Question about Canon 50mm F/1.4

[Fattymoocow]

Hi everyone,

I just received the Canon 50mm f/1.4 and have been playing with it for about a week. This is the first lens I've bought aside from the kit lens that comes with the Canon t3i. So I'm really a beginner when it comes to photography and the gear.

My question stems from not knowing for sure if there is a problem with my lens or if it's just a problem with the user (me). I've included a picture of something I took and I'm confused as to the bokeh that my lens creates, it just doesn't seem even or normal.

If you look towards the bottom right, the very right piece of dessert (last whole piece in the picture, not the one that is partially cut off) in the white liner the blur looks distorted. The blur doesn't look like that in any other part of the picture, not even on the dessert piece to the right of the piece that I'm referring to (the one in the pink liner partially cut in half).

The dessert piece to the very left at the bottom looks blurred but it doesn't look completely distorted. Neither do the pieces at the top of the photo. Is there something wrong with my lens? Is there something that I'm doing wrong when I'm taking the picture? Or is this just an optical illusion that is created from the picture itself? I'm not sure because I feel like a lot of other pictures have this weird unnatural blur as well and it's not just in this one. So I am in need of help trying to distinguish if my lens is maybe defective or if I'm doing something wrong and if I am what is it that I'm doing wrong that maybe I could fix?

There are no edits to the photo except to resizing the photo to be uploaded into the forums.

Canon EOS Rebel T3i
Manual
f/1.4
1/125sec
ISO-100
focal length: 50mm
flash on
white balance: auto

Thanks ahead of time! Also, if you need examples from other pictures I've taken with this lens that has this same problem let me know and I will try to upload them.

[ceremus]

Doesn't look to me like anything is wrong with the lens, but I think the thing to note is that you're shooting your subject at a fairly short distance with a wide-open aperture of f/1.4. That's a very wide aperture lens, and especially with a short focus distance your depth of field is going to be razor thin. You can expect to see things out of focus centimeters apart from your plane of focus. Not to mention the 50mm f/1.4 can be a bit soft when shot wide open, especially in the corners.

[Fattymoocow]

That makes sense, I guess I have to play with it a lot more so I can understand how to take better pictures with this lens. I did notice the corners were very blurry when I shoot at wide open like that. I can distinctly see that effect through my eyepiece when I'm setting up shots.

But a quick follow-up question.. why is it that the left corner isn't just as distorted as the right side is? To my beginner eyes, the left side looks normal but the right side just completely throws me off. Isn't the focus or the blurring effect usually in a circular sort of fashion from where my focus point is when I shoot at wider apertures? This out of focus aspect of the photo just seems irregular to me.

Thank you for your response!