The Lens that made me an Impostor | Sony 50mm f1.4 GM

It’s somehow, too good?

How do you know if your photos are “good”?  The more you shoot, the more you might suspect that maybe none of it is very good, and so it begins. The hunt for the perfect camera or lens to take your work to the next level.  This search took me a decade, but last year I finally found it.  My favourite lens of all time - this one. 

A technical masterpiece - everything I could have wanted in a lens. But it does have two problems.  One - this lens is so good it made me feel like an impostor and Two…

Today let’s talk about Sony’s 50mm f1.4 G Master.  This G-Master prime has absurdly fast autofocus, a full suite of controls right on the lens - we’re talking aperture ring, focus ring, switches for auto focus manual focus, iris lock, customisable buttons. 

Robust weather sealing, 516 grams - a bit lighter and more evenly distributed than the 35mm G-Master, not as front heavy, so it handles really well.  Bright f1.4 aperture, shooting wide open it’s sharp.  Ridiculously sharp.  Unreasonably sharp, yet buttery smooth transition to out of focus bokeh.  Chromatic Aberration?  Vignetting? Distortion?  Almost none to speak of and what’s there is all correctable in Lightroom at the click of a button.

It is pretty much a perfect 50, but the more I shot with it, I realised none of this matters.

The impostor syndrome - where you feel like a fraud despite all external accomplishments and evidence to the contrary, is a plague amongst the photographic community.  Right now it’s still not classified as an official psychiatric disorder, there’s no standardised way of diagnosing it, it gets confused with anxiety and depression, so no-one really knows definitively how to treat it? 

The strategy that worked for me is based on Japanese philosophy - Shu Ha Ri. 

Learn the basics, imitate, then innovate.

A 50mm lens feels natural.  It can capture plenty of the scene using a field of view similar to our eyes.   If you’re used to your phone camera it will feel really tight - not the easiest for casual group shots or top-down latte-art.  Compared to 35mm - the most versatile do-it-all travel lens - it is just 1-2 steps closer. 

If a 35mm is defined by all you can fit into the frame, a 50 is about what you can leave out of it.

More bokeh. 

Better subject isolation. 

A tool that spotlights whatever you point the lens at, a fraction more than their immediate surroundings.   You’re more in control of every scene with a 50mm, a slight pan or tilt and you can remove unwanted distractions right in camera. 

There’s a reason 50mm is favoured by the greats. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson, the Father of street photography. Elliot Erwitt, Robert Doisneau, and Saul Leiter - all had a penchant for 50. 

It’s enough to make you feel like an impostor.

My work will never be as pure, elegant, or beautiful, but all I’m hoping for on my best day is a mere facsimile.  To pay homage to the greats, and hope I can find a hint of something original by following in their footsteps. 

Shu-ha-ri - imitate then innovate.

And that’s why the Sony 50mm f1.4 G Master is my favourite lens of all time.  Versatile enough to capture the romanticism of a bygone era in street photography, with all the modern bells and whistles that technology has to offer. 

But it does have two problems. 

One - just like me, it might make you feel like an impostor, and Two it gets overshadowed by sibling rivalry.

Its bigger brother.  The heavyweight champ - Sony 50mm f1.2 G master.

Which 50mm should you go for? More in the next post.

Happy shooting everyone, talk soon.

Jack.

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