the narrowest depth-of-field I had ever seen. If you didn’t stop the lens up, it would be very difficult to get the shot in focus. In the short time I had the lens, probably 75% of my shots were not in focus. However, the ones that I did manage to get were incredibly sharp and clear.

In all, it was a nice experience to try the lens. I didn’t end up getting the lens. It was just a bit too difficult to use for my use case. I’ll try some of the other lenses some other time. Below, you can see some of the good shots I managed to take during this period.

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