After quite some a few years of mostly using manual focus lenses, I'd got lazy. I'd been relying on zoom lenses with autofocus, as well as not doing as much photography in general. The result was that I was very out of practice with focussing. I took the manual focus lenses out for some street photography, and wasn't particularly happy with the results. I'd missed focus far too much. And I had a shoot coming up with a model, which suddenly felt a bit risky with these lenses. I had my zooms (24-240 and 28-60 ([[Sony SEL2860]])), which took decent photos, but only *decent*. Nothing special. When I got it right, those manual lenses could take really special photos. So I did a bit of searching for something that might combine the best of both - autofocus, decently sharp, but with a bit of character, and able to give me some shallow depth of field. There are a few good lenses for that, but the bargain choice seemed to be the Sony/Zeiss 55mm f/1.8. It's not the widest aperture, but pretty wide. The focal length is good for portraits. The only down side is that it's an expensive lens for my budget, at around £650. <a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/pigpogm/53594395868/in/dateposted-public" title="Serina"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53594395868_c2137b8d9b_h.jpg" alt="Serina, photographed with this lens"/></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script> But they've been around a few years now, so used prices are pretty appealing - around £300 or so. And there are usually plenty available. I picked one up from Wex, got it the next day, and barely had chance to try it out before the shoot. But it worked out just fine - a very capable lens, but easy to get good results with. At least for the moment, it's my favourite lens - reasonably small and light, reasonably fast aperture, reasonable amount of character without being over the top, and reasonably priced.