Effectively this is the deal with this lens, it's pretty ordinary performance, optical old style, CAs and bokeh fringing, when not set against the recent competition at a price of $800 it would look good, but set against the Sigma at a tad over half the price, it's standing there with it's pants round it's ankles!
Pretty embarrassing for Nikon.
Thanks! Timely for me, I was considering this lens.
Markus, thank you for your review. Excellent!
Are you back permanently?
Gah... and I was about to wonder aloud about the almost 2 months of downtime.
Lenstip put this lens down big time, and here it actually looks better than that. The only thing I'd really like to contest is the very last sentence of the verdict: not every fifty has to be "nifty", and it's kinda silly to hold every 50ish mm lens to the same standard. For this kind of lenses, I suggest a new category - "hefty fifty" or something.
Quote:Gah... and I was about to wonder aloud about the almost 2 months of downtime. Lenstip put this lens down big time, and here it actually looks better than that. The only thing I'd really like to contest is the very last sentence of the verdict: not every fifty has to be "nifty", and it's kinda silly to hold every 50ish mm lens to the same standard. For this kind of lenses, I suggest a new category - "hefty fifty" or something.
PZ sharpens the MTF images, lenstip does not. Sharpening does not lift every sampling up the same way, sharp results get less lifted than less sharp results. This (partly) will explain why the lens seems to perform better in PZ then in lenstip reviews.
Still, this lens is not about sharpness, but about rendering softer in OOF parts on purpose. With a silly price tag.
"error" in the review text:
"The outer image region is good to very good at f/1.4 and f/2 - which is actually pretty impressive."
The graph shows it to be in the "good" part, not reaching the very good at f1.4 and f2.
Nice to see a Nikon review
Quote:Still, this lens is not about sharpness, but about rendering softer in OOF parts on purpose. With a silly price tag.
Yep. The Sigma is designed for sharpness, but doesn't render backgrounds as nicely as the Nikkor does.
About that "cat's eye"- effect mentioned in the review (mechanical vignetting, isn't it?): I think this is what produces a "swirly" bokeh, especially if there is foliage in the background. A lot of people actually like this effect (me included). I think my old Helios 44-2 is even better at this than the Nikkor, but it's probably less sharp wide open
There is one more coming to the race of 50mm primes - Samyang.