1/200s, f/1.4, ISO 800, 35mm

I have been trying out Canon's 35mm f/1.4 recently. It's an amazing lens and the wide apature opens up some interesting creative opportunities. With such a shallow depth of field, you can really make the foreground stand out, and, shooting wide-open, the lens produces photos with a cinematic feel. The 35mm focal length on a full frame camera makes the lens great for environmental portraits. You can fit a lot of the surroundings in the frame but still make the subject stand out. And compared to most wider lenses, it produces very limited distortion. Still, the lens is a little on the wide side for my general shooting style, especially for street photography. I feel that I'm too far from the action and that going closer would interfere with the scene I'm trying to capture. As a result, I sometimes end up cropping my shots more than I'd like to. On the other hand, it's a fun challenge to frame fairly wide angle street shots, and in that way I like the way the lens forces me to think about how to compose an image, rather than just find, say, an interesting person or object to focus on.

Today, I took the lens on a 5d Mark II for a tram tide to Kennedy Town on the west side of Hong Kong Island. Continue below the fold, for more shots.