The Nifty Fifty Lens from Canon
See the Canon EF-50mm f1.4 lens above? Buy it!
I say to all my students to buy a 50mm standard lens when they first buy a DSLR camera. When I first got into photography in the early 1980's, most cameras came with a 50mm lens.
The nifty fifty is a great lens to own for a number of reasons:
What it also does is make you think as a photographer. Many people tend to lazily zoom in and out with a 24-70mm lens and shoot a ton of shots. Using a 50mm standard fixed lens will make you think more about each shot.
Move around more
You will tend to move about more and look for new angles and positions as you are limited (in a nice way) by this lens. I absolutely love it for portraits, you can see some sample images from this lens in the review linked below.
I have had the Canon EF 50mm 1.4 lens for around 8 years so I thought it best to finally review it! Just for fun, I put it up against the Canon EF24-70mm L 2.8 for a couple of shots to see how they differ.
I use this lens whenever possible as I think it produces some of the sharpest, cleanest images possible, especially on a full frame DSLR.