Nikon 50mm shoot-out / comparison
I like the focal length of 50mm a lot and since I have quite a few lenses covering this focal length I though it would be nice to see how the lenses perform in relation to each other and which aperture is the sweet spot in terms of sharpness.
Disclaimer: I'm not a professional lens tester! I do this for my own interest and fun. I also just have a single exemplar of each lens so please take this with a grain of salt.
Featured lenses:
* Nikon AF-S 50mm f/1.8 G
* Nikon AI-S 50mm f/1.2
* Nikon AF-S 58mm f/1.4 G (ok, this is not a true 50mm, but well...)
* Nikon Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S
* Nikon Nikkor Z 24-70 f/2.8 S
All attached to a Z7 on a sturdy tripod. I used pinpoint AF except for the 50mm 1.2 AI-S and the 58mm where I focused manually. The 58mm was a bit front focusing interestingly. 🤷♂️
Shooting distance was 110 cm because this is roughly the distance I use 50mm often for kind of half body shots.
I disabled the sharpening in LR (sliders to 0) and just adjusted the exposure a bit.
Read MoreDisclaimer: I'm not a professional lens tester! I do this for my own interest and fun. I also just have a single exemplar of each lens so please take this with a grain of salt.
Featured lenses:
* Nikon AF-S 50mm f/1.8 G
* Nikon AI-S 50mm f/1.2
* Nikon AF-S 58mm f/1.4 G (ok, this is not a true 50mm, but well...)
* Nikon Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8 S
* Nikon Nikkor Z 24-70 f/2.8 S
All attached to a Z7 on a sturdy tripod. I used pinpoint AF except for the 50mm 1.2 AI-S and the 58mm where I focused manually. The 58mm was a bit front focusing interestingly. 🤷♂️
Shooting distance was 110 cm because this is roughly the distance I use 50mm often for kind of half body shots.
I disabled the sharpening in LR (sliders to 0) and just adjusted the exposure a bit.
The 50mm f/1.8G performed actually quite good, much better than I expected.
The old 50mm f/1.2 AI-S was already nicely sharp at f/2.
The 58mm f/1.4 only got really sharp at f/2.8 which was kinda expected. The real sweet spot might be somewhere between f/2 and f/2.8.
The new 50mm f/1.8 S is already amazing wide open.
What I also wanted to test was how the 58mm and the 50mm 1.8 S compare. Actually to get the sharpness of the 50mm 1.8 S at f/1.8 I have to stop down the 58mm to f/2.8, which results in a more or less similar bokeh imho. This is quite interesting.
The new 24-70 f/2.8 S at 50mm also is quite good wide open but not as good as the 50mm 1.8 S wide open.
All lenses perform really well if you know in which range to use them.
