Current 50mm lenses comparison

[jose_angel]

<p>Shun, you`re right, it is my experience. Most of my photos could be called "semi-posed environmental portraits". As a sharpness freak my main concern in photography is to achieve perfect focus, I usually like to shoot at wider apertures. Also, for other than optimal light conditions I simply don`t use my camera... except for still lifes with a tripod. If I must shoot this day I simply take a flash. Other attemps always result in a bunch of blurred, out of focus inusable images.</p>

<p>I always liked to consider fast lenses creative tools, that one or two faster speeds in the limit rarely helped me to achieve better results.</p>

<p>Thanks Ilkka. I see that some people looking for the highest resolutive lens should be looking instead for another more resolutive camera... I suspect the D700 nyquist frecuency is not so high and can be easily surpassed by many lenses (at least at their optimal apertures). </p>

[ShunCheung]

<p>If you are indeed a sharpness freak, you don't want to shoot hand held at f1.4 under dim light. You want to stop down to at least f2.8, f4 when those lenses tend to get a lot better optically; you also want to use a tripod.</p>

<p>But then once you stop down and shoot from a tripod, even an expensive 50mm/f1.8 is going to perform very well.</p>

<p>One way or another, I don't see the point to obsess about any minor differences among different 50mm/f1.4 lenses. As I said in another thread, I have spent my share of time studying Leica and Zeiss lenses. Now I would rather focus on developing my photography skills.</p>

[oskar_ojala]

<blockquote>

<p>Isn't discussion of any comparison among the current 50mm lenses rather incomplete--to say the least--if the Leica M and R 50mm lenses are not included?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Leica M lenses cannot be munted on Nikon DSLRs and the Leica M8 is worse resolution-wise than the best Nikon cameras. Leica R lenses would be an interesting avenue to explore. Dpreview has tested a Summilux 50/1.4 on a Canon and compared to Canon's 50/1.4, it had better performance wide open and worse at the edges stopped down than the Canon. The Leica also had markedly higher CA. Given this, the Leica 50/1.4 does not seem to be a particularly interesting performer since one does lose automatic aperture using it on a Nikon. However, it would be interesting to see more tests about the subjects.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I don't see the point to obsess about any minor differences among different 50mm/f1.4 lenses</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I don't see the obsessive part and I don't see why you need to come to this thread and point that out. I'm not commenting on the topics I think are redundant either. And sometimes the differences are not that minor.</p>

[sjmurray]

<p>I expect most 50mm lenses to be pretty close in sharpness, especially in the center. To me the use of a fast 50mm lenes is in the wide open to 2.8 range for portraits in natural light. More than sharpness I want nice bokeh and I don't mind soft corners since they are out of focus anyway.</p>