When I was looking for a fast lens (church shots, Christmas in front of the tree, etc...) I came across the fixed focal length EF 50mm/ 1.4/ USM from Canon. What is important for me is a functioning, fast AF with USM, so that many third-party providers have fallen behind, and a moderate price, a fixed focal length in the standard range is not worth 1,000 euros or more to me. After almost a week of testing on a 5D MKII, I came to the following conclusion: First of all, a fixed focal length is not as bad as it sounds, 50mm is quite suitable for everyday use, if necessary you have to move a bit, I would have imagined it to be worse and will probably add another 24mm in the long term. Let's start with what you get with the EF 50mm - and that's not L-like, but looks a lot cheaper". There is no lens hood - this has to be for 10 (third-party) or 25-30 (original) euros be ordered later - and there is no leather pouch. The lens is made of plastic, but the zoom ring moves fully. On the negative side, I notice that the focus is outwards (approx. 10mm maximum position). After the camera is switched off, the lens does not move in (transport) back to the basic position, which makes it look quite vulnerable. Here I got used to moving back manually for the first few days before I stowed the camera. Regarding the imaging performance - this is significantly worse at f1.4 (even for the layman) than after At f4 it is in no way inferior to my 100 macro, up to f8 I hardly notice a change, from f2 I am already very satisfied.The AF works quickly, quietly and quite precisely (failure rate felt 5%-10%), here I don't see any differences to the colleagues from the L parliamentary group. Conclusion: for 330 euros there is a lens with USM and with an enormous light intensity, which has a very high imaging performance when stopped down a few times. Flowers and portraits are my favorite motifs, and I can now get them beautifully photographed even in diffuse lighting conditions. Other (L) lenses sometimes cost 4-5 times as much, I hardly believe that you can really get that much more out of them. Actually, it's 4 stars due to the weakness with an open aperture and the not quite as robust construction, but since I was aware of both beforehand and the lens is at the top for me in the price/performance comparison, 5 stars are my choice.