The seven-blade diaphragm is fairly well-rounded, helping to maintain decent bokeh when stopping down a little. Sharpness is mostly very respectable, but underwhelming when shooting wide-open at f/1.8. The autofocusing is reasonably quick but is very noisy compared to any comparable lens with an in-built AF motor. Instead, autofocus is driven by a motor in the camera body via a helical thread. That’s mostly due to it having a plastic rather than metal mounting plate, and no autofocus motor. This is a little smaller than most 50mm lenses and is noticeably lighter, at 122g. That’s often ideal for still life, portraiture and any time you want a bit more reach than a standard focal length will deliver. This lens may have a typical 50mm standard prime focal length, but it's designed exclusively for use with APS-C format SLRs, rather than being full-frame compatible, so really it's a short telephoto prime with an effective focal length of 75mm. Sharpness is pretty reasonable but drops off quite a bit towards the corners, where colour fringing can be very noticeable – but its performance/price ratio is brilliant. The viewing angle of 140-degrees is not as wide as the 180-degrees of most diagonal fisheye lenses, and the fisheye effect itself looks less extreme. There’s also no autofocus but the depth of field is so enormous that the two-position focus lever is all you need. This lens has no adjustable diaphragm, just a fixed aperture of f/8. The 9mm fisheye gives a completely different shooting experience, producing the trademark extreme barrel distortion, while still utilizing the entire image sensor. Olympus also makes a similarly priced 15mm lens, but it's not that great and doesn’t really give you anything that’s not covered by a standard zoom. Inch-thick ‘pancake’ lenses have become quite common, but this Olympus lens is even thinner, at about half an inch thick, literally about the size of a body cap. With that in mined, here's a choice selection of the best cheap lenses that add value to your camera outfit – and definitely with the emphasis on value! We've picked out lenses for all the major camera systems, so whatever model you use, there should be a cheap lens or two here to tempt you. Cheap lenses have a reputation for being plasticky, rather than the rugged metal build that's associated with pro optics. Affordable zooms are out there, but cheap primes will offer considerably better optical quality and faster maximum apertures, giving you more creative freedom and opening up possibilities. The best cheap lenses tend to be primes, and that's what we've focused on for this guide. While cheap lenses will never rival the expensive ones for optical quality, they can still be effective designs, and what's more, they tend to be considerably more lightweight, making them ideal for travel (which makes sense anyway, as you'll be a lot less heartbroken if you drop or lose a cheap lens). It does take some navigating – some lenses are cheap for a reason, some are famous for offering great value, and some are hidden gems that don't get as much press as they should.
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