Last night I was glancing really quickly through craigslist, when I came across a fresh posting from someone looking to sell a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens for $75. It wouldn't have been anything special, except for the fact that the lens was Mark 1. I immediately contacted him via email and offered to buy the lens from him.

The Canon 50mm 1.8 Mark 2 is an extremely cheap and famous for its sharpness and image quality. The problem with it is that they are made entirely out of plastic and fall apart when bumped or dropped onto carpet the wrong way. The Mark 1, on the other hand, has a metal mount, stronger build, and many other advantages over the newer Mark 2.

The Mark 2 lens costs about 60-70 dollars brand new right now. Canon doesn't manufacture the Mark 1 anymore, so the only way to get your hands on one is through a website like ebay. Even then, the cheapest you can get them for is probably over $150 now.

Thus, when I saw that someone was selling theirs for $75, I immediately pounced on the deal. I found out the reason they were selling it was because they recently also got a really good deal on the 50mm 1.4, a $300 lens they bought for $150.

I met the seller this morning outside my apartment and purchased the lens after testing it a little. I'm probably going to sell off my kit lens that came with the 20D. If you want a 18-55mm, contact me soon.

This evening five of us went to Joe Song's house for dinner. Twas a delicious dinner of chicken and spaghetti with sausages. Afterwards we did schoolwork for a while, paid a short visit to a couple with a new baby, drove back to berkeley, and lost an intramural volleyball game 0-2.

After a day of using this 50mm 1.8, I highly recommend it. It's amazing in pretty much every aspect.